Living or Existing?

Jesus said to him, "Go; your son lives." The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started off. As he was now going down, his slaves met him, saying that his son was living. (John 4:50-51)

The word that attracts my attention this morning is the word live. I decided to look up this word to find its definition and then observe a number of places where it is used to get some sense of its related meaning. Technically speaking the son of this royal official who came to Jesus could have been said to be living all the time that he was sick right up to the point of death. A skeptical mind could have easily reasoned this and made room for a little doubt about the real meaning of Jesus' words. But then by this time the royal official already saw the effect of his doubting heart on his situation and chose to turn away from that way of reasoning toward the kind of believing that would allow Jesus to do whatever Jesus wanted to do.

Maybe my own mind is far too experienced in using logic and reason to analyze words and motives behind what people say – I am sure it might be. But at the same time, without stepping into the atmosphere of a doubting spirit I sometimes find it quite affirming for my relationship with God to consider the real meaning of words and phrases from a critical perspective (logically speaking, not in a spirit of doubting criticism). As I carefully analyze and search for the true meaning of words, particularly in the Word of God and the stories of Jesus, I often uncover beautiful, rich revelations of meaning that greatly enhance and strengthen my growing appreciation of what God is really all about.

I think it is obvious that Jesus would never play mind games with someone in this sort of situation by being technically accurate in words while holding out on this man's heart and what he really yearned for Jesus to do. But at the same time Jesus saw the necessity of challenging and exposing the deceptive nature of the logic and reasoning infected by unbelief in the people all around Him who were used to living in a world full of double-talk. God does not try to use words to trick us like many of us often do with each other. The nature of the kind of belief that John is so intent on revealing to us in this book is all about transparency, honesty and revealing the real truth about God.

Jesus is intent on also bringing us into the same kind of honesty that describes how God lives. So when Jesus says to this man that his son lives, implied in these words is much more than simply that his son has not yet died. In another story of healing interestingly similar to this one, it is seen that healing and living are not necessarily assumed to be the very same thing.

One of the synagogue officials named Jairus came up, and on seeing Him, fell at His feet and implored Him earnestly, saying, "My little daughter is at the point of death; please come and lay Your hands on her, so that she will get well and live." (Mark 5:22-23)

This may seem like splitting hairs to many, and maybe it is. But I find inspiration at times in some of the smallest details that contain rich insights into how God relates to us. One reason that I wanted to research this word was because I believe that God wants far more for me than just to exist, to live in the most restricted sense of the word. A prisoner may be alive but would not be very willing to say with enthusiasm that he really lives. It has become apparent that governments train people in how to torture suspects in ways to keep them living while it could hardly be said that this kind of living would qualify as the definition of being truly alive.

Technically, to live could be considered to be anywhere on a scale from enjoying total freedom filled with unspeakable joy, totally fulfilled and valuable and loved all the way down to living on the very edges of death while suffering extreme agony not only of body but also of spirit and soul, ravaged by physical pain and emotional guilt, fear, distress and terror. Given this very wide range of potential descriptions of what it might technically mean to live, I think it is reasonable to ask where on this spectrum Jesus was referring to when He said to people that someone lived?

What picture or expectation did Jesus have in His own mind that He also wanted this man to believe concerning his son when Jesus said that the son 'lives'? I am confident that He was not thinking just about the fact that he had not yet died. But on the other extreme I also don't believe that He was referring to this man's son as living in the sense of all who will enjoy life who live in heaven with Jesus after being rescued from this sinful mess of a world at the Second Coming. This son was close to the bottom of the spectrum of what we think it means to live and Jesus clearly wanted this father to trust in His word that his son lived and to believe something far better than that his son was simply not yet dead.

What I am seeking to discern here is where on this spectrum of what it means to be alive was Jesus referring to on these occasions when He asked people to believe that a loved one or friend would be O.K. and would live, not die? Since it seems evident that He was not referring to them moving into the kind of life of eternal bliss and joy that we will enjoy in heaven and He was also not referring to the minimum existence of simply having a pulse, what should we think when Jesus says that someone lives? And what effect can that belief have in our own lives right now today?

