Reflection

Recent

Breast cancer must make way for faithfull prayer

Sunday the 11th of November 2007 is a day Maria won't easily forget. For that morning she felt a big hump in her left breast. Immediately a lot of bad thoughts ran through her head: cancer... and even a quickly growing one too... Maria was totally upset and she wept quite a lot that morning. At first she did not want to go to church, because she knew everyone would ask her how she was doing.

Healing from rejection in the Fatherheartschool

Ria has been coming to our church even from before it was officially established. Through Josée and Eugeen she came to the then prayergroup. She couldn’t attend her church anymore because of frequent and severe epileptic seizures. Her therapist advised her to come to the group on Tuesday nights. Ria says she never quite knew why this woman gave her this advice. At first she came just to get out of the house for a little while.

John, the disciple Jesus loves

For me and for many others, this is a stumbling block in the Bible. What to do about it? So Jesus seemed to love one of the disciples more than the others. Some even claim that Jesus had a homosexual relationship with John. But if you really want to understand the core of this verse, you just have to think twice and read carefully what it says. What's important is that it's not Jesus who makes this statement, but John. And nowhere in the Gospels do we read that Jesus says that He prefers one to all others.

So the saying and the conclusion come from John himself. Did he receive a special revelation? As far as I'm concerned, over the years it happened occasionally that someone said: "God is happy with you". It was a statement that I kept in mind because I was used to hearing sometimes "God loves you". But according to me there is a difference between loving someone and being happy with someone.

Recently an elderly lady came up to me after a meeting and said God told her to tell me He is happy with me. Usually I forget such a sentence quite quickly. But this time I began to think about it. I did not have a special revelation, but I did have the Word that clearly states that God loves us and is happy with us. So I decided to just accept that word.

Maybe the same happened to John. Maybe he was so proud that Jesus loved him that he felt the need to make it known, while the other disciples weren't so concerned about telling it. Nobody knows exactly how it went. It seems clear to me that Jesus did not love John more than the others. But one thing is for sure: John knew for sure that he was the disciple Jesus loved.

I just wanted to bring this to your attention and hope you will think about it. I wish you a lot of blessing with it.

Hugo, the disciple Jesus is happy with.