Then we cried out to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our misery, toil and oppression.
So the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror and with miraculous signs and wonders ( Deuteronomy 26: 7-8 NIV).
Part 1 is comprised of the first three modules of the book and is Part 1 of the FREE eCourse Bonus on this Web site. They are:
Module 1 – Chapter 1: El Roi [The God Who Sees Me]
Module 2 – Chapter 2: God is Elohim [The Creator and Triune God]
Chapter 3: Because God Is Elohim, I Am Alive
Module 3 – Chapter 4: God is Jehovah-Tsidkenu [The Lord Our Righteousness]
Chapter 5: Because God Is Jehovah-Tsidkenu, He Sees Me As He Sees Jesus
It was no different than when President Kennedy was shot or when 9/11 hit. I knew exactly where I was and what I was doing when the realization came to me of what Jesus’ blood did for me–that God sees Jesus’ blood when He looks at me. I was folding laundry, listening to a spiritual cassette tape when the Holy Spirit opened my eyes to the words “in the name of Jesus.”
It happened during the same time-span, and in the same house where I was seeking to find the Something More I knew I was missing. It seemed to me every prayer I prayed hit the ceiling and came back down. My thoughts were: Why would God give me the time of day when there are so many other people who deserve His attention more than I? Then, the man on the tape mentioned that Jesus, standing at the right hand of the Father, intercedes for us, and “that’s why we pray, ‘In the name of Jesus.'”
I had always learned to end a prayer with the words, “In the name of Jesus,” but until then, the full impact of what they meant had not gone from my head to my heart. However, now, in my mind’s eye, I could see a RED umbrella covering me so that when God looked down upon me, He saw Jesus’ red blood, not me. Until then, what I saw was the underneath side of the umbrella smeared with my own unworthiness.
The words no good in me came to mind. I looked them up to see if they were in the Bible. Sure enough, there they were, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out” (Rom. 7:18).
I realized I’d been trying to feel worthy on my own, when Jesus had already made me worthy, or justified. God actually did hear my prayers because of Jesus; He is the only good in me. God actually did see Jesus blood when He looked at me. He saw perfection. What awesome thoughts! I just had to believe them in order to walk in the knowledge (receive) of what His blood had done for me.
How I’d limited God’s power and ability! I also began to realize that growing as a Christian was learning and relearning, and comprehending the awesome dimensions of what Jesus did for me at the very moment He came into my heart many years ago. And, it was not long before God taught me that “dying to self” [Galatians 2:20] would be a life long ordeal.
“Look to Me and Me alone. Let me teach you.”
We sold that two-story house in Kansas and moved to Texas, debt free, so Jim could get a doctorate degree in community college administration. He had been coaching football and teaching, but felt he needed to prepare for the future while our children were still young.
Four-year-old Kurt and two-year-old Francy hated the crowded daycare when I worked as a secretary at the college. We had no friends, not even at our church. We lived in a trailer house with a postage-stamp sized yard. Life was dry. Texas was hot. Not one tree. God seemed to say, “Look to Me and Me alone. Let me teach you.” But our life, pursuing unfulfilling things, chocked out all God’s Word from our hearts we had to begin with. Life was dry, drudgery, confused, a desert, a wilderness, and we knew it.
Three things kept me going that year, things I read or heard:
(1) When we make Jesus Christ absolute Lord of our life and of each day, it means there is nothing that can come into our lives that is not filtered through His fingers.
(2) Dying to self in order that we may live in God’s power, rather than our own, is something we must do daily. Mentally assenting to self dying, allows Christ to live His life through us each day–His royal red blood flowing through our veins.
(3) When we make Jesus Lord by giving ourselves and all we own to Him, He will, at some point, return 100-fold.
I had a green hanging plant God used to speak to me. It needed sun, water and fertilizer in order to grow. He impressed upon me that my heart was the same. It needed His Son, His water, and His fertilizer, but I did nothing to give it these things. With a three-year correspondence accounting course I was taking, a full-time job, and family, I made no time for God.