What keeps coming to my mind through all of this is the concept embodied in the word thrive. This word fascinates me, especially at the heart level. To thrive, at least in my thinking, is not just to exist or live physically but carries the connotation of feeling much of what God designed me to be, at least as much as possible while remaining in this sinful world before the Second Coming of Jesus. I don't have the privilege of being able to examine or even interrogate any of the people that Jesus healed or resurrected to life in His day, but given the evidence recorded in the Bible, whenever Jesus healed someone that healing seemed to restore them to at least what we would consider normal functioning of their body if not better.

To thrive conveys with it the idea of feeling fully alive, of having energy and alertness and alacrity. When the crippled man at the temple was healed through the ministry of Peter and John a few years after this, he was so alive that he greatly disturbed the peace of the temple by leaping around like an excited little child he was so happy. Likewise, I have to imagine that when blind people were healed by Jesus they very likely spent an inordinate amount of time feasting their eyes on everything they could see, particularly beautiful things and the faces of their loved ones. And they likely did this far more than the average person would ever likely do. The dumb were probably the loudest in shouting and even singing the praises of God. The list could go on, but what seems to be inherent in the act of healing was the potential for that person not only to have restored function but to have far more appreciation than most of the people around them for whatever it was they did not have before.

But that now exposes a new arena of thought that maybe we seldom consider. Does our lack of appreciation and enthusiasm for life, for sight, for healthy legs and arms or other body parts or capacities indicate a level of sickness that is not so evident to us because it seems so normal, so typical? Are we in fact far more sick than we ever imagine and as a result feel little need of desiring to be healed? Can it be accurately said of us that we honestly feel that we are thriving? Or does that word make us squirm a little bit and seem to be quite a stretch as an accurate definition of what might describe our life? Are we thriving in life or are we far more often just coping?

When our bodies or even our minds and hearts are obviously sick it seems much easier for most of us to realize our need of healing and our lack of a sense of thriving. But does our averageness with those around us cause us to be blinded to the fact that the kind of existence we experience is in desperate need of healing and new life for ourselves? Is this condition of assuming that everything is O.K. when actually we are not really thriving but are just deceived about our true condition – is this blindness of the soul possibly the greatest sickness that is only unmasked during times of crisis when the true condition of our hearts suddenly bursts out into the open unexpectedly?

For you say, 'I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.' You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich; and white robes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen; and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. (Revelation 3:17-18 NRSV)

Reversing the Lie

Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me... an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.” (John 4:21-23)

Many more believed because of His word; and they were saying to the woman, "It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this One is indeed the Savior of the world." (John 4:41-42)

Jesus said to him, "Go; your son lives." The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started off. (John 4:50)

So the father knew that it was at that hour in which Jesus said to him, "Your son lives"; and he himself believed and his whole household. (John 4:53)

I am getting a clearer view of this bright thread that John is weaving into the fabric of his writing. And like a thread in fabric it keeps showing up on the surface at regular intervals. It is this thread of believing in the word of Jesus which is a parallel to believing in Jesus Himself.

This is in contrast to a believing that is based on what Jesus does and the signs and miracles He performs. That thread is something like a counterpart thread that shows up alternatively to this thread of believing in His word. The effects of each kind of belief in various stories are also corresponding threads that show us what is important and what may be misleading.

As I look at the bigger picture and John's emphasis on the effective kind of belief, it begins to dawn on me a little more clearly what the true purpose of Jesus' coming was in relation to what these verses are telling me. Jesus came primarily to undo the false assertions about God that Satan convinced Eve and Adam to believe that got us into this giant mess to start with. It was not really the fruit that they ate that was the real problem and that allowed sin to enter into the human race. It was embracing lies about God, about how God wanted to relate to them, about how much God's heart could be trusted – these are the views of God, our basic assumptions that are our legacy today, that blind us and fill our hearts with so much unbelief and fear that we focus on external issues while ignoring the deeper issues of the heart.

