God

I heard a great sermon by John Piper yesterday. It was called A Plea For the Supremacy of God in Preaching, Part 2,or something like that. It was yesterdays radio broadcast, so you can find it in the radio archives. It was a good reminder that my speech needs to be directly God-glorifying not just neutral. Go to www.desiringGod.org to find it. It's only about 25 minutes long. By the way, if you are not getting regular doses of John Piper in your life you really need to. He helps me keep from falling into the superficial flow of the world around me.

I just need to praise God for my friend Andre. You guys have heard about him. He's an alcoholic that was doing well then fell back several times. He went to Victory House, an intense Christian discipleship rehab home, and did well for several months. Then in February he was found beat up in a convenience store parking lot. Nobody knows what happened, but he was probably starting to get into trouble again. God graciously let him get beat up before he got to far into it.

He was in a coma for over 3 weeks, and the first time I saw him I was 95% sure he would die. He was on a ventilator, on 100% oxygen, and they still couldn't get his oxygen levels up close to normal. I left the hospital with almost no hope. He made it through that, but I thought he would be mentally retarded the rest of his life. He made it through that also. When they extubated him the first words he said were, "Jesus is alive."

He's now staying at his sister's house, and recovering well with full mental function, able to walk and talk normally. He's still weak and they won't let him eat or drink anything yet, but he's the same old Andre that I used to know (hopefully without the alcoholism). I really believe he was miraculously healed by God. He had a lot of people praying for him. My prayer is that Andre will be a partner in ministry with me for many years to come.

God is good.