Update the Newsletter "Valley of Decision"

Bolinger update to newsletter "Valley of Decision"

Ever wish you could retract something? I sent out that last newsletter too early. I should have waited for the Doctor appointment to then sent out an email. The way I was feeling prior was not good at all. I felt deceived in someways because the expected out come was not what we thought. Having felt sick for so long. We just assumed it was my heart getting worse. I was dizzy and sick and sleepy.

Come to find out the doc says your actually getting better. Your BNP (Heart Hormone) is coming way down. A year ago it was 800-900. June it was 600. Last month it was 465. and this month it's in the 300's. We were stoked He said that the drugs are causing these problems you need a change. He took away my Lasix (Diuretic) and reduced some others. Mihoko and I were like confused because it was a 180 from what we thought. Today at church I had more energy than usual but also I was happier and Mihoko in the middle of the message was like, "What did you eat today?" ?

I told the doc that I was thinking we'd have to leave Japan and go home soon. He, very serious, looked at me and said, "My hope is that you will never need a transplant. If you keep loosing weight the hormone and heart damage will be less and you'll feel better. I had been depressed and back to eating comfort food. I gained 10 pounds back. I have been depressed at that as well. I may never get off the meds but I have the opportunity to live a near normal life. Normal is way too boring. There could be risks and potentials along the way for future problems. But a normal BNP is 100 or less. So I am still not healed. I still get fatigued and dizzy during today. But at least it isn't a constant.

Thank you for your prayers. God is good. We are still praying about decisions with the Church/School. Please keep praying with us.

God bless,
Dan and Fam

News letter titled "Valley of Decision

Dear Guys,

    Pray for us. Dan it's time to get up? Mihoko calls from the kitchen where she has been working for a long time making the kids lunches and breakfast. She is already thinking about dinner and setting out the food to prep. The kids have already eaten, hung laundry, and got ready for school. Dan? As I roll up out of bed to stand up I fall back down exhausted and dizzy. I try again sitting for a while on the side of the bed. I stand. Holding onto furniture and shuffling to the bathroom. The kids are out the door "Bye dad!" Appointments to keep and classes to prepare for and teach. It's a normal day. With my heart problem I often wake up with low blood pressure. Yesterday, 88/43 was a grand low. The Doctor appointment is in two days. I am praying for him to change my meds. I was feeling great until he added a new drug. It has offset the balance of the others and is causing me to feel just plain yucky and sick. Usually about noon I am revved up and ready to go. My energy level is able to carry me through the night of teaching providing I don't do dumb stuff and lift heavy things or climb stairs. Today, I woke up at 6am and felt great. My BP was up and I was able to hang laundry and help with breakfast before the kids wake up. Praise the Lord. But even in the difficulties we are no different than normal humanity. We picked up bread at Costco for the weekly distribution. We had prayed for a city contact that we could assist and distribute the donated bread to. On Tuesday, when my BP was really low we had to go to the city hall for business. In our city the city hall is where your insurance is. Welfare office, School district offices, the foreigners help desk is there. Also our handicap office where we turn in gas receipts for reimbursement is in the same building. It is kind of efficient for us but I am sure the workers are struggling as they work around each other. I was able to go the the volunteer office where I originally got the radio dj job. They were so happy to see us. We asked about the bread distribution. They were happy to introduce us to a lady who is helping families and they said she is a Christian like you guys. So we have made contact and hope we can serve together. Tonight is Handa san's new believers class. He is amazing and is loving all the things he is learning. We have studied about the attributes of God and he began reading through the bible on his own about 5-10 chapters a week. So we are in exodus and will discuss the temple elements and the priestly garments and their significance in the New Testament and with Jesus. Mihoko and I are so enjoying the time. Sundays are going great. We still have our faithful few and last week a visit of the Bedow family we had good fellowship. It was a blessed time. Pray for Mrs Sasaki she is not talking about the results of her cancer. Her husband is just staying busy working even though he is retired. The elderly love to keep busy and feel needed. They really don't understand retirement. They say if you stop working you stop living. So I say  so working hard is really living. Why don't people look more happy? They don't know how to answer me. Hee Hee. During my Tuesday class one of the moms hung out and was looking at the books and freebees we have. She won't take any but she looks with fascination. I try to explain things but she just smiles and nods not really comprehending the things. We do talk but she defers and distracts from the spiritual questions. Pray for the parents of the kids we are ministering to. They so need salvation. There is questioning in the hearts a restlessness with the status quo. There must be more to this life. In the parents life there is a window of opportunity to answer these life questions. Soon though it closes with a sigh of, "This is the way its always been and this is the way it will continue."