But it is our hearts that are most affected by the lies that we have inherited from our earthly Adam and Eve parents. It is not just better information or more exhibitions of power that is needed to deliver us from the bondage and fear and shame that sin has wrapped around our lives. It is a transformation of our whole way of perceiving God and how He feels about us that is vitally necessary before the fruits of salvation can begin to really take root and have effects in our lives.

As I traced back this line of repeated references about believing the word of Jesus, I came across one of them that explicitly shows that God's reputation is really the issue at stake. Jesus came to reverse the lies about God that Satan has immersed our hearts in and Jesus is all about restoring the credibility of the Father.

He who has received His testimony has set his seal to this, that God is true. (John 3:33)

The problem ever since the fall is that we don't really believe from our hearts that God is true. We may spout off all the religious jargon that we have been taught to say and that may even be correct, but deep in our hearts we have seldom come to the place where we really believed what He has been trying to say to us all along. Instead we believe that God is more like our own parents or the government or our abusers or any number of other distorted images that has displaced the truth about God from our hearts and affections.

Jesus came to reveal the real truth about how God feels about us but we still struggle to accept His testimony. We hear His words about the Father and we think we believe them, but again it is often more of an intellectual acknowledgment of them than a genuine embracing of the true meaning and implications of what Jesus is trying to share with us. We learn to parrot all the correct answers and yet we continue to see many of the symptoms of unbelief still present in our lives – symptoms like our desires to depend on external signs and exhibitions of supernatural power or interventions in our lives in order to prop up our “belief” in God's love for us.

Even in the life of this man here at the end of John four we see that he transitioned through at least two stages of belief if not three. He initially came to Jesus because he must have had some flicker of hope that Jesus might be willing and able to heal his son. We could call that belief, although it is such a sorry sort of belief that Jesus had to prime it and expose its weakness to invite this man to embrace a much healthier version of belief.

Next the man chose to accept Jesus' challenge and believed the words that Jesus spoke to him about his son to the point of acting in faith on those words. That level of belief was significantly superior to the first stage of belief that he started out with, but evidently there was still room for a lot more.

Finally, as far as this story goes anyway, the man is noted once again as believing along with his whole household this time, when he verified the details of the healing of his son and the timing involved that confirmed in his mind that it really was Jesus' word that had accomplished the healing. Interestingly though, this external-based sort of belief or faith, coming after he had chosen to believe based solely on Jesus' words instead of on hard evidence – this external-based sort of faith now tended to deepen the more saving kind of faith that he had already entered into instead of undermining it as may have happened if he had insisted on getting it first.

This sequence of deepening faith seems to be reinforced over and over throughout the Bible as a need to believe in the word and the heart of God first and then to have that faith deepened and strengthened by external confirmation. Sometimes however faith has to remain firm when the hoped for confirmation does not appear or may delay for a long time. That is when true faith or belief has to hang on even tighter because it has nothing to defend its assertions but the word of God Himself. It is then that faith can be extremely tested. Yet in the list of heroes presented as examples of faith in Hebrews eleven it is explicitly stated that some of them received evidence and some of them failed to enjoy the external benefits of their faith. Their reward is said to have been deferred, but not absent altogether.

All faith that roots firmly in the real truth about God is going to have its great reward sooner or later. God wants us to learn to trust His heart more than any other lesson we need to learn. It is this kind of belief that John is seeking to impart to everyone willing to read and listen and open their heart to embrace it. I want much more of that kind of faith which is why I am here immersing myself in these passages.

Coming or Going?

