Moving Into Faith

Jesus said to him, "Do you wish to get well?" The sick man answered Him, "Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me." (John 5:6-7)

I feel this question still resonating strongly in my own heart. I hear Jesus speaking to me personally just as He did to this man so long ago, “Do you wish to get well?”

As I consider the direction of this man's answer I recognize the same sort of distracted thinking and assumptions that are so familiar. I too have spent years researching, exploring, listening to various people present promising methods of healing that report wonderful results for those who have gotten there before me. These stories have raised hope in my heart and have caused me to seek out counseling and ministry from a number of organized ministries or individuals with varying results.

I do not regret most of these events in my life. Each one has contributed to my growth and has helped me to move a little deeper into unmasking lies buried in my heart and exposing them to the light of truth. But repeatedly I have become frustrated as I fail to see the kind of dramatic breakthroughs that are touted by most of these people in their examples of what can happen in people's lives that participate in their programs. And I suspect I am not the only one who feels this way.

I have spent many hundreds of dollars on procuring videos, audios and books from various ministries that specialize in the inner healing concepts. Again, I do not regret doing this for each one has had a positive effect on my life, my marriage and my relationships with others. But I continue to wonder if maybe I am such a hard case, that maybe I have been more sick spiritually and emotionally than most that it requires far more power or insight or skill than anyone that I have met with up to this point in order to accomplish what I feel needs to happen in my life.

As I look back over my history of very slow recovery I can see the thread of the guidance of the Spirit of God. But even in that area of my life, as dramatic and wonderful has been the presence of God increasingly close to me I want to know more clearly how God views my situation. Am I really still focusing too much on theories, superstitions, hearsay, natural phenomenon or any number of other potential means of relief while the all-powerful, all-caring Savior of the universe may have been standing very close to me all along offering me something so simple that it confuses me?

I can already hear someone steeped in traditional religion eager to pounce on that last statement and insist that I just need to repent and be converted and everything would be suddenly fine. But I was raised and trained thoroughly in those concepts of religious jargon and have been very disappointed with most of those assertions. In the process I have learned a great deal by flushing out the true meaning of many of the words used which in turn has caused me to realize the shallowness of much of what is so intensely promoted as religious conversion. Most of these teachings depend heavily on fear, intimidation, force or strong will-power but fail to produce the kind of heart transformation that is needed for genuine living. I have been there, done that and realize that I need a much more robust God than the one that I was exposed to by most spiritual leaders around me. I need a very personal Savior who knows how to deal with the wounds in my heart without putting me deeper into despair and hopelessness.

I praise my God that over the past fifteen years He has been introducing me to just such a Savior. He has been personally tutoring me, mentoring me, teaching me from His Word and increasingly I have felt the presence and guidance of His Spirit in my daily life.

I happened to watch a program yesterday on my TV that really helped to enlighten some of this for me. It was a teaching by one of the most helpful preachers that influenced me and gave me hope from an early age. He was talking about our need for abiding in Christ and explained that there can be two different kinds of abiding. One of them involves the effort that we can do, the kind of abiding where we intentionally focus on knowing Jesus, on pursuing Him, on seeking His face. The other kind of abiding comes out of this relationship which is Jesus' presence abiding in us. This second abiding is what produces all of the external and internal results in our lives of true righteousness that we so often try to accomplish directly ourselves.

It is so easy to try to focus on being good, on doing the right things, on avoiding bad behaviors, activities, thought patterns etc. instead of realizing that we are attempting an impossibility. This has been a favorite diversion tactic by Satan for millennia and has been very effective in discouraging millions of believers who have tried to impress God with their goodness so He will love them and save them. But this approach is doomed to failure and produces depression and discouragement in all who pursue this supposed path to victory.

I have seen this truth many years ago and have turned my attention more and more to focus on seeking to know God from the heart and not just with my mind. The results have been very encouraging and I believe God is drawing me to Himself each day through this process. But part of me still longs for those big breakthroughs, those dramatic encounters with a living Christ that make for inspiring reading in stories of great Christians of the past. But the days move by and I find myself generally growing only incrementally which sometimes gives cause to wonder if maybe I am still missing some key bit of information or failing to take advantage of some method I haven't tried yet.

Somehow I feel sympathy with this poor cripple sitting in front of Jesus babbling on about some superstitions that everyone around him believes and that seems to work so well for others. But he had never been able to measure up sufficiently, had never been able to fulfill the requirements demanded that would produce the wonderful results others seemed to enjoy. So he had resigned himself to a life of crippledness, a life of severe restrictions on his movements and freedom, laying among many who like him had little hope of ever being much more than they presently were.

Are my prayers to Jesus so much like this man's response – focused on what I believe to be the answers that I need while nearly oblivious to a potential life being offered to me in a way I never expected? Somehow I suspect that may be the case. And yet in Jesus' words to this man I also notice that there is no hint of disapproval, condemnation, rejection, disdain or disgust that the man just wasn't paying attention to what Jesus was trying to tell him. The compassion of Jesus is consistent and strong and He is not put off by the confusion and misconceptions of the man whom He is offering to bless.

That really gives me a sense of hope, hope that I can feel growing tiny roots deep into my own soul. It is God's faithfulness that is most important here, not my weak, confused ideas about how I am supposed to receive healing. What I am seeing more clearly here is the real truth about the heart of God and His consistent compassion for me as a broken, messed up sinner in desperate need of even more grace than the open sinners in the ghettos. I am almost convinced that there are different levels of grace offered by God and some of the most concentrated forms of grace, the greater grace mentioned in James 4:6 is reserved for those who have been caught in the trap of self-dependent religion or a life where we believed we had to be good with help from God.

I notice in this story that Jesus did not offer to help this man to get better. He challenged him to turn away from what he was focusing on and simply act in accordance with the words of his healer. “Get up and walk.” Just that simple and yet so profound because the words have to come from the mouth of the One who has the power to enforce His own words.

And this leads me back to the very reason why I am immersing myself in this book of John. For this book is really about what belief looks like from all different angles. In this story I see that my part in the healing process is to hear what Jesus is really saying to me personally and then to believe His words so assuredly that I will take action based on what He says instead of living according to what I am most familiar with from my past or my surroundings.

What I also see in this encounter is that the man's faith itself was a reflection of the faith that Jesus was placing in him. Jesus in His words to this man was offering him the very gift of faith, of the kind of believing that was needed in order for the man to take hold of the healing being offered. And because somehow the man saw the love and compassion and faith that Jesus had in him he was able to grasp those things internally and choose to act upon them thereby experiencing a new kind of life he had never known before.