Tag Archives: healing

Hold a Kid and Flip a Table, All For Freedom

Our church is taking part in a study called the Amazing Race, and as a church we are reading through the New Testament together until the end of the year.  I thought I’d post my thoughts on the days readings, and I’d love to hear what you have to say.  If you don’t attend SCC, I’d still love to invite you to read with us, and weigh in with what you are learning as well.

Today we read Mark 10:32-12:37.

In the verses we read today, we have the story of Jesus heading up into Jerusalem for a showdown with the religious and political leaders.  It’s this really amazing mix of stories, as Jesus is facing off with people of power.  You see Him working amazing miracles, like healing the blind man Bartimaeus, and weird miracles, like cursing the fig tree.  Mixed in with it are these battles of words and authority with the religious leaders in Jerusalem.

Anytime we read the Bible, we not only need to take time to understand each individual story, but we need to ask questions like “Why did Mark put these stories in?  Why did he put these stories in the order he did?”  We know that God inspired him, and ultimately God is the author.  At the same time, Mark is trying to tell a story.  Why this order, this way?

With the stories of the miracles, Mark is proving to us how much authority and power Jesus has.  You’ve probably noticed as we’ve read through Mark, how many times he includes those words when we talks about Jesus; “authority” and “power”.  It’s on purpose.  He wants us to understand that Jesus is in charge, that He can do whatever He wants whenever He wants.

Then, you look at the debates with the religious leaders.  These people want to kill Jesus.  Jesus knows it.  Why doesn’t He just make one of them wither like the fig tree?  No, I’m serious.  Why doesn’t He simply do some miracle that wipes out a couple of the mouthier, more annoying Pharisees?  That would settle the whole issue.  No one would mess with Him then at all.

Or would they?

Jesus knows us.  He created us to be free.  Anything that forces itself on us can not stand long term.  God has made us to follow Him, hard wired us to choose to love Him, built into us a desire for true freedom that only He can give us.  We have to choose Him.  He could force us to obey, but He is more interested in us choosing to love and worship Him.  That is where freedom begins in our lives.  That is why Jesus won’t destroy one of the Pharisees.  He could.  They are a creation of His, just like the fig tree.  But He doesn’t.

He values our choice, He wants us to be free in a way we rarely know.

He loves us.

He loves you.

So, He talks.  He listens.  He heals.  He gives hope.  He warns.  He upsets tables and systems of power.  He whispers.  He holds children and blesses them.  He puts up with our selfish requests to sit on His right hand and left hand.  He yells.  All so that we can hear Him, choose to trust Him, and seek forgiveness from Him.

All so we can be free.

Where is Jesus trying to get our attention today?  What is He calling us to?  Are we listening?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.

Long Distance Miracle


The passage in Matthew 15:21-28 is a tough one. You have this woman who is not a Jew come to Jesus and beg Him to heal her possessed daughter. Jesus doesn’t answer her. She keeps after them to the point of driving the disciples nuts, and they want her sent away. When they ask Jesus to get rid of her, His answer is interesting. He says “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” That answer would have made sense if they were asking Jesus to heal her daughter, but they weren’t. They said “Get rid of her.” You would think His answer would be like “You send her away” or “Let her follow us, she is doing no harm” or something dealing with whether or not to get rid of her. Instead, He throws out a “theological” answer dealing with whether or not she qualifies for His help. “I was only sent to help lost followers of God” is what He says.

She comes in front of Him and begs for help. His answer again is based on this idea of who He is there to help. “I am here to help those who are seeking God”, at which point she proves with her humility that she is a God follower. He then tells her that her daughter is healed, and He doesn’t even go see the daughter. He healed the daughter based on the mom’s faith.

It’s a really different story. It seems that He loves to work with people who aren’t Jews, and heal their kids from a distance. He does it with the centurion’s servant, and some others as well. So, what’s His point?

It’s not about the systems we think God cares about. He is focused on who lives out a vibrant faith, not what their background is. Does a person believe that Jesus is God, and do they act on it? Yes? Great! Drop the rest of the requirements, He will bless them.

The challenge is in digging in my own life and rooting out where I am more traditional Jew than I am Canaanite mom. Where am I counting on my understanding of God’s system and not really running to Him, begging and trusting for mercy and power? I don’t like this question, because it pokes deep in my soul and brings up long ignored sin.