The royal official said to Him, "Sir, come down before my child dies." Jesus said to him, "Go; your son lives." The man believed the word.... (John 4:49-50)

I am perceiving what I believe to be a key point in this story. Repeatedly this man urged Jesus to come to his place to resolve the problem he had and heal his son, but Jesus never did it that way for him. Instead of complying with this man's own plans and ideas of how it should happen Jesus gave him instructions for what to do if he wanted to act in real faith.

How many times do I believe that I know what my problems are and what is needed to fix them. I look at my immediate circumstances that may be causing me so much discomfort or grief and am sure that I know just what God needs to do to make me happy, to resolve my pain or fear, to remedy my situation so that I can then have more faith in Him. That reminds me of what I just read in My Utmost devotional today.

The only way we can be of use to God is to let Him take us through the crooks and crannies of our own characters. It is astounding how ignorant we are about ourselves!...

We have to get rid of the idea that we understand ourselves, it is the last conceit to go. The only One Who understands us is God. The greatest curse in spiritual life is conceit. If we have ever had a glimpse of what we are like in the sight of God, we shall never say —‘Oh I am so unworthy,’ because we shall know we are, beyond the possibility of stating it. As long as we are not quite sure that we are unworthy, God will keep narrowing us in until He gets us alone.

Chambers, Oswald: My Utmost for His Highest : Selections for the Year. Grand Rapids, MI : Discovery House Publishers, 1993, c1935, S. January 12

Yet I find that God often doesn't seem to be paying attention to my demands. Instead of responding quickly to my ideas of what needs to happen, what power He should exercise on my behalf, I sometimes hear rebukes and warnings and confusing messages about what is going on in my own heart. Instead of feeling comforted or listened to I feel even more stressed. “Why doesn't God just show up and take care of my problems the way I ask Him to? Why doesn't He care enough about me to see that I am hurting, I am stuck, I am helpless and come to take care of my needs, reveal His will to me explicitly, make the things that are hurting me stop?”

And yet the words keep resonating uncomfortably in my ears. “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” I squirm because deep inside I have to admit that His words ring true. Yes I do crave to see more miracles happen in my life to induce faith in my heart. Yet that often doesn't seem to be God's plan for me. He keeps insisting that something is awry here, that I need to have faith in His goodness and care for me ahead of the miracles instead of insisting on waiting until after them. There must be a critically important reason for this but it is so hard to agree with Him. I always tend to want to see the good things first and then base my trust in Him on the external evidences of His care instead of trusting His heart first and giving Him unlimited permission to do whatever He sees best whether it fixes my problems or not.

I find myself just like this man in the story begging and pleading with God to come to me, to resolve my problems and to do it now before it is too late. But like him, I tend to want God to do it my way, to already have worked out in my own mind what needs to happen and then solicit His power to make those plans take place. But what are the subtle implications behind those statements of how my heart feels toward Jesus? What are the hidden feelings hiding behind those words that reveal my gut-level beliefs about how God views me and cares for me?

I see implied in these thoughts that I doubt to some extent that Jesus really cares enough to want to do something about 'healing my son', at least as much as I want him to be healed. It exposes a secret belief that maybe I care about my children, my family, my friends, my needs, my prayer requests more than God cares about them. Now when that dirty little belief gets flushed out into the open how does that make me look? Embarrassed, ashamed, fearful that God might get upset with me for even thinking such audacious things about myself in comparison with Him. That in turn begins to drag out a whole string of further assumptions and beliefs about God that have tenaciously tried to stay out of sight as much as possible for most of my life; things like, God doesn't really love me as much as He says He does, that I have to take things into my own hands when God doesn't respond quickly enough, that God has a dark, hurtful side that might at any time lash out and punish me and consequently I cannot let my heart really trust Him fully.

The list could go on and on – and maybe it is important that it should. For it is not until Jesus exposes what is really lurking in the dark corners of my heart, the beliefs that necessarily must be exposed for the real lies that they are, that the light of the actual truth about Him can begin to replace those ugly lies inside about how He feels about me. And if He has to employ my own desperation in a time of crisis as the means of exposing those secret thoughts about Him He is willing to do so for my ultimate healing. For my beliefs about God are actually the most important thing that He wants to heal, even more important than the physical or emotional healing of my family or loved ones as strange as that may sound.