My plant also needed pruning, cutting back in order to grow to its maximum potential. I hated the thought of being pruned, but I knew it was true–God was pruning us–and was about to do a whole lot more. Our family had yet to put a real demand upon the covenant–a need to use the words “in the name of Jesus.”
If you’ve enjoyed this excerpt from my book, GOD Who Are You? AND Who Am I? I invite you to LEARN MORE with my free eCourse about the 7 aspects of heart operation Jehovah Tsidkenu [Jesus] does on our heart when we give Him open access. CLICK on link below.
No matter how much of the heart is blocked, Jesus performs whole heart operation. Consider the children of Israel who did not understand this. After the Israelite’s 430 years of bondage in Egypt, “God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them” (Exod. 2:24-25).
God sent Moses to deliver them. Moses, like all the children of Israel, was a descendant of Jacob (whose name was changed to Israel). Moses was delivered from the wrath of the Pharaoh of Egypt who hoped to retard the growth in the number of Israelites (Hebrews), by sentencing all newborn baby boys to be executed. To avoid that fate, Moses’ parents put him in a floating basket and hid him in the Nile River. He was discovered by the Pharaoh’s own daughter who raised him as her son.
When Moses was an adult and discovered who he really was, he tried in his own strength to deliver his people from their slavery by killing an Egyptian who was mistreating a Hebrew slave. Accused of murder, he fled to the desert to save his own life. While tending sheep, Moses saw a burning bush. After turning aside to look, God called to him, saying, “. . . I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey. . . .” (Exod. 3:8).
Through his servant Moses, God worked miraculous signs and wonders, with ten plagues, to snatch the Israelites from Pharaoh’s grasp. After leaving Egypt and crossing the Red Sea on dry land, the Israelites witnessed first-hand miracles from God Almighty. They could have entered the Promised Land within eleven days; however, when Moses sent out twelve spies into the land, ten came back with a fear-filled report that the people were stronger and taller than the Israelites.
Only Joshua and Caleb Allowed Jesus to Perform Whole Heart Operation
Only Joshua and Caleb trusted in the goodness, wisdom, and power of the Lord, in His promise that they could take the land as He commanded them. For that lack of faith, the Lord told the people, “Not a man of this evil generation will see the good land I swore to give your forefathers, except Caleb son of Jephunneth. He will see it, and I will give him and his descendants the land he set his feet on, because he followed the Lord wholeheartedly” (Deut. 1:34-36 emphasis added).
God sent all the people back to wander in the wilderness for forty years until that generation died. Only the little children who the people said “would be taken captive”19 would see the Promised Land. Joshua would be their leader because, like Caleb, he believed God and followed Him with his whole heart.
Try to imagine what it would look like for a patient to refuse to allow the surgeon to operate on her whole heart? After experiencing the initial life-giving royal blood flowing through her veins and being translated into heavenly places, she wakes up from the operating table and says, “Just take half; give me back the rest.”
In doing so, the upper chamber pumping the blue, lifeless blood would only partially gravitate to the machine. Only a part would ever be energized and rerouted to the body. Left long enough in this state, the result is “congestive heart failure,” where fluid backs up, causing congestion in the tissues due to reduced pressure of the blood flow.
You may say, “But no one in their right mind would do such a thing.” Spiritually speaking, it happens all the time. Look at what the children of Israel did. After they received the command of the Lord to go up and take possession of the land, the people fell into a half-hearted commitment. Moses writes,
“You grumbled in your tents and said, ‘The Lord hates us; so he brought us out of Egypt to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us. Where can we go? Our brothers have made us lose heart'” (Deut. 1:27-28 ).
The Lord had just told them where to go and how He would get them there; but, they listened to the wrong people–the ten spies. With their non-believing words, they took back part of their hearts from trusting the Lord to live His life through them in His power and in His strength.
This brings up an important question, “If the children of Israel lost heart, did they lose their salvation?” They were out of Egypt, weren’t they? So are the patients who have asked the Great Physician to replace their heart. It is just as impossible to take back a replaced heart as it is blood that is already shed.