Today there were some schools that had events with other schools and so there was an unusual amount of kids exiting the train station. I was waving to them and saying hi. They love to interact in English. Occasionally, I get a few that try to talk to me. I am able to tell them who I am and where our church and school is. I offer them a pamphlet. After that our train station department store had a renewal grand opening for the supermarket. I went over there just wanting to see the store. It was a crazy mad house the membership lines were longer than the register lines, which were down the isles blocking items to shop for. I went in and the noise was deafening. The new employees were shouting greetings out loud. The product reps were playing music at the ends of the isles for specials. The music was really loud. Then there was a manager announcing specials over the intercom that was competing over the store music that was blasted. The noise was so distracting and disjunct I couldn't think. My heart started to palpitate and I knew I had to get out of there. Walking home about a eighth of a mile was so exhausting. I crawled back into bed and took a nap. I woke at noon to my alarm for medicine time. So I take meds and make lunch. Mihoko had a women's Bible study to attend and she came home after lunch and we went to Costco and got the bread. When we got home I began to prep pulling together the study of material for tonight's fellowship. Then I wrote this. this has been a fairly normal day.

Pray for daily energy and strength, Pray for the parents of our students salvation. Pray for Mrs Sasaki's cancer healing. Pray for Mr. Sasaki to desire to know more about God. Pray for Handa San's growth spiritually. Pray for his desire to minister to the other AA men. We have begun praying for them and desire for them to want to come to fellowship with us. There is a problem with the drug and alcohol programs. They don't fix lives. It is one thing to get dry. But the problem of drinking is only a symptom of a deeper need. Families are hurting from violence or fighting. Some men are out of work. They have no purpose to exist and many desire suicide. Pray we can reach these men and their families. It would be cool to have a U-Turn for Christ here. Pray for us as we weigh our existence here. The serious issue is my kids who had this sickness reach a month and even a week where the health just spirals fast into the ER. I am not there yet, but we know that day is coming. Do we continue in faith or in faith become practical with health concerns. It isn't an easy decision. Pastor Phil offered some advice but that isn't hearing from the Lord. God is very silent right now. We are so praying for him to confirm in our hearts what we should do.

Depression

Hello here is an update to the newsletter we just put out. 

Depression is a sneaking thing. It doesn't just pounce on you like Tiger. It slithers around your feet and winds up into your brain and nests in your heart. You think you are tough and beyond depression. After all, I'm a pastor, I help folks with depression. Yet, you listen to its sensual talk and you feel down. I told my wife for weeks the medicine is making me feel funny. I am tired all the time. I had lost over a hundred pounds now I have gained 10 pounds back. What? HOW? I feel sicker. Getting out of bed is harder and harder. The days when there is challenging work to do are the hardest. The days for rest are up and easier. Still there is this weight that grows in the heart. Emotions not under control. Anger, fear, resignation to fate, giving up symptoms are viral in my blood. The weight of the stuff makes reading the word fuzzy not so inspiring. Cynicism is the choice of all conversations. Back handed comments are wrapped in compliments. The clouds of darkness surround me. What is happening? The fear gives way to hallucinations of projected outcomes for things that are unrealistic. A thought! I'm on track for what my kids, Caleb and Rachel, went through. Shock and denial have broken into fear and panic of undesired things. I feel like Jesus in the garden in some ways although I am not sweating blood. I am drooling for comfort food. I have been putting hot sauce on everything. I even drank a packet of taco bell hot sauce just because I could. I am disgusting and when I look at disgusting the noose of depression tightens around my neck. Hopelessness begins to crumbling the foundation stones of the call of God on my life. I have been rock solid in the things the Lord has done and know that I am called to this ministry. Yet, there I am wavering teary eyed thinking God is taking it all away. Why Lord? So I go to the doctor this last week in despair and thinking this is it. We are going home... God must laugh at me sometimes for all the wild stuff I dream up. The Doctor looked me in the eye and said Dan, as far as I am concerned you won't need a transplant you are getting better. Look...” and he showed us the numbers and stats and its like wow. I am getting better. BNP is a blood test that measures a hormone that comes from the heart. Here is information I got off the internet.

• BNP levels below 100 pg/mL indicate no heart failure •  

BNP levels of 100-300 suggest heart failure is present
• BNP levels above 600 pg/mL indicate moderate heart failure.

BNP levels above 300 pg/mL indicate mild heart failure

• BNP levels above 900 pg/mL indicate severe heart failure. 

The I asked the doc why I felt so terrible. He shrugs and says I don't know you should have plenty of energy and not feel dizzy. Then the Lord spoke to my heart I have been depressed. The Doc says I'll reduce your diuretics better yet I'll stop them all together. What? Wait I need those for weight loss? No, those are to prevent water retention. Weight loss is my not eating gig. 

