Healing or Help?

Jesus said to him, "Get up, pick up your pallet and walk." Immediately the man became well, and picked up his pallet and began to walk. (John 5:8-9)

I have observed a very subtle but great danger in our general view of what it means to be a Christian and to experience the power of God in our lives. It is seen quite often in the prayers that we pray so often. It seems to sound good and it is very easy to slip into that mode even after years of awareness about it. What I am talking about is the commonly accepted maxim that 'God helps those who help themselves.'

But as someone pointed out to me some years ago, God is not in the helping business. While it is true that in many ways God does provide help for us in other respects, in the crucial area of belief that leads to radical transformation in the life, we too often become trapped in the thinking that what we need is more help from God instead of making choices of faith that force our hearts to step out into the unknown before we have all the feelings present or enough evidence to satisfy our doubting minds.

I believe that too often we tend to wait improperly for God's help in our lives, but this mindset actually ends up sabotaging our ability to experience the healing and growth that we so need. Waiting for God's help when He may well be waiting for our choice can actually become a counterfeit religion of the kind of experiential relationship of faith that is needed to enter into deeper relationship with Him. While there are many areas of our lives where we genuinely have to depend on God's help for things we cannot do, when it comes to things we secretly do not want to do but don't want to be viewed that way, God is actually handicapped in being able to move us forward in our experience until we make a choice that gives Him permission to do for us what He is so eager and able to do.

This crippled man clearly needed healing. But it was not just his crippled legs and body that was in need of healing. Even more importantly it was his mind and heart, his picture of God that was in need of serious revision and healing. Jesus came to this world to do far more important things than simply to heal people's bodies of the ailments and afflictions that sin has caused. Those people all ended up succumbing to the effects of sin in their bodies sooner or later and all died. But what Jesus was after and still is today, is to alter our fundamental beliefs about who God is and how He wants to relate to us. The healing of people's bodies was in many ways symbolic of what He was seeking to do within their minds and hearts.

I can see this truth in this story in how Jesus related the offer of healing to this crippled man. I sense that there is a very important lesson here for me to grasp when it comes to my own life and experience. The way that Jesus related to this man simply reveals the way God relates to each one of us who find ourselves in similar situations, whether physical or spiritual. All of us are crippled in some way or another and all of us are in desperate need of healing. The real issue to understand is how we can properly relate to the power of God that is available to undo the damage that has been caused in our lives. Do we need help from God or do we much more need the healing of God, both internally and externally?

I must repeatedly ask myself that question in various circumstances. There may be times when I really do need God's help and I need to ask for it in order to receive it. There may be many times when I receive God's help and don't even realize it until looking back on some event or situation in my life. But I am starting to see more clearly that when it comes to the point of choosing to believe in Jesus, believing the real truth about God in the face of other ideas and feelings and insinuations and traditions, waiting for help from God might even be a fatal mistake.

I notice that there is no hint in this story that Jesus did anything to help this poor cripple. Yet in the words of the crippled man it is obvious that this was the main focus of what he believed that he needed most. He was complaining to Jesus in all the reasons he listed why he could not be healed, insisting that the real problem was that he had not received enough help. Implied in his words were an obvious appeal of hope that maybe Jesus might be the one who would feel sorry enough for him to help him into the pool where he hoped his healing might possibly take place.

But Jesus had no use whatsoever for the notions about what the people thought they needed for restoration or healing. It did not matter that everyone around them believed to some extent that healing could be had from jumping into a pool at the stirring of the waters. He did not even give that idea enough credibility to even discuss it with anyone. He had something so much more true, so much more powerful and saving, so much more real that he did not even want to go into that arena of thinking. He had come to reveal the real truth about how God feels about every person in this world and He was offering what this man really needed far more than what he wanted – a splash in a mysterious pool in hopes of inducing a miracle. Jesus was the Source of all life Himself, the real author of all healing, and He was standing before this man waiting for a choice of belief, not offering a hand of help.

The text also has no hint that even after telling the man to get up that Jesus put out His hand to help the man up. He simply spoke the word, letting the man know clearly what choices he had to make if he was willing to believe. Everything depended on this man's willingness to enter into real, saving belief in the invitation of Jesus without any help from God. Everything hinged on whether or not he was willing to exercise his own power to choose. Jesus simply made it clear that the path to wholeness had to pass through the narrow door of making a conscious choice that was outside of what felt normal or even reasonable. It might feel bizarre and weird to choose to try to stand up in response to Jesus' words to him, but if he was willing to make that choice and act on it he would suddenly experience the reality that was waiting to be manifest in his life and his body as a result of joining his will with the will of God for him.