Scripture backs this up: “No one can deliver out of my hand. When I act, who can reverse it?” (Isa. 43:13). The apostle John records the words of Jesus, chapter 10 verse 28, “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand.” If that were not enough, Jesus takes it to the highest authority, “My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”
Salvation cannot be annulled; it is the legal contract between Jesus and His Father.
If only the children of Israel could have, in faith, let go and believed this promise:
Do not be terrified; do not be afraid of them. The Lord your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as he did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes, and in the desert. There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place. -Deuteronomy 1:29-31
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With Marie, nothing good came to her life until she was ready and willing to commit her whole life, her whole heart, to Jesus Christ, in complete obedience to His will and His way. Our analogy stops here, for Jesus not only transforms our heart, He replaces it. He says, “I’ll remove the stone heart from your body, and replace it with a heart that’s God willed, not selfwilled” (Ezek.36:26 The Message.). The marvelous thing is, He gives us His heart, uncorrupted, pure and clean.
7. Jesus Performs Whole Heart Operation with a Deep Inner Meaning:
“The Lord confides in those who fear him; he makes his covenant known to them” (Ps. 25:14). The Amplified version reads that He will “reveal to them its [deep, inner] meaning.”
E. W. Kenyon (1867 – 1948), discovered this deeper meaning. He was a pastor and evangelist who found the Lord in a Methodist prayer meeting when he was seventeen years old. His ministry lives on through his writings. In one of his booklets, Blood Covenant, he says he knew there had to be more to the New Covenant than he realized, and that it resided in the Lord’s Supper table. “The silence of the disciples when Jesus introduced it, saying, ‘This is my blood of the New Covenant, which is poured out for many unto the remission of sins’; and then told them to eat the bread which was His body and to drink the wine which He declared was His blood–I say, the very silence of the disciples indicates they understood what he meant. I did not and it confused me”20
Through more research, Kenyon found evidence that in Africa, India, China, Borneo, and the Islands of the Seas, men practiced a blood covenant very similar to the Lord’s Table. Their reasons for evoking a covenant, as it were for Abraham and others in the Old Testament of the Bible, were to bring peace between parties, or for love’s sake. When one party had a demand put upon it, the other obligated himself to meet that demand. It was a sacred rite that if broken, one’s own mother or wife, or his nearest relative would seek his death. “No man can live in Africa who breaks the covenant . . . he curses the very ground he walks on.”21 It is so sacred that the children to the third and fourth generations revere it and keep it. It is perpetual and cannot be annulled.
Kenyon tells a profound story that illustrates the New Covenant Jesus was trying to communicate to His disciples and to us:
Journalist Sir Henry Stanley was commissioned to go to Africa to find David Livingstone. When he found the Scottish missionary on November 10, 1871, his now famous words were, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” In his seeking, Stanley came in contact with a powerful war-like equatorial tribe. His interpreter explained what a blood covenant was and asked Stanley, “Why don’t you make a strong covenant with them?” “What will the results be from such a covenant?” Stanley asked.
“Everything the chieftain has will be yours if you need it.”
Stanley revolted from drinking someone else’s blood, but when conditions worsened, he agreed. The first step was negotiation as to motives and the commitment and ability to keep the covenant. Next, the chieftain and Stanley exchanged gifts. The old chieftain wanted Stanley’s goat, but giving away the goat meant life or death for Stanley. He was in poor health and had to have goat’s milk to live. It took everything within him to give it. The chieftain gave Stanley his seven-foot, copper-wound spear. Stanley thought he was defeated.
To Stanley’s surprise, the ritual continued with each man bringing in a substitute to perform the actual cutting. Blood dripped from the substitutes’ wrists, falling into one cup of wine. The bloods were mixed, and then the cup was given back to the two substitutes to drink in equal parts. They were now blood brothers, and Stanley and the chieftain and his men were bound together. Gun powder was rubbed into the wounds of the substitutes, which when healed, was the sign of the covenant.