Why does the Bible have to be such a living book, anyway?

Beer Bottles, Flip Flops, and Jesus


Yeah, I did it. I lost my flip flops off the top of my car. There, I said it. It’s out in the open, and I’ve come clean. I put my flip flops on top of my car to dry, since when I leave them in my car wet they smell like a herd of dying rhinos threw a death party in the back seat of my trooper. And I drove off, completely forgetting they were there, just like I promised myself I wouldn’t do.

So this morning, I saw one on the road, and stopped to get it. Walking along the road, cars whizzing by, old farmers on bicycles asking if I lost something and guffawing as they pedaled past, I kept looking for the other flip flop. As I perused the ditch and deep weeds along the road, I kept thinking I saw my shoe. But no, it was a beer bottle, an old glove, a beer bottle, some cardboard, a beer bottle, another old glove, a mountain dew throwback can, a beer bottle, and a trash bag full of something quite scary. Apparently the people driving in and out of our church drink a lot of beer and throw their empties into the ditch along the road.

It really began to hit me how much trash we pitch out in a small space. It was pretty discouraging, cruising the ditch and looking at the leftover unwanted parts of other people’s lives laying there. Then I saw a bumble bee, and it was buzzing around this tiny yellow wisp of a flower. In the middle of a couple of beer bottles. For whatever reason, it hit me, that it is just like God to grow a flower in the middle of the trash and weeds. Just like Him….

So, I read in Matthew 9:27-38 about Jesus healing people, and seeing them “harassed and helpless”. He wades out into the trash of that day, the people who were tossed aside and pitched for being worthless, and makes flowers of healing and hope grow. He still does, really.

It’s just like Him… Oh, and I found my other flip flop.

When He Walks In


I hit Matthew 9 today, and the story of Jesus raising the girl from the dead. It’s in verses 18-26. He walks into the house and everyone there is wailing and mourning because the girl is dead. He tells them she isn’t.

There it is. The difference in how Jesus views us and how everyone else does. We give up on each other all the time. “They’re a failure”, “they’re a mess”, “they have no hope!” We look at other people, and basically classify them as dead. Maybe it’s because they disappoint us. Or they’ve hurt our feelings deeply. Or we are intimidated by them. But we write them off, dismiss them, push them aside.

In walks Jesus and tells us that no, we’ve got it all wrong. They aren’t dead, they’re just not awake yet. And we laugh. Oh how we laugh. There is no hope for that one, even God can’t change them. So, He clears the room, walks over, and simply touches them, and it all breaks apart. Just His touch, one time, is enough to turn the world upside down.

But even harder sometimes is when we are the ones who are dead. We’re the ones who have messed up one too many times, we’ve screwed up, we’ve dropped the ball and we’ve blown things up. We are convinced its over, so we listen to everyone else, and we lay down and die.

Until He walks in. He comes for us when it’s all over, when there’s no hope, He walks in. And takes us by the hand. And tells us to get up.

I am so glad He never quits, He never gives up on those of us who are dead. Just Him grabbing our hand, and there’s life again. Phew… that will keep a person going for a long time.

The Power of Word


So in Matthew 9, Jesus crosses back across the lake (see Matthew 8), and goes to His hometown. The place He had grown up, where He had been a kid and a young man. You gotta think that the people of His town had a lot of different ideas about Him. He had to come off as pretty weird most of the time, in this beautiful, entrancing kind of way that drew people in and worried them at the same time. So, anyway, He’s back in His hometown. It never says He was home, cause He didn’t really have a home.

These friends carry in a paralyzed guy. This is a different story, it seems, than the crew who lowered their friend through the ceiling down to Jesus. I love how these guys bring this paralyzed friend to Jesus. Jesus sees all of their faith, and tells the kid, “Take heart, your sins are forgiven.”

I always am caught by how different from Jesus I am. I want the kid healed physically, because that is what I see in front of me. Jesus worries about what He sees, the kids heart and soul. The more I hang around Jesus, and more like Him I become over time, the more drawn to hurt and brokenness I am. But it still is the physical hurt. Someone who is poor, who finds them self homeless, who has a debilitating disease. I am drawn to them and want to help. Jesus is focused on their hurt too, but He sees past the outside hurt to the inside hurt. He is drawn to their broken soul, the need for forgiveness and hope.