On June 1, 2012 I was 668 BNP. This weeks BNP was just above 300. It was in the 8-9 hundreds last year. God is healing me. The key is to loose the weight and lower that BNP which is a hormone that is produced from the normal stress on the heart. If your heart is damaged there is more hormone produced. So If I can drop down to 100 there is the chance of never needing a transplant and or any other type of intervention. Whew. 

Praise God! Here I was, all depressed and sick to my stomach that I had to pull out of Japan and go home and all kinds of fear and doubt. So I was thinking how did that happen? Just a few months back we were so charged up about serving the Lord and all. So I took to the Word of God and started to study. I came to Psalm 42 and found myself sizing up pretty closed to David's feelings in his situation. He had very real enemies of persons wanting to kill him. I only have deadly thoughts that kill ministry and life and hope. Below is my study of the chapter. God bless you if you read it especially if you have been depressed. I am renewed in hope and joy for God is my salvation and the sustainer of my life. He will continually use us and test us. I failed the faith test but it's okay He lets me retake it over and over again until I get it right. God is a great teacher. He is an awesome God that loves us so much. God bless you. 

1 As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, O God.

The Psalmist feels distant from the Lord. He is questioning his silence. He feels dry in his soul for a fresh drink in the
fountain of the Lord. The river of joy is dried up, the overflowing life is quenched and the desert of desolation has taken its place. He feels lost.

2. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. 

When shall I come and appear before God?

He is not desiring the things of the world there is only one element in the universe that can satiate this dryness. It isn't just any god type experience. It's not a louder or longer worship service. He waits like a forlorn lover deprived of his soul mate. He wants intimacy. He wants holiness alive and active and healing.

3. My tears have been my food day and night, 

while they continually say to me, 

“Where is your God?”

The deprivation has even made nourishment less than desirable. The hopelessness he feels seems, from my perspective, to have people around him saying, "Dude what happened to the God you believe in? You feel God has abandoned you but where is your God?" He has spiritually isolated himself in the vacuum of hopelessness. It is sucking the life out of his relationship with God.

4. When I remember these things,
I pour out my soul within me: 

For I used to go with the multitude; 

I went with them to the house of God, 

With voice of joy and praise

With a multitude that kept a pilgrim feast.

The time wasted in this place of despair and depression have led him to neglecting the things of God. He notes that spiritually he is withdrawn and now looks back to joyful times going to Church and loving the Lord with worship. He desires to walk with God yet the depression makes this physically impossible. Something is missing? What is missing? Why can't I get back to where I need to be? He has looked at God and he has looked at Church but those aren't the problems or the reason for his despair. Now he must look to self...

5. Why are you cast down, O my soul? 

And Why are you disquieted within me? 

Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him

For the help of his countenance.

Now he gets to the source of his depression. He has been looking at external realities and social abnormalities but now he must go deep into the darkness and turn on the light. Why is it so dark down here? It's like a cellar. His questions give way to a command. "Put your hope in God." Hope? is that the core problem here? Turn on the light with hope. In the soul of man, a seed of hope can feed him for life and give expectation of better times lying ahead. When that seed is uprooted by the claws of depression the cares of this life choke out the seed.

6. O my God, my soul is cast down within me; 

therefore I will remember You from the land of the Jordan, 

And from the heights of Hermon

(a Sanctuary also the largest MT in Israel) — 

from the Hill Mizar. (Mizar means mount small)

His inspection of soul has yielded a trip down memory lane. He is literally talking to his soul. He has diagnosed the problem. Himself. He is looking at self. Now he make a conscious decision to cast aside all thoughts of self and to think on God. He tracks his memory banks of God through the geography of Israel. God has done mighty works intervening in man's history and has yielded a great legacy that God is always there and cares and loves. God loves us. Romans 5:5 "Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us."

7. Deep calls to deep at the noise of your waterfalls; 

all your waves and billows have gone over me.

The Love of God is like a deep ocean. Like the fish that call to the deep and the sonar echoes back, "God loves you." It bounces around the depths of deep calling to deep echoing the same voice, "God loves you." As he travels out of the sea of this great love it is still reaching out to him and washing over him in great waves of love. He is carried

away by the love of God washing away the hopelessness that was there.

8. By day the Lord directs his love, 

at night his song is with me—
a prayer to the God of my life.

The cleansing of God's love has yielded the fruit of a relationship with the Living God. No longer is he lonely at night fighting with tears the vanity of hopelessness. Now his love is back and is singing him to sleep. He is in worship, fellowship, and prayer to the God of his life.

9. I say to God my Rock, 

“Why have you forgotten me? 

Why do I go mourning,

because of the oppression of the enemy?”