After sealing the wounds, a priest pronounced awful curses upon the wives, children and tribal members if the covenant was broken. Then a tree was planted–one known for its long life–as a remembrance for the time to come.
Afterwards, Stanley’s men did not have to stand guard over their bales of cotton cloth and trinkets, but now they could sell them and buy from the tribe as well; to steal meant death. To Stanley’s amazement, everywhere he went with the chieftain’s spear, everybody bowed to him as though he were the chief himself.
In comprehending Stanley’s story, heart surgery and how it relates to us and the New Covenant, consider these things:
The difference between the Old Covenant and the new is that the third person of the Trinity cuts into the heart. (He is the only third on earth today.) The Holy Spirit does the work of Jehovah Tsidkenu. [For simplicity’s sake, Jehovah Tsidkenu is used here, although Jehovah Mekoddishkem is God’s name meaning to sanctify, or purify. The Holy Spirit is the sanctifier.22] When we trust Him to do so, He cleanses our heart of waste matter with His royal blood; for “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). He then daily and perpetually gives a spirit-filled life to those who believe whole-heartedly.
An open-heart surgery cannot take place unless 100 percent of the blood supply is diverted to the artificial heart-lung machine. Until we mentally and spiritually assent to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, giving Him 100% commitment–as Stanley did with his goat–and make Him our number one priority, we cannot find life.
These seven dimensions of heart operation performed by the Holy Spirit can only be discerned through the Holy Spirit, for “the man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14). As we spiritually discern this New Covenant, we begin to see that when God looks at us, He sees Jesus. He sees the royal red blood Jesus shed for us, and the legal contract signed in His blood.
In exchange for our gift of self to God, He gives us five words, “In the name of Jesus” (see John 14:13). After Jesus ascended to His Father and sent His Holy Spirit to earth, His disciples used these words in time of need, for themselves and others. By so doing, Jesus replicated himself 100-fold, just as a dying seed brings forth life multiplied (see Matt. 12:42). Using the “name of Jesus” (which represents all that He is) puts a demand upon the New Covenant. This was revealed to Stanley when tribesmen bowed to him because of the spear. It represented the chief himself, “Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:9-11).
ENDNOTES 19. See Deuteronomy 1:39. 20. E. W. Kenyon, The Blood Covenant,(Kenyon’s Gospel Publishing Society, Lynnwood, WA, 1969), p. 5. 21. Ibid, p. 10. 22. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, p. 1100.
3. Jesus Performs Heart Operation that Brings Death:
While the heart is being connected to the artificial heart-lung machine, the coronary (heart) arteries are infused with a cold potassium solution. The heart beat stops; it grows cold and motionless so the physician can work on it. “The body is preserved by the nutrient flow provided by the heart-lung circuit, while the heart is preserved by the low temperature and other conditions managed by the surgeon.”10 Likewise, placing our life into the hands of the great Physician, Jehovah Tsidkenu, means Jesus performs heart operation that brings death.
Millions of surgeries are performed each year where only a percentage die. All those who trust Jesus to replace their heart must die to self. The heart during surgery is seemingly dead; it is not beating. “The great Physician, who sees in us what we cannot see, knows exactly where to place the knife. He cuts away that which we are most reluctant to give up. And how it hurts! But we must remember that pain is only felt where there is life, and where there is life is just the place where death is needed.”11
Death Springs Forth Life
What a paradox! Death brings life–like a seed has to die before it can spring forth life.
At the very moment Marie chose Jesus, she was crucified with Christ. She no longer lived, but Christ mysteriously started to live His life in her, as the Bible says,
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing! -Galatians 2:20-21
Marie’s choice was saying to God, “I’m tired of trying to live this life by myself. I’m miserable and have failed on my own.” Turning her life over to God was no less than placing her own body on an altar.
It was Henry Van Dyuke who said, “Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.” Dying to self means mentally letting-go of my rights-the “i” in the middle of pride. This spiritual death to self is the only thing that brings life–Jesus living His life through us when we are out of the way.
