2 corinthians 12

P 2607 A vastly underrated Gem.

/ DVH

In the middle of a very ordinary rock of circumstances  – I found a rare gem, biblically speaking. There are books and books on the subject of faith, so what I am writing here today is just a tiny speck on the windshield of our lives …  It’s my own personal experience…. so far. My faith has often been badly dented by the fact that I have been chronically sick in one way or another for most of my Christian life … over 50 years. An overall observation of my experience of healing faith is this … my faith in healing seems to work much better when I point it at YOU – rather than at me!

Over the years, I’ve stood in more queues for healing prayer than I can count. I’ve been prayed over by mighty men and women of God, and went home, full of hope — only to find nothing had changed. Of course, after that prayer, I felt more joyful, more in love with the Lord. Only to have those feelings fade because I still had the physical problems. Meanwhile, over the years I also learnt that my body doesn’t react well to any sort of self-bullying. It ‘explains’ to me  – via pain and physical illness – that pushing hard on those supposed ‘faith’ edges is a bad idea.

In Luke 18:1. 8b Jesus said: “Then Jesus told His disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up …” “…However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”  I take what the bible says seriously and this means that I have not stopped asking for healing, or letting people pray for me whenever the Lord asks them to do it. I have, however, stopped making healing my main focus because otherwise discouragement grips me by the throat, and I don’t want to get out of bed!  Good health is definitely a desired part of my life — but I have learnt it is not all of it.

The Lord has shown me that running about … or even waiting as patiently as I could to be healed … can become a snare. I became so focussed on seeing that kind of prayer answered I couldn’t see anything else. My thought process was this – I can serve Him better if I am healed. Unfortunately what happened was, I stopped serving Him at all, I became so intent on being healed, or going after it. During that time that I lived in a kind of limbo of chronic illness, and overall, it added to my daily frustration. In the end I made a quality decision that if I am to serve Him, then serving HIM needs to be my focus, not my comfort or discomfort.

Just to be clear, I have experienced healing along the way. My dear hubby prayed for a gaping wound on my side and the wound disappeared within hours. I’ve also seen pain disappear. I want to say that I am not writing this to discourage anyone from fighting for their own healing. But I do want to encourage others that they should not let a lack of healing stop them, or even be a deterrent to their personal responsive obedience to God’s leading in their lives! Going after healing can be a distraction to our primary purpose – which is to love and glorify Him in what we say, do and think. And, sadly, a lack of healing can end up being a logical excuse, plus a means of elimination from every day simple obedience to what He asks us to do.  

The bible talks about having faith. I want to look at a couple of verses that have helped me with my focus.“It’s impossible to please God apart from faith. And why? Because anyone who wants to approach God must believe both that He exists and that He cares enough to respond to those who seek Him.” Hebrews 11:6. As you can see … this life is not about healing, or being healed, it is all about FAITH. My problem was that I wanted to be in charge of His response! 

The result of endlessly praying for healing, without maintaining my spiritual focus on loving Him and other people, was eventually quite detrimental to my day by day walk with Him. I started to believe that the Lord didn’t love me the way He loves other people ….who have been healed!  It seems I saw healing as a badge of honour and approval, rather than the goodness of God doing what it does best – blessing people! I often felt less of a ‘Christian’ because I wasn’t able to meet my own imposed standard – which was … only well people can serve God! 

The Lord fixed all this fuss and bother with one verse from the bible, which lit up like a Christmas tree. He took me off the side track I was stuck on and put me firmly back in the fight. In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul quotes Jesus who said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.”And that’s when I began to see the blessing I had been missing in my preoccupation with injury and illness, and my overly-focussed desire to be healed! I realised I am weak – and that means I definitely qualify to ask for His power to help me. That thought changed my life. 

Now I had a golden God-given opportunity to experience His power in a way I never had before. The next thing, I learnt was to let my weakness teach me about humility and dependence on Him. And then I found a rare gem in an unexpected place. His strength totally beats mine at every opportunity! I have seen some of the greatest miracles of my life, so far, after I chose to serve the Lord anyway – healed or not. Bye. 👋

P 2580 Unblocking blockages.