The question to God is a rhetorical one with the accent on the word have. "why HAVE you forgotten me?" finish with rising intonation as if a question that remains unanswered. His first answer to this self posed question? Because I have been focused on the enemies of my life that are oppressing me. The cares of this life. I look at things that take my eyes off of you. I allow personal perception to cloud godly wisdom.

10. As with a breaking of my bones 

my enemies reproach me, 

while they say to me all day long,

“Where is your God?”

The fruit of this allowing yields very real pain. Down to the core of his very frame he is tortured by these cares. The frame of his faith the pillars of high quality construction are like bones breaking or shattering. Luke 21:26 "men's hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth," Spoken by Jesus Christ. He also adds in verses 34-36 "But take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly. For it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the whole earth, watch therefore and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass and to stand before the Son of Man.” The Psalmist restates the previous in a conclusion of the poem. So the circumstances and enemies which are the cares at staring at him speaking to him saying, "Where is your God?"

11. Why are you cast down, O my soul ? 

And why are you disquieted within me? 

Hope in God;
For I shall yet praise Him,

The help of my countenance and my God.

He finishes his conversation with self by restating the original question and then giving the answer to the problems of self and the cares of this life. Jesus says for us to pray always. Paul says we are to pray without ceasing. Get eyes off self and on God. God's eternal love is there ready to wash over your life and cast out the despair of depression. This action renews us for proper worship and a right mind before the Lord who is our Savior and our God. Hebrews 11:6, "But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him." Hope is the seed of faith in Hebrew 11:1 "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Again hope is the container for faith it is like a tire that holds the air of faith. If the tire gets punctured then faith leaks out. Depending on the nature of the puncture it could be a rush or a very slow leak. It's the slow leaks that catch us by surprise. I don't realize I am getting flat, losing faith, until I'm in the same place as this Psalmist, stuck in a desert of despair and depressed at the conditions of life sitting next to my flattened hope tire.

HOPE IS THE TIRE THAT HOLDS THE AIR OF FAITH

Giving Up

     Have you ever felt like just giving up? No matter what it is we just can't see the future in this thing and we are struggling and are panicked and worried. The stress is taking years off our life and each day we can mumble around "Why am I doing this?"

My daughter had a very important test. She had been riding the train everyday but with her older brother and younger sister. Today was the day she was going to assume responsibility for herself. Confidence was exuding from her prideful stature. She was going to get up early and then hop on the train all by her self and get to school on time for the test. Well, she hadn't paid attention to the names of the train and the one she boarded blew past her stop as an express train that doesn't stop there. She went into panic mode. But she held it together I'll just get off and go back. Yet she calls us only to cry and say, "I missed the test." "We comfort her and tell to do her best and continue on." She says she is going back to a certain stop and catch another train to her destination. That stop is only one or two stops. But that stop never appeared. The 3rd and 4th stop pass by and she realizes she went to the wrong platform and boarded a train that went even a different direction. She was now in major panic. She calls and is broken and crying I wanna come home. Mom consoles her and tells her what to do. Her crying was blinding and sobbing and she was fearful. She is lost and missed a test but most of all she was humbled that she needed our help. This time she got on a train going in a third direction she is now on her way to Shinjuku Tokyo one of the busiest stops for trains in the world. We start to panic. Mom tells her to get off at the next stop and to wait. She does. Mom rescues her by physically going to get her and take her to school. She still wants to come home for all the embarrassment. But no her job is to go to school. Her job is to face her responsibilities head on and do her best.We are not to give up.

I have been here as I am sure many of you have too. Exasperation leads to absolute desolation and depression and we drop our hands and resign to just give up. "I quit!" In the Bible, we are encouraged by the Apostle Paul to in these times to look unto Jesus.In Hebrews 3:1-2a, the writer encourages, "Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, whom we acknowledge as our apostle and high priest. ² He was faithful to the one who appointed him," 

God will give us trials and will speak to us in these times. We are encouraged in the Bible to over and over again never give up. But to press on reaching for a prize, running to win, looking to the author and finisher of our faith. there are many more themes that come out of the life of faith. 

Hebrews 3:7 " So, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion during the time of testing in the wilderness,"(NIV) In the NKJV it says, "In the day of trial in the wilderness." The days of trial are plentiful. And the Bible says there will be many. It also says our God is with us and the Holy Spirit is speaking. Look at verse 7. "The Holy Spirit says." That means He is speaking to us. Listen, don't go in your own confidence. But do what is right and obey. If you don't obey the consequences are worse. But it you do obey when we are done with that trial there will be some rest.

This scripture speaks more to the culmination of life and that when we die to self we can enter that rest even while we are in the trial.