Tag Archives: healing

Doing the Impossible

Posted on by
Reply

In John 5, Jesus heals a man who “had an infirmity thirty-eight years.” 

Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your bed and walk.” And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked. – John 5:8-9 (NKJV)

The man had to rise, take up his bed and walk.  If healing were the only issue, Jesus might just as well have healed him and left him on his bed.  This, however, is one of those cases where the Lord asks the healed individual to do something in response to the healing.  He did so with good reason.  Two things are accomplished by the man acting upon Jesus’ words.

     1.  The man’s faith is reinforced by his actions.

When we don’t act upon our faith our faith can more easily falter.  Action draws faith out of mere theory into reality.  A man walking, bed in hand, knows that he is healed.  He doesn’t just think that he is.  It’s very hard to doubt you can do something while you’re in the very act of doing it successfully.

     2.  The actions make it harder to go back to his previous condition.

Action puts some distance between us and our previous, weakened condition.  It’s important to burn all bridges between where we are now spiritually and anything that once held back our growth.  Otherwise we’ll be tempted to look back after putting our hand to the plow.  We may begin longing for the delicacies of Egypt and forget that when we lived there we were slaves.

Repeated Requests

Posted on by
Reply

For reasons that I don’t fully understand, the Lord sometimes allows us to experience great need and then He doesn’t answer until we have prayed “enough”.  It’s probably not so important that we know why this is true, but it’s very important that we know that it is true.  If we didn’t catch on, we might quit praying too early, falsely believing that God was simply unresponsive to our need.  One example of this kind of repeated request that received a remarkable answer is found in John 4. 

So Jesus came again to Cana of Galilee where He had made the water wine. And there was a certain nobleman whose son was sick at Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had come out of Judea into Galilee, he went to Him and implored Him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death.  Then Jesus said to him, ‘Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will by no means believe.'”

Christ’s response might have discouraged a less determined person from asking – but this man was desperate.

The nobleman said to Him, ‘Sir, come down before my child dies!’

Jesus said to him, ‘Go your way; your son lives.’ So the man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him, and he went his way.  And as he was now going down, his servants met him and told him, saying, ‘Your son lives!’

Then he inquired of them the hour when he got better. And they said to him, ‘Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.’ So the father knew that it was at the same hour in which Jesus said to him, ‘Your son lives.’ And he himself believed, and his whole household.”   – John 4:46-53 (NKJV)

So the lesson we learn is: Keep asking!