It hits me too that when Jesus pushes back against the pastors in the crowd, He says “Which is easier to SAY…” He goes back to that Genesis 1 and 2 deal where God creates everything by saying it. Here Jesus says “Be whole” and the kid is, both in soul and body. It’s the power of God’s words. Again, I am so different from Jesus. I believe it’s what I do that matters most. Jesus believes it’s God’s words flowing in and through Him that matter most.

So, I want to help fix someone economically, socially, and physically. Jesus wants to speak healing into their soul. I really need to come around on this understanding, and trust that God can speak healing through me. That’s tough.

So, What’s the Plan?


I need God to help me out. Okay, that’s not true. I need to listen to what God has known for billions of years. Yeah, that’s much more like it.

I am overwhelmed with the needs of families in our community, and how it plays out in their teenagers lives. It’s the old feeling of fighting the oncoming flood with nothing more than an umbrella. I feel outmatched, out powered, under equipped, and under resourced. So, I want to turn away from it.

There is so much brokenness, abuse, hurt, anger, hatred, and dispair in people. I’ve had six suicide threats in the last three weeks. What can I do? What can we do? We’re just a church, how can we fix all of society?

Honestly, that’s how I feel. That’s what I think.

But even as I write this, I am reminded that the battle isn’t against other people. It’s against powers and spirits and Satan’s forces. It is. They are the ones that need beaten back. People need rescued. I can’t heal them. But I can fight for them. So, today, I am praying for God to give me the pieces of the Plan that He has. I’m going to seek for them even more this week. What will it hold? I don’t know. But He does. That’s more than enough.

Pray with me. Pray for the families in our town. Pray for other people to be drawn to His plan. I know there are already dozens working it out. I just need to figure out my role. You need to figure out yours. He is the one who has to solve the problems. We just have to follow.

When He Comes For Us


As we finish out the story of the once blind beggar in John 9:35-41, Jesus hears that the Pharisee’s have thrown him out of the temple, and Jesus goes to find him. Be sure to catch what this means. It’s not one of the scenes from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air where Mr. Banks picks Jazz up and throws him out of the front door into the yard. When it says “they threw him out”, it means that the beggar has been barred from the temple. He may not enter and offer sacrifices anymore. The Pharisee’s have cut him off from God. He has no way of finding forgiveness now. He is destined for hell.

So, Jesus goes and finds the one who has been thrown away. He begins speaking to the beggar, who doesn’t recognize Jesus. Remember, Jesus sent him to was in the Pool of Siloam to be healed. He has never seen the one who healed him. Jesus gave him sight, but he has never seen the sight giver. As soon as Jesus tells him that He was the one who healed him, the beggar believes and worships him right there. (vs 38) Notice in verse 40 that there are Pharisee’s following either the beggar or Jesus around, it doesn’t say which. Can you imagine their anger when this guy worships Jesus. He was just spanked by them, and can’t worship God anymore. Then Jesus finds the guy, and he worships Jesus. Oh, the irony of it all.

The Pharisee’s get all bent out of shape at Jesus’ remark about the blind seeing and the seeing being blind. Clearly he is implying the once blind beggar gets it, and worships God by worshiping Him. And, they don’t. He tells the Pharisee’s that by continuing to claim to be healthy spiritually, they are still guilty.

Jesus has done this with me recently. I have been struggling with some things, and under a lot of stress. I felt like I couldn’t find the answers I needed, and in my blindness and weakness, I wasn’t getting any help. I felt like no matter how hard I tried to see, I couldn’t and God just wasn’t helping. I finally got so mad and tired that I had it out with God. I admitted that I didn’t think He was going to help me. I confessed that I was mad at Him, even though the mess was mine to begin with. I basically threw myself at His feet in anger and uncertainty.

And He came to me.

He sent two friends who don’t know each other. He had them both check in with me, telling me that God had prompted them to come and ask. Both brought wisdom and healing. He came and found me, and offered me my sight back. Again.

He is trustworthy. He really is. But we have to admit our blindness and frustration. We have to be willing to fall in front of Him. But He always comes for us. Every time.