Desire Good

God is the business of turning bad things into good things.


Things happen, right?

The last decade or so of my life has been an amazing journey! I have experienced more really neat stuff than I ever thought possible ... Biblical type stuff too ... empathy ... miracles ... healings ... knowing impossible to otherwise know stuff ... compassion ... and the list goes on and on and on!

A lot of change happened for me after I learned how to desire good ... "how" to do desire good ... not just that I am "expected" to desire good.


"How" to desire good is epically different than "expected" to desire good.

Follow along with me! I'll explain it to you!

I'll begin by using some testimonies that changed my adult life and forwarded me into having the will to desire good ...


My wife, Holly, and I lost our triplet son during pregnancy some years ago. He passed away at seven months along.


However, because of modern medicine, the surviving twins of the triplets were carried to full term. Their birth weights were 7 pounds 5 ounces and 7 pounds 12 ounces. We chose to view it as their brother's passing aided the surviving triplet brothers to live and thrive.


Holly, on the other hand, was a psychological mess. In her mind, she had existed as both a nursery and a mortuary at the same time!


She was both in joy and in mourning.


After the twins were born, and after we were finally settled, she went to a small country church for prayer because she when she finally unwound herself, she was distraught.


The pastor and his wife prayed for her. Holly ended up on the floor because she felt so relaxed. She said what she felt like was that she was a scrambled puzzle, and God put her puzzle pieces back together. The pastor's wife had a revelation about Holly even though she barely knew her as we had just moved to town within the prior two weeks. She was excited when she told Holly these words.


She told Holly, "You see things that other people don't see!"


Holly had worn eyeglasses most of the time I had known her. She couldn't read much beyond about eight feet when reading average text on signs and such. The pastor's wife's comments were somewhat odd since Holly could barely see across the room without her eyeglasses.


On our way home from prayer, I was driving. Holly was not wearing her glasses because she had been crying, and when she had put her glasses on, her eyes hurt, which she figured was due to her tears. This was at night.We stopped at the only four-way stop in that little town, and Holly remarked, "Town and Country Supermarket". Next, she stated, "Town and Country Bank ... I didn't know that was there!"Then she turned and looked at me with eyes wide open.


"Jeff! I have been healed! I can see!"


True enough! To this day, some nearly 12 years later, she still does not use eyeglasses for seeing.


But!There is more to this story.


I remember as we were in that little rental in that little town, that Holly was watching some type of ghost hunting paranormal show.


However, as she viewed it, she began to see apparitions in the rental house. She began to see a child in the house though it was not a a physical sighting. Other things of interest started happening.


Enters my testimony of what happened to me ...


Before the triplets were conceived, Holly had had a long history of back-related pain, which was from an accident she had had as a teenager at an amusement park.


Again, we were at a church in the way back woods of Missouri. There was a fellow there who was speaking as a guest. He had had a miraculous encounter with healing.


While he was at his in-law's residence and working on their roof, he lost his footing and slipped from the peak of the roof. He landed head first on metal tool box that was sitting on concrete. The doctor's had told he and his wife that he would not walk again and would most likely reside in a nursing facility.


That wasn't to be the end of his story because that accident was just three weeks prior to him standing before us, in church, at the pulpit, telling of us his healing.


That the conclusion of his talking, he returned to his seat next to his wife, which was the pew directly in front of us. The pastor asked him if he had any additional prayer requests. He said that his back still ached a little.


So, as the custom was in that church, the pastor asked for the congregation to extend out their arms and hands (as a gesture of laying their hands on him for those who could not touch him).


Holly was directly behind him, and she could have easily touched him. But as modest as she was she thought to just do the gesture like others who were afar. What she had felt though was to massage or gently rub his back in that area, but that seemed so odd to her, which is why she hesitated.


Now, in the past, for those many years since Holly was teenager, she could not stand directly straight up nor move around freely as many other could.


Holly had sort of a routine like an aged person. If she had been sitting for a while, she had to work herself into being able to stand up.


When the church service had ended, Holly stood straight up. Then she sat right back down quickly. Then she stood straight up again. Then she sat down quickly. She turned from side to side. She stood up again quickly. Then she looked at me with surprise and shock, and told me that she had been healed!


From that time, Holly began to do more and more physical things that she could not do before. For instance, she could run again. She took up Tai Kwon Do and earned some belts. She became pregnant and carried triplets. At the end of her full term, she was carrying over 17 pounds of babies not including additional pregnancy materials. Holly had genuinely been healed of her back issues. That was over 15 years ago. She is still healed from that today.


So after the triplets were born and after the prayer at the church and after we realized Holly's eyesight had also been healed, in came my experiences.