4. Jesus Performs Heart Operation that Brings Life:
The next thing we need to understand about the heart is that it requires energy. It is a muscle with cells that contract in sequence to force blood into every organ and cell in the body. It is a vascular highway taking nutrition to the whole body as well as the heart itself. “A normal heart in an average sized person will pump 4 to 5 liters of blood per minute. The average heart will beat almost 4 million times per year. It is estimated that the energy required to continuously pump blood at these rates is almost 5 watts of power per hour.”12 To show how much energy this is, blood “. . . moves in the principal arteries at the rate of a foot per second and it makes the circuit of the vascular system in about 20 seconds.”13
The arteries of the heart of a patient requiring a CABG are blocked with cholesterol deposits. The surgeon builds substitute passages, with harvested vessels from other parts of the body, to restore blood (energy) to the heart. Only a bypass is erected. Jesus, our substitute, completely annihilated sin–actually removed the blockages–no mere bypass. Consequently, Jesus is the “Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29).
The energy Jesus restores to our heart takes beyond a lifetime to comprehend. Our hearts are no longer sprinkled with the blood of bulls and goats as Moses did to the people under the Old Covenant. At the moment the tired, blue, lifeless blood, carrying all its impurities, hits the heart-lung machine (the substitute), it is infused with high energy far above any natural oxygen we could ever imagine!
The powerful heavenly energy Jesus infuses into our hearts catapults us all the way to heaven in the blink of an eye! We are immediately translated, just as Hebrew is translated into English (Tsidkenu to “righteousness”)-into the body of Jesus Christ “who delivered us out of the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love . . .” (Col.1:13 ASV).
We must comprehend: we are living with Him in heaven right now, “And He raised us up together with Him and made us sit down together-giving us joint seating with Him-in the heavenly sphere [by virtue of our being] in Christ Jesus, the Messiah, the Anointed One” (Eph. 2:6 Amplified). Additionally, heaven’s energy “fills all things” (Eph. 4:10).
This supernatural energy brings life. Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life and have it to the full” (John 10:10). Marie’s vision of the angels fighting over her–warfare not visible to the naked eye–unmasks this spiritual battle continually being waged for the hearts of humans. Thankfully, Marie confessed her sin and asked Jesus to come in and take over her life, bringing salvation, truth, and life.
Jesus prayed for Marie and for us immediately before he was arrested and crucified. He prayed to His Father, “that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them” (John 17:26). That prayer was answered with His blood actually replacing our own selfish, sin-stained blood at the very moment the Roman soldier pierced His side, “bringing a sudden flow of blood and water” (John 19:34). Jesus purchased salvation for the whole world right then (see John 3:16), but only those who choose to believe and receive this gift are “saved” from sin’s natural punishment. This is a free gift of grace through faith, not of ourselves, not by works we can do; for Jesus paid the price with His blood (see Eph. 2:9). Hell is sin’s natural punishment. Hell is an “eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41); God never sends anyone there, but the devil is deceiving many to go there with him.
After her salvation, Marie experienced the cleansing life-blood of Jehovah Tsidkenu. She wanted to feel pure again in regard to her virginity, “While reading my Bible one day, I came across 2 Corinthians 5:17, ‘Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!’ That was the day I gave that sin to Christ and became a born again virgin. Although I didn’t save sex for marriage, God gave me a second chance and a whole new joy-filled life. I changed my goal from living day to day with no direction, to living with my path pointed toward heaven.”
5. Jesus Performs Heart Operation that is Legal:
The first thing a patient does before any surgery is sign a consent form–Conditions of Services–giving the surgeon the legal right to do surgery with consent for medical treatment. It also says, “Should the patient not accept the treatment recommended, or leave the hospital contrary to the doctor’s advice, the patient or his agent will assume full responsibility for such action and will in no way hold the hospital, its employees or the patient’s attending physician responsible for the result.”14
Followers of Jesus Christ are signing a legal contract as well. The Hebrew word for covenant means, “A contract which was accompanied by signs, sacrifices, and a solemn oath which sealed the relationship with promises of blessing for obedience and curses for disobedience.”15 Only when we come to understand this are we able to take advantage of the benefits, like any contract we would sign, such as for a house or a car.
