![]() This is an extremely personal narrative of my total “undoing” as God rewired me. John Paine: My purpose for writing this book is to draw the reader’s heart into a deeper desire to experience God and grow their faith. What do you want your book to accomplish in the lives of its readers? I would not trade what I have with God for anything. What they do not realize is that this connection and relationship I have with God causes me to feel like The Luckiest Man. Many people look at my condition and feel somewhat sorry for my condition. Living in connection with God as he transforms my heart produces intimacy with him. John Paine: Although I despise this disease of ALS I would not trade my relationship with God for anything. Why did you decide on this title for your book? Intimacy was the byproduct of this new relationship. I was immersed in God’s love as he met me in the darkest of times. At this point a new relationship birthed. For me it required the convergence of many trials concurrently and my inability to control the desired outcome, which led to a willingness to think differently and brought me to the end of myself. I kept working harder and trying to figure life out. John Paine: To start with I was in absolute denial that my heart had a problem much less was hardened. How did God “thaw your heart”? How have you become more intimate with him? The truth of living is being internally overwhelmed with God’s love. True living yielded his fruit in me despite life’s circumstances. I erroneously used to believe that real living was the absence of difficulties and negative circumstances and the presence of life going the way I believed it should. ![]() John Paine: The real truth of living is walking in connection with God each day as Christ described in John chapter 15 that I’m to remain connected to him as the branch is to the vine. What do you mean you’ve “learned to identify the truth of living”? Our relationship transitioned into the most important part of my total being. God allowed me to see myself as he saw me and my identity shifted to his reality. The God that I was so knowledgeable of became the God that breathed life and love into my heart. That shift moved God from my head to my heart. I taught Sunday school and Bible studies from my daily quiet times but something shifted within me after the death sentence diagnosis. John Paine: Scripture has been a part of my life since conversion at age 14. How do you describe your reading of the Bible and your relationship with God differently before your diagnosis and after? My first symptoms appeared as involuntary muscle twitches (fasciculations) in my left forearm followed by a loss of strength. Most patients die from suffocation as the diaphragm loses its communication with the smart cells telling it to breathe. ![]() John Paine: ALS is a degenerative neuromuscular disease that kills the muscle’s motor neurons resulting in total body paralysis. Secretly, I was ready to give up on the concept.Įxplain what amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is and what your symptoms were when they began. Christ’s promised abundant life seemed illusive and I felt exhausted searching for it. Peace, joy, and contentment were occasionally present but never lasted. I projected confidence to the world at large, but inwardly life’s trials were crumbling the perfect projected image. John Paine: From the outside my life looked fantastic as a successful business man, family man, and church leader. ![]() But his journey into true, mystical intimacy with God began when a neurologist diagnosed him with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease.īible Gateway interviewed John Paine about his book, The Luckiest Man: How A Seventeen-Year Battle with ALS Led Me to Intimacy with God (Thomas Nelson, 2018).ĭescribe your life before your diagnosis. How can a terminal diagnosis lead to experiencing God’s intimate, comforting, tangible presence? At middle age, John Paine thought he knew what it meant to have a relationship with God.
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