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@HollySaxby Part 8
By this time I had left the Anglican church, and moved to fellowship with a healing ministry. Within a few years I was beginning to feel differently unwell. And doctors couldn’t explain why. I was getting visual field disturbance, fatigue, bodily changes, emotional changes, and various seemingly unconnected symptoms, but clearly distinct from M.E. It took several more years before a tumour was found in my head, just under my brain, on the pituitary gland. I’ve told you about this Holly, since you so kindly asked.

Sadly, the normal treatment didn’t seem to be making the expected difference. And I am still a mystery to the top endocrinologists in the country to this day. The top Endocrinologists are still doing tests, tinkering with doses of hormones and tumour-shrinking drugs, and sending me off to get other conditions explored. When one world-leading Professor (who I’m pretty sure was a believer) retired he said to me:

@HollySaxby Part 7
Over half way through now!
My theological library started to become a looming temptation to me, and I knew that my tendency towards pride and arrogance could weaken my resolve, so I asked The Lord what to do with it all. It had cost me thousands of pounds after all, and I really could do with that money now. It seemed the perfect solution to sell it, but The Lord game me no peace to do so. I was kind of relieved, but also intrigued. Perhaps He wanted me to go back to it soon? But within days I knew I had to get rid of it. I have since then taken to reading the Bible alone. It later became clear why The Lord wanted me to make such a radical step, as my health was about to take another chronic decline, and I would become unable to read more than a sentence or two for over a decade. But when those sentences were the Word of God, they were sufficient. It was a period of feeding my spirit on the Word alone. It also became life and health to all my flesh.

@HollySaxby Part 6
Within the space of a year, I had got sick, lost hope, been thrown on the scrap heap (by some), and received a powerful and wonderful deliverance into health, and a clear sign from God that in His mind, my life was far from over!

Part of my journey of healing from the M.E. was repentance. The Lord told me I had developed a pride & arrogance over the Word of God through my years of academic training. I knew it was true. So I repented. That was the first step to a glorious deliverance into health.

I then struggled with The Lord about what to do with all my years of Theological training and the vast theological library I had amassed. The answer came back really clearly. Buy a simple Bible with no notes at all, and read that alone, coming to it several times a day like a hungry man looking for bread.

@HollySaxby Part 5
I suffered from terrible exam nerves, and failed my Biology degree and was kicked out of Uni at the end of the 2nd year. My father ejected me from the family home and told me to make a man of myself alone in the world. I felt rejected and alone.

Soon after I was thrown out of University, I married Sarah, who I had met there. I took many twists & turns, but after 5 years of theological training, was ordained as a minister in the Church of England. Then in the second year of my first job, I became sick. I was off work for 9 months, eventually diagnosed with M.E.. My wife was told by one Bishop that I should retire from the C of E on health grounds. Thankfully there was one man of faith in the picture, and that was my boss, Chris. He contradicted everyone and said that he believed I would be well and back in full harness in my ministry before the 3-year term of the Curacy was up. And he was right.

@HollySaxby Part 4
I did buy a Bible which appealed to me in a bookshop: a ‘Living Bible’.

My parents had the highest expectations for me, but it wasn’t matched with support, and I was forced by the school into the wrong A-levels. I didn’t get the results I was hoping for, and after a year off earning and touring Australia for 6 months, I was finally ready to go off to Warwick University. As I left the house, my mother said “You know, Nigel, if you had really bothered to work at school you could have been going to Oxford or Cambridge now.”

The shame crashed in on me, destroying the excitement and confidence I had of starting a new chapter of my life. I was being told that yet again I was a disappointment. I think it was from that point that I came to believe that I would always be a disappointment. That I could do nothing but let everyone down: my parents, myself, and of course by extension my Lord and anyone else I might love in the future. I lost the confidence for anything.

“... through the odd circumstances of Jesus' conception, Jesus can identify with two of the most oppressed and disenfranchised types of people in the world: the single mom and the "illegitimate" child.”Karl Gessler in his latest podcast. See karlgessler@karlgessler@dingdash.com

How did we get some of the non-biblical details of the Nativity story?
eg: Mary & Joseph arriving ‘just in time’; the Donkey, the innkeeper, the stable, the Magi visiting close to the the time of the birth? They all came from a heretical text called the The Protoevangelium of James. It is a pseudepigraphal work deliberately named to mislead people into thinking it was written by the biblical James. What are we doing having anything to do with such a book? Let's not blunt our double-edged swords.

My Declaration on Hope

I declare that I am blessed because I trust in you, Lord. You are my hope. Because of that hope I will increasingly be like a tree planted by the waters, that spreads out her roots by the dependable river. I will not wilt when the dry season comes, but my leaves will remain green. I will not be worried, because even in the drought years I will continue to bring fruit to maturity.
(From Jeremiah 17:7-8)

"The Bible teaches that God helps those who are at the end of themselves." Jackie Cowan quoting an insightful re-writing of the old and much-quoted & worldly proverb "God helps those who help themselves".