Our spiritual covenant is between two parties: the first, Jesus; the second, us.
First Party: Jesus
The Old Covenant was between Jehovah and Abraham, also called the Abrahamic Covenant. The new contract is between God the Father and Jesus. When we accept Jesus, we enter into the New Covenant.
It is legal because Jesus was a legal Jewish sacrifice. The high priest turned Jesus Christ over to the Romans to be crucified on a cross altar outside the camp (see Luke 23: 13-14). Hebrews 13:12 refers to the Old Testament scapegoat, “And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood.”
Jesus’ final words, “It is finished!”16 while dying on the cross meant He fulfilled (not replaced) the Old Covenant. Jesus ascended into heaven’s tabernacle and “entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood having obtained eternal redemption” (Heb. 9:12).
He later gave us His New Testament– testament meaning “a covenant between God and the human race.”17 Like a last will and testament, it documents his gifts to us.
Jesus was His Father’s firstborn Son, without blemish, whom He sacrificed for the world’s sin, thus, bridging the gap of separation between God and man. Jesus, who paid the only legal price for sin said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
Just as a patient must give legal consent, we must give Jesus permission to continually perform His heart operation before we can truly see Him. By so doing, we enter legally into the New Covenant with Him and receive what the shedding of His blood did for us, as it now courses through our veins.
Second Party: You and Me
What if we later change our mind in allowing Jesus and the Holy Spirit to have their way in our heart and life? We have to accept the consequences of breaking our end of the contract. A patient not accepting treatment may die. A person not paying their mortgage or car payment could possibly no longer live in the house or drive the car. Our spiritual covenant with God is different from a contract in that we may pull away, but God never does–the same as the fact that the hospital is still here and the car is still around, but we no longer have access to their benefits.
The New Testament documents our contract including what is contained in the Old Testament. The whole book of Deuteronomy, written by Moses, is the formal treaty between God and Israel. It holds all the elements contained in treaties from the 2nd millennium B.C.: the introduction of the speaker, historical prologue, stipulations, statements concerning the document; witnesses, curses, and the blessings.18 Chapter 28 of Deuteronomy stipulates the “Conditions of Services,” the blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience.
We are legal heirs to the blessings through Jesus Christ because, “cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree. He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit” (Gal. 3:13-14).
In a nutshell, God tells us in Deuteronomy 28 He will set those who honor His name and obey Him, high above all nations on earth; He will bless all the work of their hands; they shall lend and not borrow. The curses are blessings withdrawn from those who do not honor His name or obey His commands: confusion, disease (including those yet unnamed), defeat before enemies, unsuccessful endeavors, and indebtedness. Both blessings and curses extend to the next generation. The blessings are detailed in fourteen verses; the curses in fifty-four. Jesus took the curses in His body so we can receive the blessings of the Abrahamic Covenant.
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With her heartfelt prayer, Marie voiced to Jesus legal permission to change her heart, which would change her life. It was just the beginning, but eventually her understanding would grow. We, too, must “sign” our consent form. (An actual signature on paper or in a journal is not a bad idea.)
This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. Deuteronomy 30:19 NIV
ENDNOTES 9. Mark M. Levinson M.D., The Heart Surgery Forum, www.hsforum.com, Hutchinson Hospital, Hutchinson, KS (accessed April 2005). 10. Ibid. 11.Fénelon, Let Go,(Whitaker House New Kensington, PA, 1973), p. 6. 12. Ibid. 13. Clarence W. Taber, Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary, 10th Edition (Philadelphia, F. A. Davis Company, 1968), B-28. 14. Mercy Health System of Kansas, Conditions of Services, item 7. 15. Zodiates, Key Word Study Bible, p. 1716. 16. See John 19:30. 17. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary-Eleventh Edition,(Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, Springfield, MA, 2003), p. 1291. 18. Halley, Halley’s Bible Handbook, p. 176.