Just like what this man had to finally face in his own heart, I have to see that my distorted ideas and feelings about God that are hidden even from my own view are the very obstacles that are preventing me from having the kind of trusting faith in the heart of Jesus that can give Him permission to do all of the other things that He already is intensely eager to do for me anyway. But it is my own unbelief, my mixed emotions and beliefs about how God feels about me, my own double-mindedness that blocks the unleashing of the outpouring of heaven's blessings into my life and the lives of those around me.

But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. (James 1:6-8)

My reactions even to this last text will reveal much about my beliefs of how God views me. If I feel resentment when I read this, that God is refusing to give me what I need because I don't have enough faith worked up yet and still cannot expel that last little bit of doubt, then the whole system of beliefs and assumptions that supports that logic reveals lies that permeate my heart picture of God. This is how I viewed these verses for much of my life until it was shown to me what this text was really saying and what the true meaning of many of these words are that had never made much sense to me before.

Faith is very different than the elimination of all doubt, as I grew up supposing. And doubt is not just the existence of a passing thought that maybe God won't do this for me, as I often supposed it was. And most importantly, double-mindedness is not a description of the presence of both faith and doubt in the sense of those early definitions but is actually a condition of having two opposite opinions about how God feels about me at the same time. It produces a similar effect like applying both the brakes and the accelerator full force at the same time and then wondering why I am having so much problem driving.

My mind has been carefully educated in the schools of religion and by the church all of my life to believe all sorts of “truths” about God and about life and reality. My mind has learned theses lessons well and has filed them all away just as I was taught to do. These beliefs may not have all been completely accurate as I have discovered since, but they were still learned and generally embraced nonetheless. I have been highly equipped with abundant religious information, facts, logic, assertions, arguments and many of the trappings of a good religious training.

But parallel to that and much more subtly deep in my heart, I was accumulating a thorough education in its own internal views of God. But this other system of theology was so different than the outwardly acceptable system of religion that it had to stay pretty much out of sight to keep out of trouble. Those in my life who through default were God's representatives to my heart often portrayed in their actions and treatment of me a dark picture of God. This mentoring process instilled in my heart a great deal of fears, suspicions, questions and doubt about the rumors of God's love for me. Because of suffering abuses from those in authority and misrepresentations of God's love by those claiming to love me in His name, my heart amassed many lies about God that to this day still feel very true inside even though my head has been learning many wonderful things to the contrary.

This discontinuity between what my head believes about God and His attitudes towards me, and what my heart believes about how God feels about me creates a condition that James labels as double-mindedness. It is simply that my head and my heart are believing incongruent, incompatible things at the same time. The clear and unavoidable result of this condition is emotional instability. I believe that this was exactly the condition that this man found himself in when Jesus exposed his condition with His words about signs and wonders. This man's head thought he was believing but deep inside his heart simply could not believe because of all the false beliefs about how God felt about Him.

When Jesus speaks these words about our resistance to believing in Him, He is not trying to shame us into having more faith. Shame does nothing to inspire more belief but only affirms our false beliefs about God even further. Jesus is seeking to open our own minds and hearts to see the incongruity that is blocking Him from doing what He wants to do for us. He wants us to know that He desires our good even more than we want Him to bless us. He is seeking to expose the myriads of false assumptions that prevent us from trusting His heart so that He can have permission to bless us beyond our wildest expectations. It is not His heart that is holding back but is our conflicting internal beliefs about His heart that block Him from being able to bring into our lives the healing and blessings that we so desire to experience.

When this true condition of our internal situation finally becomes obvious to us, we are then challenged by Jesus to do something very different than what we have been insisting should happen. Why is this? Why is it wrong for me to insist that Jesus come to me to fix my problems? Why, when I say come He instead says that I should go? I say come – He says go. Who is right here? Why won't He do it my way?

