More Than Physical

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 been musing for several days now on the question of Jesus to this man as well as to myself. Jesus challenged him to search his own heart to know his true desires and attitudes about his sickness and disabilities. I too have been challenged just as he was to examine my own heart and get more honest before God about what I discover there in the light of the presence of Jesus.

But Jesus did not stop there with just challenging this man to know his own heart better. Neither was Jesus put off by the man's distracted answer that largely missed the main point of Jesus' question to him. Instead He abruptly instructed the man to act on new emotions that were stirring in his heart and to believe solely in the word of Jesus. Again there is enormous implications involved in this very short report of what happened that goes far beyond what can be explicitly seen in these few words.

I sense that God may well be doing something very similar in my own life right now that is just as strange feeling to me as the words of Jesus were to this man so long ago. These words of Jesus seemed so bizarre, so unrealistic, so ridiculous to the normal way that most of us view life and reality that one is forced beyond normal logic if they are to relate to the word of Jesus in any meaningful way. But to do so also places them outside the expectations and even acceptability of many who live around them. It shatters their own comfort zone, their own familiar surroundings and history and compels them to do and think and live in ways they have never known before, to enter into a new dimension of life, to exercise faith and belief far beyond anything they have ever dared to do before.

So, why had this thought never occurred to this man before? Is it reasonable to believe that if he had just thought of this command himself that he could have been healed years earlier? That may sound absurd at first, but I express that to flush out important factors in the healing process that seem to be consistent with what I observe in how Jesus relates to many people. There seems to be an important issue of timing involved in relation to God's healing power in our lives. There seems to be a need to mature our sense of helplessness before we are ready to grasp the power of God in true faith that can appropriate His words of life into our own experience.

This key issue can also be a source of great frustration for many people including myself. I can remember many times when I have complained bitterly to God that my circumstances felt desperate enough to warrant Him showing up to help me but He still seemed to be nowhere around. There was this sense or religious idea that when a person reaches the end of their rope then God is supposed to show up to rescue and restore them. But I already felt like I was at the end of my rope yet when I looked around I still couldn't see God anywhere. I distinctly remember crying out to God about this and wondering how much farther I must go into desperation and hopelessness before He would answer my frantic prayers for deliverance.

I don't think it is just coincidental that the story mentions that this man had been sick for a very long time. That part of his history is a key ingredient of what was going on in his mind and heart. It was a major influence in how this man likely had come to view God and Jesus wanted to challenge his assumptions about how God felt about him along with offering him the physical healing that he knew he obviously needed.

I have repeatedly sensed God doing the same thing in my own experience with Him. When I was upset about my physical circumstances and pleading with God to rescue me, I often sensed that He was trying to focus my attention more on my internal feelings about Him and seeking to flush out more into the open hidden attitudes and faulty assumptions about Him that were still hidden from my view. This has sometimes been very frustrating for me but also forced me to have patience as well as more honesty about my real motives for wanting healing or deliverance. My relationship with God has been shaped and reshaped many times as He seeks to remove lie after lie about Him that has distorted my feelings about Him for so long. But it seems to take intense situations to get me to flush out many of these lies and allow Him to remove them in exchange for new concepts and truths to replace them in my heart.

Jesus' primary work among men was not to just heal their physical maladies but His real desire was to change their hearts and minds about how God relates to us and feels about us. This is the real core problem that sin has produced in our lives – the fear and distance that we have from God because of our deep mistrust of Him. This mistrust that sin has bred right into our subconsciousness is the unbelief that Jesus came to this world to counteract with a fresh revelation of the real truth about how God feels about us. But this unbelief does not go away easily and so Jesus has to fight for every inch of ground in our hearts relentlessly to capture our affections and allegiance by demonstrating His faithfulness, goodness and the truth about God in every way possible.

I am seeing more and more in these stories the theme of belief in the words of Jesus about God. We usually think of this story as a healing of a crippled man of his physical problems and the subsequent conflict produced with the leaders about proper Sabbath observance. But that was just the surface issues that couched the much deeper battle over the truth about our relationship to God as sinners. Jesus performed His miracles of healing for far more significant reasons than just to heal someone's body temporarily; for it would not be long before that same body would weaken and die as the effects of sin once again took over as the person aged. It was the loyalty of our hearts that Jesus was really after and everything He did while on this earth was laser focused on that one objective.

That is what I sense I face time after time. Each day I am faced with a conflict revolving around where the loyalties of my heart really fall. My heart can be amazingly deceptive to me and God is constantly seeking to expose my real condition and to give me opportunities to choose loyalty to Him in all sorts of situations. As I continue to trust in Him even when it means being out of sync with many of those all around me, I find that my life takes on more meaning and I feel a deeper sense of real peace in my soul.

That peace can easily be lost when I lose sight of the real source of power and life for me. I have to be reminded over and over that the only real source of life, power and hope is to trust and act on the words of Jesus to me as He reveals them to me each day. I have to remember that the children of God must always be led by the Spirit of God and not trust to their own understanding even as it becomes more and more sanctified. Elijah had to learn this lesson the hard way on Mt. Carmel and I have to learn it over and over myself.

When Jesus says, “Get up, pick up what you have been lying on for so long and walk like a man,” then I am faced yet again with a choice of who I am going to believe – my feelings, my past sense of identity and social assumptions about myself or am I going to believe the radical words of Jesus that always forces me far outside what feels normal? And even more importantly, am I ready to keep on trusting the word of Jesus to my heart each day and continue to live in even clearer revelations of truth, healing and a new identity as He challenges me to move even further into a life I am not familiar with?