Staying Well

Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, "Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you." (John 5:14)

These words are again speaking a message to me personally this morning.

Behold, you have become well.

As I ponder what significance these words may well have for my own life, I realize how very easy it is to slip back into old habits of thinking – negative thinking that is. When a person has lived with sickness for most of their life, whether it be physical, emotional or spiritual sicknesses, it is not as easy as one might think to adjust to continuously living in a completely different mode of thinking.

My assumptions about what is 'normal' have to be constantly challenged.

My reactions to given situations and things that have triggered me all of my life have to be healed.

My opinions about how to relate to those around me and what makes up reality need serious revision.

My dependence on 'common sense', the kind of normal logic that nearly everyone around me assumes is what people are supposed to do, even those who appear to be good Christians, all of that has to come up for exposure to the light of heaven and be given up in exchange for a different and radical new way of thinking.

This man had been sick for a very long time and the text specifically states that Jesus toke note of that. Those words were not written to fill space in the story but for a very specific reason. Jesus knew that the effects of living in hopelessness and despair and in the context of sin and negative thinking would have a deep impact on the psyche of a person and just because their body experienced dramatic healing did not insure that their mind and heart would fully engage and stay with that new reality.

Jesus had offered to this man the incredible gift of a new body, full of strength and life and capabilities that this man had not enjoyed for 38 years. The man took Jesus up on His offer and indeed had received the wonderful healing that was extended to him. But after quickly running into stiff resistance in the social and spiritual realm of his life and having seeds of doubt and unbelief pressed into his soul by the dark attitudes of those who claimed to believe in and teach others about God, this man was in serious danger of being sucked into the dark views of God that nearly everyone around him were trapped in and that he himself was just beginning to escape.

But these many lies about God and how He feels about sinners was the very sin that had been part of this man's trap for all of his life. Although the effects of this sin may not have been seen in the lives of the Jews who accosted him in the same way that it had affected his own life, nevertheless it is the lies about God that are at the foundation of all sin; to live in the shadow of those lies is to live more or less in the darkness where we are cut off from the life-giving light of real truth that is so essential for life of every kind.

When Jesus looked up this man in the temple who was likely by that time feeling very confused after having encountered God up close and personal in his life, and after having his own experience challenged as being 'wrong' by those who asserted that they were God's authorities on earth, he was in desperate need of reassurance and guidance and direction to keep the healing that he had just received.

In Jesus' words to this man He made it quite clear that one's healing and its continued enjoyment in the life is not to be taken for granted. Just because I have experienced a dramatic breakthrough in my life in any arena does not guarantee me that I am immune to once again slipping back into the shadows of the lies about God or reality that have been so familiar to me all of my life. There really is a very present danger that my life-long habits of thinking about what is real, what is sensible, what God is really like and the pervasive assumptions that God is two-faced and uses the methods of men to discipline and punish and manipulate His children like sinful parents do – all of that messed up thinking that is so acceptable to everyone around me is actually my greatest danger to suck me back into the very sicknesses that God has been delivering me from so recently.

I hear Jesus saying to me today that I am also in danger of potentially losing the wonderful benefits of His mighty work of healing in my life if I allow myself or others to drag me back into the familiar kinds of thinking that conflict with the realities of heaven that so recently have flooded my soul with hope and joy. My greatest danger is not to suddenly plunge into some heinous open sin like we may assume Jesus was talking about here, but to slip back into the dark views about God and about ourselves that have controlled our own thought patterns and that reflect what is accepted by everyone around us.

Do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you.

When a person allows their heart and mind to slip back into old patterns of thinking, no matter how religiously correct they may even appear to be, they are in grave danger of slipping back not only into their previous state of despair and pain and dysfunction but into a state that is even worse than before.

For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. (2 Peter 2:20)

Father, remind me continuously to not allow old habits of thinking to suck me back into the darkness and twisted ideas about You that have gripped me for so long in my past. I constantly feel the pull to conform to those ways of feeling and believing both internally and from many around me. Please keep my attention focused on You and my heart in the presence of Your true face. Show me the real truth about myself and about You over and over so that Your reality becomes firmly rooted in my heart instead of the all too familiar assumptions I have lived with most of my life.

I praise You and thank You for the wonderful healing that You have already done in my life. I want to live in a constant attitude of gratitude instead of succumbing to the stern faces that threaten to obscure Your wonderful love from my heart. Make me a source, a channel of grace and hope and life and joy to others instead of being overwhelmed by the familiar lies that they try to impose back into my life. Fill my heart so full of Your presence that I will not be influenced by what anyone else says about You unless it reinforces the healing work of Your presence that I have already experienced.