I don't have all the answers for this, but one thing is becoming clear to me as I listen to His Spirit all through this. If Jesus were to accommodate my demands to work miracles for me the way I think they should happen, then He would be reinforcing the very system of confused beliefs about Him that exists presently in my mind and heart. And that is certainly the last thing that He wants to perpetuate.

According to James, the presence of believing opposing ideas about God and how He feels about me creates a condition inside of me that incapacitates me from being able to receive anything from God. This was a startling revelation to me the first time I saw it. But far from God arbitrarily withholding things from me that I ask for as His punishment on me for not having enough faith, as my heart has too often supposed, I now see that James is simply here describing a reality of the broken condition of my soul that is incapable of receiving what God is eagerly desirous of giving to me. That man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord. He can't receive because inwardly he is like a broken cistern that cannot retain water. The problem is on the receiving end, not on the giving end. He will not receive simply because he cannot receive.

Father, please repair my broken cistern. Expose and expel all of the lies about You that have blocked Your desires for me for so long. Heal my heart from these damned lies, because that is exactly what they are doing to me. Shine the light of truth deep into my soul and transform me into a harmonious reflection of the truth about how You really feel about me. Open my eyes, my heart, my mind to embrace what You are really trying to do in me when it seems that You are holding back the things I am begging You to do for me. Thank-you for not settling for a half-done, immature, confused relationship with You but are wanting to grow me up into the full image of Jesus Himself.

Healing From Proof Sickness

Jesus said to him, "Go; your son lives." The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started off. (John 4:50)

John is writing this book to show us what real, saving, vibrant belief looks like. Every page of this book is filled with illustrations, comments, warnings and revelations about both the right kind of belief and the counterfeit belief that fails to connect with the heart of God.

This story introduces a man who started out with the weakly sort of belief but when exposed by the words of Jesus quickly dropped it in favor of real belief that saved his own son. If I want to do the same I need to follow the example of this man and see what he did that I could emulate.

Evidently he was hoping that there would be something to prop up his faith before he would invest more trust Jesus. He wanted Jesus to come to his house first; maybe that was the first sign he wanted to see. Maybe that would be the first step to prove to him that Jesus cared enough to even want to help him. Interestingly the gospels are filled with stories where Jesus easily complied with other people's requests to come to their homes to heal someone, so why did Jesus take a completely different approach with this man? Why was it so important to Him that this man trust Him without Him showing up at the son's bedside to heal him personally?

It has to go back to issues of the heart. The only reasonable explanation why Jesus seemed to treat one person so different than the next in a similar situation is that Jesus was far more concerned with eliciting trust and faith from their heart than He was in performing a miracle for them. The difference had more to do with where a person was in relation to their belief in Him more than the practical logistics of whether He could get to their house or not. And think about this for a moment: every single person that Jesus healed or even raised from the dead during His earthly ministry just turned around and died later on anyway. All of the physical healing and resurrecting He did for people all ended in death eventually, so what was the point of it all?

Jesus did not come to earth primarily to exhibit some miracles to impress us into believing that He has more power than we have. Satan also has more physical power than any of us have and he is eager to exploit that with supernatural signs whenever it furthers his plans to deceive us. It is far too easy to assume, without sufficient skepticism, that if miracles are involved then credibility must automatically follow. This is a very dangerous trap that millions of people have fallen into or even grown up within already. When God works miracles the true purpose for them may often be very different than the assumptions that we may have about them.

Generally people tend to view miracles, healings, supernatural manifestations and the like as proofs that are very beneficial for soliciting the faith of unbelievers. It is true that God has used miracles all throughout history as one of the means of helping people on their journey toward a saving relationship with Him. But most of the time we put far too much faith in miracles themselves than we do in the heart of the Father from which some of these miracles come. In essence, we are often secretly more interested in benefiting from a good miracle in our lives much more than in deepening our relationship and dependence and submission to the authority of the God behind the miracle.

