Sometimes in life, we find ourselves crying out to God for help and his answers are a little left of centre.
Like in Exodus 15 when the Israelites are in the wilderness and without water to drink. Moses cries out to God and God directs him to a piece of wood.
Really, God? A piece of wood?
Apparently so.
So Moses cried out to the Lord for help, and the Lord showed him a piece of wood. Moses threw it into the water, and this made the water good to drink.
It was there at Marah that the Lord set before them the following decree as a standard to test their faithfulness to him. He said, “If you will listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in his sight, obeying his commands and keeping all his decrees, then I will not make you suffer any of the diseases I sent on the Egyptians; for I am the Lord who heals you.”
That’s some timber.
However, God also tells His people that He is a God who will heal them.
Whenever I see that line, I fairly quickly hear Don Moen in my head singing the kind of classic, schmaltzy worship song from the 1980s that brings us so much joy.
But God is not about schmaltz.
God is about Holy Spirit power and about using it for a reason.
Whenever we are sick, it is good and normal to pray for healing. To not do so, would be rather bizarre and lead to Jesus’ question to the man by the pool in Bethesda, “Do you want to be well?” Of course, people want to be well.
But sometimes we can feel as though we don’t matter. As though God wouldn’t be bothered. Or, as though it’s selfish to ask for healing.
I recently came across a passage written by John C. Maxwell which takes that lie from the devil and thumps it right on down. Here’s what he wrote:
“I’m grateful for the second chances God has given me. He has always forgiven me when I’ve done wrong. And he has saved me from death… It was only by God’s grace and the skill of two surgeons that I survived a heart attack I had in 1998. Ten years later, I realised how much God had done for other people because he had given me a second chance: More than ten thousand people have given their lives to God… [he lists more stuff here] … Five million leaders have been trained in nearly every country around the world. Many millions more have been helped by the books I’ve written since 1998… [and lists more stuff here again] … All these things happened because God gave me a second chance… You have no idea how many people you may help…[1]”
To ask for healing is not selfish.
How we feel doesn’t dictate anything. God’s plans, purposes and power do instead. We may feel low or down, but that doesn’t change matters in God’s mind.
“Grace always runs downhill. It met me when I was at the bottom, not the top[2].”
So get your piece of wood. And meet God at the bottom of the hill.
Or something like that.
Yours listening to Moen’s back catalogue,
Alison
[1] Learning from the Giants: Life and Leadership Lessons from the Bible by John C. Maxwell, p.97
[2] ibid., p.102