/ DVH

As Christians we can experience spiritual blockages. So today, let’s look at attitudes that can get in our way, and sometimes we are almost unaware of them. Our God is not legalistic, we are forgiven. However, WE can block the flow of the Holy Spirit in, and through our lives by ignoring Him or choosing not to be aware of His ways. Or even by disobeying the things we don’t like! It is our responsibility to discover for ourselves what He wants from us, by talking to Him, reading the book and then doing it. At the same time, praise God, He is always willing to engage with us at any hour or any moment, of any day to help us whatever is currently going on. 

Here are some things that have helped me. If I find myself gossiping about someone, then the first place I go to is – am I angry with this person? If perhaps I get sick of somebody I know bragging about their skills, or their possessions etc. then I look at jealousy. Instead of blaming my attitudes etc. on others, the first place I need to look at is myself. Personally, I try not to excuse my behaviour, by saying ‘I’m tired or sick, or life has been a bit much.’ If I really believe that the Lord holds my life in His hands, then I need to see that everything that comes toward me is Father-filtered. But that does not mean I will not hesitate to tell the enemy to take a hike when oppression comes at me! 

The thing is, I refuse to let my sinfulness prevent me from running toward my Father, because Calvary took care of any legal requirements on my behalf, so now His Grace predominates. Grace frees people everywhere it is embraced – Grace is not ‘permission to sin!‘ Grace is ‘we have an advocate!’  Now I am free, Christ made me free and I’m the boss of what I do, say and think, and I can’t blame you! We can stop the flow of His life through us by our choices, actions and attitudes at any given moment. God gave us power, and that power can be used to help others, help us adjust our behaviour and theology – or … tune Him out! Paul wrote this in his second letter to Corinthians, chapter 12 verse 9!

“But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” You know there are days when I wish the Holy Spirit would just arbitrarily do this stuff through me, or to me, instead of me having to choose and apply myself? But freedom means choices. Dying to self is hard. The problem is this, a lot of the time, my ‘old man’ is trying to bring about an unlawful resurrection! That’s called necromancy. We can blame the devil if we want to, but really, the devil ain’t that big! Nobody can stop us from moving, but US. Seriously. Like the book says: “What then shall we say to all these things? If God is for us, who can be [successful] against us?” Romans 8:31.

The answer to that rhetorical question is ME. I can exercise my God-given power of choice at any given moment, and simply refuse to move on. I can take offence with something that God, or someone else has done, and spit the dummy and opt out of discussing it with Him. I can look at my circumstances and decide that I am too weak to fight, or I am sick of fighting my old self. Instead I can just feel sorry for myself and sit marinating in my sorrows.

This whole ‘walking with Jesus life’ is optional. And if we do not use every opportunity to get to know Him better and fall in love with Him, and the way He works — then we can be pretty sure we will eventually take ourselves out of this marathon race, in favour of comfort and safety! Some people, sadly, have even walked away. The good news is repentance will bring us back again!

There are areas in all our lives with big fat “KEEP OUT” signs on them. You and I put those signs there in some moment of desperation, angst or a fit of pique. Maybe someone hurt us and we feel we can’t get over it. My advice is to exercise the power of choice and … just get over it. Here’s why I think that. We can actually tie ourselves up like a loin of pork and wonder why we aren’t moving on spiritually. Or we can discover, by prayer, persistence and reading the bible, where we have put up stop signs. Blockages come from us, not from the Lord.

Christ took away every single road block between God and us, even though it killed Him. Brothers and sisters, there is so-very-much-more-of-Him-and-Who-He-is for us to know. Why waste time? Let’s go on a “seek and ye shall find tour,” and pull down, or starve out, every single one of those strongholds that are imprisoning us. Let’s throw away the balloons, cakes and streamers at our frequent pity parties and just get on with it. 👋