Where's the Power?

A man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, He said to him, "Do you wish to get well?" (John 5:5-6)

I am still confronted with this question in my own heart. But I am glad that Jesus is confronting me this way. I am tired of being sick spiritually, emotionally and sometimes physically. When I am physically sick it is easier to see more clearly and want to pay attention to doing anything and everything to take better care of my health. My unhealthy indulgences suddenly come into sharp focus and I make strong promises to myself that I will put away my sloppy lifestyle after I get well and be sure to eat better foods and do all the things I need to stay healthy. The pain of being sick has a way of really putting life into perspective and making me realize how valuable good health really is.

But what is sometimes harder to be aware of is the spiritual condition of my soul and how much more sick it is than my body ever has been. I suppose that one of the problems I have is that I have never been very healthy spiritually, not healthy like Jesus was anyway. So since I have never even experienced a day where I felt totally alive, joyful, intimately connected to God and thriving, eager to bless others from a totally selfless attitude, then I don't have anything to look back to or long to return to. I have always been baffled by Jesus' statement to one of the seven churches in Revelation about returning to their first love. If a person never had a first love experience, especially when they were raised within a religious environment all of their lives and had no dramatic conversion event to look back on, then there seems to be no measurement to which to compare any other part of their life.

In a way I suppose that is not really much different than the man Jesus was talking to that day near the pool of Bethesda. It says clearly that he had been sick a long time. He may have been sick so long that he had pretty much forgotten what it was like to be anything else, if he ever was. Other than comparing his condition with those who could freely walk around that he could observe nearby, he had little to compare himself to and had little hope of any change for his life.

Yet there is something very intriguing about Jesus' question to this man. There is something very strange and compelling that Jesus would ask anyone who so obviously was in desperate need of restoration and was in such poor condition, such a strange question. The implications of this question almost sound insulting to our ears today. Which is precisely why I find it so compelling to look much deeper into this event and perceive more clearly just what was going on in this situation that can relate directly to my own circumstances and my own heart condition.

What if Jesus were to ask me this very same question today?

What if He really is asking me this question right now?

Who's to say He is not asking me this question?

To doubt that He is is to expose a heart full of doubt – which only reveals that I likely am much more sick that I might suppose.

Am I so used to being sick – emotionally, spiritually, soul-sick – am I so accustomed to living in the fellowship of sick people all around me, clamoring after this gimmick or that potion to reduce my discomfort, that living life the way God has in mind for me is just too far-fetched to even consider? Is living a healthy life such a stretch for my imagination that I am refusing to believe it can happen for me, that it is only something that could happen for others but that I am too broken for even God to repair?

As I write those words I am starting to see at least part of the conviction buried within this challenge from Jesus. Because underneath my reluctance to believe that I can live much differently than I am accustomed to living lies a bed of lies deep in my soul about how God views me. I am starting to see just a little more how much I am infected still with so many false assumptions about the heart of God toward me personally. It is so much easier to believe that God wants to heal someone else of their immense difficulties and transform them into joyful, passionate Christians living in new-found freedom from their past. But when it comes to my own heart that has been repressed, abused, stuck, wounded and full of fear of ever being seen by anyone else for so long – when it comes to my own healing it is so much easier for me to focus on all the impossibilities of my situation than it is to imagine that God might just want permission to do the impossible in my situation.

I caught a glimpse of this as I was reading today's devotional by Oswald Chambers a few minutes ago. It forced me to rethink the way I perceive my relationship to God and God's relationship to me in the gospel. The word 'gospel' is one of those tantalizing but obscure words that has eluded clear definition much of my life because it was so difficult for me to resolve the obvious conflict between the definition of this word – 'good news' – with what my heart was being taught about how God felt toward me. I found myself saying secretly that I couldn't see anything that sounded very good about the news I was hearing about God or religion. All I was seeing were long lists of requirements and demands and threats if I didn't come into line with the high standards imposed on me by 'religion'. This perception of religion has suffocated my own heart and damaged my emotions and soul for much of my life. But what I read this morning reminded me of what God has been trying to get through to me for so many years.

We are apt to make sanctification the end-all of our preaching. Paul alludes to personal experience by way of illustration, never as the end of the matter. We are nowhere commissioned to preach salvation or sanctification; we are commissioned to lift up Jesus Christ (John 12:32). It is a travesty to say that Jesus Christ travailed in Redemption to make me a saint. Jesus Christ travailed in Redemption to redeem the whole world, and place it unimpaired and rehabilitated before the throne of God. The fact that Redemption can be experienced by us is an illustration of the power of the reality of Redemption, but that is not the end of Redemption. (My Utmost for His Highest : February 1)

After I read this and then opened my Bible to come back to the story of this sick man, it struck me that I have focused so much more on the condition of this sick man anytime I read this story instead of on the fact that standing in front of this man was a God who was all-powerful, who had instant connections with all the resources of the universe at His command, who had the perspective of eternity at His disposal and in comparison to what was all around Him everything else sank into near total insignificance. A poor analogy would be if the president of the richest company in the world were to stand in front of a poor beggar and ask if he wanted any money. Given that perspective it is easier to see that the real focal point of my attention should not be so much on all the difficulties or circumstances that surround this beggar's life but the incredible potential that is being offered to him that is only a choice away.

I am convicted from Oswald's words here and in the words of Jesus that I need to train my mind to think and dwell far more on the reality of what God is like as well as what He is really offering in order to eclipse the nonsense of how much I think my problems seem to have power over me. The only power that the enemy can maintain in my life is the extent to which I give him that power by believing his lies about me and about God. I am starting to realize that it is my choice of how to view reality that gives or removes power from the chains and bars that still imprison my heart and mind.

Yes, I too have been sick a very long time. But I want to be made whole. Jesus, save me from my own resistance and unbelief!