In one of the chapters in my book I refer to the story in John 5 where Jesus asked a man who had been paralyzed for thirty-eight years, “Do you want to get well?” I wrote that initially this question seemed like a crazy question to me. Who wouldn’t want to be healed? Of course, the man wanted to be healed!
But a recent blog by a marriage counselor that I admire, Leslie Vernick (www.leslievernick.com), opened my mind to the other possibilities as to why this man would not want to be healed. She wonders, “Did Jesus know that healing this man would not fix his entire life. It would only fix his legs? In fact,” she continues, “healing him would bring new challenges and life changes that this man had never faced. For example, he would no longer be able to beg for his support. He would now need to find some sort of work. He would now have to make new relationships where he wasn’t the needy dependent one? Would he now have to contribute to society and learn to give back to others less fortunate than he was?”
Then Leslie asks her audience, “Being willing for God to heal us is something that most of us want, but what would we expect our next steps to be?”
She’s asking a great question. Many of us love to be the victim or the martyr. We like it when the world —according to our interpretation— is taking advantage of us, or not being fair to us, and we have the right, in fact, the responsibility, to loudly protest and call out others for their injustices. We don’t have to “get healed” when others need to get healed so they can stop hurting us!
But if we get healed from our victimhood, then we will have to take the next steps. We will have to grow up. We will not be able to blame others for our condition, anymore. We will have to take responsibility (in Christ, of course) for the direction of our lives.
Think about it. We want God to heal our marriages, but that means that God will have to confront us and change us. We cannot be the victims anymore. In fact, healing our marriage means that He has confronted me for always placing the blame on my spouse.
We all want God to heal our hurts and empty us of bitterness, but once He does that we will have to walk in love toward the people who once hurt us. We will have to give up the deliciousness of always holding those persons in contempt, as blameworthy, terrible persons (in whose presence I am always so righteous!).
If God heals us from blaming others, from our passivity, or from our lack of self-control, then we must take the next steps, and there are several. We must become more self-aware; we must realize the controlling lies of our flesh, we must continually dialogue with the Holy Spirit about those lies, and take our every thought captive to Christ. Then we will have to live as a forgiver, watch our tongue, consider others as more important than ourselves (Phil 2). Otherwise, we never step into future grace. If we don’t start up these new practices, then we have turned back to our vomit (Prov 26:11). We must start up new steps of obedience, or our healing bears no fruit.
Do you want to get well? Do you want God to heal your marriage? Heal your bitterness and depression? Heal an old wound? Set you free from something?
We have seen hundreds of you get healings like this at Pure Heart Weekend. When His healing grace comes into your life, it lifts your heart to a new place of power and freedom spiritually, but it also brings about a change in your emotional state. There is newness of life. There is newness in the heart. There is a joy about walking into a new future. But you must come home, fight the lies of the enemy, and boldly walk into a Spirit-filled journey you have never walked before.
Take the next steps. Step into a future you have never lived. After your healing, get someone to guide you in next steps to take. Then ask the Holy Spirit to fill you, control you, and take those new steps.
Work out your salvation with fear and trembling,
for it is God Who is at work in you
both to will and to work His good pleasure.
(Phil 2:12-13)
Walk out what God has worked in you!
Carter