Last night, during our Friday night prayer meeting we have in our home, my
youngest son was telling everybody about his cousin.  Daniel is an assistant
pastor in a church here in Denver,  I personally know his pastor because I
preached in his church once many years ago as a guest speaker on Sunday.
Anyhow Daniel is the church youth pastor.  He is about 30 years of age.  Not
long ago, Daniel, in one of the church youth meetings, passed out a survey
questionnaire type thing.  The first question was, have you ever heard God
speak to you.  Daniel told the teenagers that if they said yes to the first
question, he would recommend they be sent to a psychiatrist.  How odd, I
thought.  I went to the same Bible college Daniel graduated from so I
understand his thinking quite well.  Yet, even having the same
denominational background, I cannot quite figure out where Daniel got this
idea.  I heard many speakers in this denomination talking about hearing from
God and being led of the Holy Spirit.  Of course we never actually said, I
heard God's voice speaking to me, but we did everything but say it.  How
sad, I thought last night, that these kids are being taught God doesn't talk
to those He loves and died for.  At any rate, my son, who was telling this
story last night, just got a Great Dane puppy that is about 10 weeks old.
He is going to be a horse because his dad was a 200 pound dog, haw.  Anyhow,
little Samson got sick a couple of days ago.  Donna, my daughter in law, got
pretty upset, she loves animals as much as my wife does, and she wanted to
take him to the vet because she thought the new dog might have gotten parvo.
Some of you may recall how Sandy's first basset hound puppy got parvo and
had to be put to sleep a couple of years ago.  Then our second puppy got it,
too, but we prayed, and asked many others to pray, and Hoaggie lived through
the parvo and is fine now.  Anyhow, some vets say parvo can stay in the
house or even outside for up to two to four years while others say six
months.  Donna and Everett's little boy they adopted recently, Anthony, was
eating some chicken Mac nuggets with barbecue sauce and decided he didn't
want the rest of them and so he fed it to little Samson.  The dog got sicker
than a dog, sort of speak.  On the way to the vet that day, the Lord spoke
to Donna and told her that her dog did not have parvo and he was going to be
fine.  And so it was.  She nearly turned around and went home because she
was so satisfied with what she had heard but since she had already made the
appointment and she was almost there, she went ahead and took the dog in.
When my wife got cancer five years ago, the Lord told me that the growth on
Sandy's arm was cancer but when they removed it, they would get all of the
malignant melanoma the first time and so it was.  As all of you know, from
my recent article I wrote about being in the hospital two weeks ago, strong
depression settled upon me in the hospital and I could not find the reason.
I knew it wasn't demonic because I know how to check for such things and I
know what demonic oppression feels like and I know how to search for the
source and origin of such an attack.  It hit me one night, as Sandy and I
talked, that I had not bothered to look for the demonic aspect of my
depression.  That was likely due to being so sick with a fever and all.  I
laid down in the bed, I had been sitting up, and as I did, I hunted for the
source to see if it was demonic.  It wasn't and I thanked God that wasn't
the source of my depression.  This puzzled me but again, being so sick and
now depressed, I just figured it had to do with being sick.  I hadn't eaten
for three days nor had I slept for three days.  Plus my mind seemed cloudy
and fuzzy from all the medications and the fever and all and sorting things
out seemed hard to do, to say the least.  So, a few moments later, when I
felt the impression that the Lord was going to talk to me about my daughter
that night, I was glad but still puzzled about it.  When he did speak,
without any words being spoken, it was the loudest He had ever spoken to me
and yet, as I wrote before, I never heard Him speaking in my thoughts or my
mind.  I know people to whom the Lord as literally appeared, my mom being
one of them, and I know people who have literally heard an audible voice
when the Lord spoke.  Of course, demons can do this, too, so you best know
who you are in Christ in order to know the difference or you likely will end
up hearing something you didn't want to hear.  At any rate, it made me feel
good that my daughter in law, at her young age, clearly heard the Lord even
about a little dog.  Try and tell me God doesn't care.  I almost prayed for
Daniel last night that the Lord would speak to him to prove he was wrong
about this topic but frankly, I think Daniel would be blown out of the water
if God spoke to him so I decided to let the Lord figure that one out without
my help.

Phil.