Satan often uses miracles as a means of inducing deeper deception in the hearts of millions who are more eager to experience the excitement of the supernatural in their lives than they are in humbly submitting to a total dependence on God and willing obedience to His laws. Sadly most of our pleas for miracles in our lives are based primarily on selfish desires to relieve discomfort but with not much interest in surrendering control over our own future or direction. We are afraid to give up our mistaken ideas about God that discolor our perceptions of how He feels about us, but we still want to benefit from the power that we know He has to fix our problems. So we look for ways to manipulate Him into doing things for us without being willing to trust His heart and allow Him full access to our own.

But God is not in the helping business but is totally dedicated to the saving business. And salvation is far more concerned with the healing of our souls and our relationships than it is with the repair of our bodies that are destined for the grave anyway. That is not to say that God has no interest in our physical conditions – He is very concerned about that. But that is not the most important part of our lives despite how we feel to the contrary. The real problem is that we seldom see where our real problem is – if that makes sense. God wants to use things that happen in the external realm of our lives to convey far more important messages of love and grace and truth to the vastly more vital part of our makeup – our hearts, our souls and our attitude and relationship with Him.

One reason God is interested in our externals, our bodies, our mundane lives is because these things have so much affect on how we view Him. He has to relate to us indirectly many times through the only things we are paying attention to in order to draw our attention in another direction that we are not presently even aware of at the moment. That is one reason why Jesus dealt differently with different people in similar situations, because each of those people needed different methods or responses according to what was going on under the surface in their own hearts.

This man evidently needed this stern confrontation by Jesus to expose to his own awareness the weakness of his faith and the deceptions that were smothering his spirit and preventing him from trusting the heart of Jesus to care about his son. Jesus was directly addressing the far more vital issues that were preventing this man from stepping into a saving relationship with Him and He wanted to nudge this man's heart to wake up and smell the roses instead of focusing on the negatives. Jesus could heal a body in a heartbeat without any problem; but drawing a person into a healthy state of belief and simple trust was a far greater challenge. But this latter goal was the focus of every interaction that Jesus had with people all throughout His life.

In this case His challenge to the man that exposed this disbelieving mindset was effective and the man instantly realized that what he thought was faith was actually doubt disguised as belief. As soon as he realized how fake his faith had been he dropped it like a hot potato and immediately embraced the kind of faith that Jesus was seeking to inspire in his heart. Jesus was challenging this man to trust God's heart more than what God could do for him externally and the man responded in brokenness and confession of his weak faith. He may not have expressed it clearly in his words, but in his mind he realized that he had come with preconditions attached to his willingness to trust Jesus and these very conditions were deadly when it came to exercising saving faith.

When this man choose to trust Jesus fully instead of wanting things to happen his own way, Jesus still pressed him to see how he would respond. Instead of accommodating the man's request to come to his house, which was actually part of the preconditions that would have undermined his new faith, Jesus told the man that the miracle was already in place. It as now up to the man as to whether he was willing to trust the heart of Jesus as well as believe in His identity enough to act on his new faith, or whether he would falter and sink back into his former mindset and insist on something more tangible before he would fully believe.

Fortunately this man chose to believe in Jesus and discarded his unbelief by seizing on the words of Jesus and investing all of his confidence in the words alone without asking for any evidence whatsoever. Jesus had just warned him of the dangers of wanting to see signs and wonders before being willing to believe and this man took those warnings to heart. He turned away from his unbelief and invested all his hope and trust in the words and heart of Jesus. As a result the text says that he then demonstrated his faith by starting off toward home.

