We were never meant to be broken.
We were never called to be sick.
We were never created to be lost.
You would never go up to the woman, stricken with AIDS from a lifestyle of whoring herself out and say to her "You deserve this sickness."
What about the man who cheats on his wife one night, and the next night his wife is killed? Would you tell him, that during the midst of his depression, that it is his fault his wife is dead and that he deserves to live a life of shame?
What about your best friend, or your mom? Would you tell them that they were never meant to be saved? Or what about the murderer, or the rapist? Would you tell them that they were never meant to have eternal life with Jesus? Maybe its just Jesus' will that they go to hell.
Far from it. If that were the case, then we would be admitting that the cross was not sufficient, that Jesus was biased as he bled to death on the cross, and that Christ's example on this earth was one of believing that only certain people deserved healing.
Now the question becomes, is the cross sufficient enough for you? Do you cling to his promises? David did, he even told himself not to forget them!
"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases." Pslam 103:2
Now how did David, a man who came before Jesus, understand the Lord's grace and healing years before His Son even showed up?
He decided to truly know God, and what he found was how truly loved he was.
As I sat at breakfast this morning, I saw a man walk in front of my window. He was completely doubled over, barely able to walk. An amazing thing happened, instead of thinking "Poor guy" my first thought was "He deserves to and will be healed, Jesus loves him that much." As I watched him get into his car, I wondered to myself "Does he know that Jesus loves him that much."
Could I have run out of the restaurant to chase him down to tell him and show him this love? Yeah, probably should have. But here is the thing I have realized, Christians tend to understand that they are meant to truly love their neighbor, but have a skewed view of what it means to love themselves. They use disease, sickness, and self pity as some backwards way of maintaining a connection with the Father. Do you realize that you will have none of those in heaven to continue a relationship with Him?
If you seek God's heart, you know what you will find? You will find that you were never meant to be broken, called to be sick, or created to be lost. You were made whole, called to live victoriously, and created in God's image.
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3 comments:
I would love to read a blog post here that firmly anchors in Scripture the idea that every one of God's children should expect to be healed of all sickness.
Perhaps I'm not phrasing that well, so give me some freedom and don't get bogged down in the phrasing. I suppose I just don't grasp how the Bible exhibits that our God's will is that none of His children would struggle with physical/body problems.
And if you want to narrow it down, how would you anchor something like "[the hunched over dude] deserves to and will be healed" in Scripture? This rings very false to me, especially the unscrupulous use of the word 'deserve.'
But he was wounded for our transgressions;he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his stripes we are healed.
Isaiah 53:8
Its never about deserving healing because of who we are or what we have done. They deserve it because everyone deserves for us to love them the way that Jesus would love them. How incredible is it that God can use us for someone else to meet Jesus, Savior, Healer, and Redeemer. Jesus displayed that He was a healer. He healed ALL. He never turned anyone away, everyone who came to Him left healed and restored (Mark 3, Luke 4, Luke 6). Can we live like that? Jesus said we could.
Luke 13:10-17 Jesus even calls out a woman who was bent over in pain (for 18 years) and slowly walking by. She was not even looking for a miracle, but Jesus gave her one. Now what if I can grab hold of the incredible promise in John 14, when Jesus says we can be like Him as He was here on earth? What if I begin to take on the mind of Christ, and know and believe that every back problem can be healed, simply because Jesus showed me how to love that way.
Since Jesus said to take care of the orphans and widows, we know He didn't just mean some of them. But when He said to heal the sick, why can't we grasp that applies to all?
Blake, I like you a lot dude. Search the Gospels and just find how Jesus lived and loved. Secondly search God's heart. The Holy Spirit is going to take you to depths you never knew existed, and I am excited for you man.
Hey John,
I intend to write a long and thorough response. I believe you are in error, and for your benefit, my benefit, and the benefit of everyone who I will ever minister to, I want to fully write out why these two things are false:
1) It is God's will to heal everyone.
2) Any regenerated (in the theological sense) child of God (read: true follower of Jesus) should expect full physical healing for him/herself.
So, before I write this, will you quickly validate those two things? I think you think 1) and 2) are true. Am I mistaken? If I am mistaken about one of them, rather than writing a big defense of anything, will you simply tweak what I wrote for 1) and 2) to be representative of what you believe? If I am going to respond to your error, I want to be very sure that you're okay with how I'm stating your belief.
Lastly, I don't want to do this if you think it isn't rooted in love. I'm not interested in any clanging symbol junk. So, dude, if I respond very thoroughly to what I perceive as your errors, are you going to take it as an attack or some superiority thing, etc? Is there any part of you that discerns that in me?
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