Back in 1998, I had had a slip down a flight of stairs that caused a lot of damage in my lower back. In 1999, I had an accident at work that shattered my ankle, and I landed on my back. Those injuries compounded to create in my lower back a problem with my L4, L5, and S1 vertebrae. I could not walk without pain from either my ankle nor my lower back. I struggled at a lot of things and had had very few "good" days free of pain.


I had a problem in that little town where we were renting at the time that Holly's eyes were healed. I had to still move the remainder of our possessions from our prior residence, and I also had to find a job.


Just before the triplets were born, I had had my third ankle surgery. I had been in recovery, but I had debt that I had to resolve quickly.


Being that I could do some light construction projects, I set out in that new town to solicit for some small contracts. The problem was ... I was not physically able to do them efficiently. One of the jobs I had contracted was a new roof over an existing RV, which meant I had to make a soffit as well a climb ladders while arching my back. That arching my back was my worst fear because I knew what kind of pain that would result in giving to me.


As it was, I was at the house, and in pain, of course. It was my life for over a decade.


Holly felt compassion for me. As she had at other times and to little avail at other times, she came over to me, but this time was different. In times past, she would try to massage my back to ease my pain.


This time was different.


This time, she came over to me, and she said, "Jeff. You are healed." She was firm and unmovable. She knew that she knew that she knew that I had been healed.


At first, I thought that she was just trying to make me feel better, as in, wishful thinking. But I quickly caught myself and remembered her back being healed as well as the many years she had had pain before then.


It was then that I believed in the miracle that if God did that for her that he had done it for me as well because I knew that she knew what pain was and what healing is.


I did not doubt it after that point. I simply believed. I believed that if she knew what she knew, then I was not going to doubt her word.Well, wouldn't you know that I worked for 11 days straight and completed that roof with no problem at all, and I was able to pay my bills as well! I had been healed of over a decade of near daily agonizing pain!


Holly continued with "seeing things that others don't see", and we moved to a different rental within a few months due to plumbing problems at the prior rental.


At the time, I was still on pain medications but had found that pain medications had actually increased my pain in areas where I had not had pain before then such as in my thighs.


Being as it had been that we had moved, instead of finding a new doctor, we decided to simply let the prescription run out. That was literally a painful decision because of withdrawals.


Withdrawals were a different kind of agony unlike I had never experienced in my body overall - across my entire body. I could detail it for you, but I would rather not. I was just flat out seemingly endless pain, but it worked in me to bring me to a conclusion.


I prayed.


I told God, "God, if I am in this kind of pain when I am old, I know I won't be able to serve you as I can now without this pain. What is it that I lack that the early disciples and Apostles had?"


This was the first time in my life that I remember experiencing what happened next.


Every pain in my body ended. Every sound in the room silenced.


I heard a voice say one word to me.


"Desire"


What more can I say about that? What did it sound like? What was it like? I was awestruck. It is indescribable, honestly.


The noises of the house returned to my hearing. The pain in my body returned to my feeling. But the essence of what was spoken to me remained.


Being that I enjoyed a family heirloom collegiate dictionary I had with me, I reached over to that dictionary and looked up the term "desire".


It was a mystery for me to search out that term because I didn't get very far with it in the dictionary ... not at the first. I got somewhat stumped.


I looked at the origins of the term, as in, where it came from. I wanted to know what the term had meant in its most basic senses.


The dictionary I had had was from the 1970's, and the origins it offered were somewhat like what is offered online today, "Middle English, from Anglo-French desirer, from Latin desiderare, from de- + sider-, sidus heavenly body".


I then happened upon a similar term in "consider". I looked up that term and found the following:


"Middle English, from Anglo-French considerer, from Latin considerare to observe, think about, from com- + sider-, sidus heavenly body"


Well, this led me to another term called "desiderate". It's origins are:


"Latin desideratus, past participle of desiderare to desire"


Circle ... that led me into a circle, and I sort of kind of understood the meaning of "desire", but I wasn't satisfied with the end meaning because I had not explored the term "desire", honestly, with enough "desire" as of yet.


I figure if God had not spoken to me before, and all he said to me was one word, then I had to explore that word to its end.


I then noticed a common non-English term in the origins of "desire" and "consider", which was "sider".


I didn't think there was a common term called "sider" in the dictionary, so I was hesitant to go off of the beaten path with the fear that I was verging on "making stuff up" in order to "make sense" of what I had heard. Fear gripped me, but curiosity, hope, and a constant gnawing of intrigue drove me to seek resolve.

When I dove into the "sider" headword section of that dictionary, the mystery started to unravel itself!

I wasn't seeking exact English terms that matched "sider".

I was seeking English terms that had "sider" in their origins. In that effort, I came across terms such as: "sideral", "siderate", "sidereal", "siderean", "siderism", and "siderous".


To be continued ... May 2, 2021 @ 3:10 PM