These simple words have far more significance than appears at first glance. These words speak volumes about the kind of new belief that this man was now choosing to exercise. Jesus had just refused to go home with him per his request, but instead challenged the man to trust His heart and His word. The man took the challenge and acted on it in accordance with his faith, so much so that he did not even hurry home in anguish and fear and haste as he had come the other direction. As a result his own heart was filled with an indescribable peace and was suddenly filled with love and joy and feelings he had never enjoyed before. The presence of Jesus actually was going home with him as he had requested even though Jesus had not complied with his demands externally. And this inner presence was far more effective in accomplishing the work that God wanted to do in his life than Jesus' physical presence might have been.

The rest of the story is almost an anticlimax from this point on. It is almost like the writer simply needs to fill in the footnotes so that it can be confirmed that his man made the right choice in acting on the word of Jesus. For this story is much more than just about the healing of a boy. This story is about the healing of the heart of a royal official from the oppression of unbelief that plagues nearly all of us each day. It is the story of the capture of a man's heart and a miracle of transforming grace in the mind and life of a person who had been trapped in a sickness even worse than his son was experiencing. Jesus was more interested in healing this man's heart, and the healing of his son was only a step in the process of accomplishing that.

All of Jesus' miracles were really more focused on capturing people's hearts than they were to demonstrate that He had supernatural power. Displaying the ability to work miracles can be used for good or for evil. We, just like this man so long ago, are far too vulnerable to the allure of signs and wonders and miracles to hang our faith on. But that kind of faith is easily manipulated by the enemy who can easily exploit those desires to built our faith on forces and ideas that are actually very subtle counterfeits of the truth. The Bible is clear that both good and evil forces are quite capable of working miracles and the basis of signs and wonders is a dangerous foundation to bank our lives on.

A number of mature Christians have observed that they have noticed how many times new believers often seem to have more miracles happen in their lives than people who have lived in close relationship to God for many years. It almost sounds strange to some and even suspicious, but it also may tell us something important about how God relates to His children. Some people can be influenced to make a move toward trust in God through the means of signs and wonders and miracles and come to trust God with their lives and begin to grow in spiritual maturity. But it seems to be analogous to the 'miracles' that happen to a baby in the provisions of their parents before they are old enough to know what is going on.

The sudden appearance of a bottle or a breast to feed a baby is almost miraculous. They have no idea of how all of this takes place and they have to learn to trust the hearts of those who care for them so diligently. But as they get older they are expected to interact more and more with those who care for them and to take on greater responsibility of their own care with less and less direct input from their caregivers.

Does this indicate that their loving parents now love them less when they are not providing everything they need at the drop of a hat? Not at all. It means that the 'miracles' are needed in the beginning to provide for their needs in ways that they latter will be expected to do for themselves as they gain experience, physical capacities and especially increased maturity. But the love they will experience will actually deepen much more as they come to know the hearts of their parents more intimately and learn to appreciate them from new perspectives.

So it is with our relationship to God. He does not want us to remain spiritual infants all of our lives in total dependence on miraculous intervention to provide for us and keep our spiritual trust alive. It is no less loving of Him to insist that we act on our growing faith at times that forces us to stretch out of our comfort zones as it was for Him to provide for us eagerly at other times through miraculous means. As we grow in grace, in maturity and our knowledge of His heart, He wants us to mature in our relationship with Him and learn to synchronize with His ways and learn to interact with Him at levels of higher maturity.

The real goal of every loving parent is to have their children grow up to become independent in healthy ways while still remaining in close relationship to their parents and deepening their affections and appreciation for them. The ultimate joy is for parents to have their grown children be their closest friends while at the same time living in close relationship to others as they start up their own families and raise their own children into healthy maturity. This is the model that God is seeking to experience with all of His children – to grow them into the fullness of Jesus so they can act like adults and not need to depend on the external presence of miracles and signs to prop up their faith.

That is not to say that God will not continue to provide miracles or signs in the life of mature Christians. But it is the heart relationship that is most important to Him and the greatest miracle is the transformation of the life as the love and presence of Jesus works itself out from the heart that is resting in His peace deep inside. It is the kind of heart that will choose to act on the word of Jesus without needing to have proofs of His love as a prerequisite for belief.