Tag: christianity

It’s Never a Formula!

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Having said these things, He spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva.  Then He anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said, “Go wash in the pool of Siloam.”  John 9:6-7

Each of us needs supernatural healing from God, whether physical healing, emotional healing, or perhaps even spiritual healing from something related to spiritual abuse. When we hear that someone else received it, we’re eager to listen to their story.  We want to know how it happened and when it happened.  As they tell us about it, we wonder if something in their story holds the secret to our own breakthrough.

But there is no formula.  Jesus never offered any nor did He conform to them.  He varied His methods of healing.  Once, Jesus put spit on a man’s eyes.  Another time, he just touched them, and the man could see.  In John 9, he put mud on another man’s eyes and told him to go to the pool of Siloam, in the southeast corner of Jerusalem, to wash the mud off.  Why such a wide variety of methods? 

Here’s a thought.  If Jesus consistently sent blind men to the pool of Siloam to wash their eyes, every blind person would have attempted to travel to the ‘miracle pool.’  The grandeur of the tales about Siloam would have obscured the power of Jesus, and He would not share His glory with another.   The whole point of blind people receiving their sight was that they encountered Jesus Christ.

For any who is waiting on God, we know how tempted we are to work hard for our miracle.  We pray and read more, trying to uncover the secret of getting God to move on our behalf.  If such miracles depended on self-effort, we would all get our breakthrough sooner.  But on the other side of it, what would be our testimony?  “When I did this, the miracle happened.”  

Encounters with Jesus are happening all over the world at this very moment. He’s speaking to someone sitting at an airport gate, and another will feel His presence in the kitchen packing their child’s lunch.  You may sense a holy encounter when you see handwritten notes in your mother’s bible.  The Lord still changes bitter waters to sweet springs of Living Water.  

How I love this Charles Spurgeon quote:  

Do not call yourself Mara but remember the new name the Lord named you. Don’t be so ready to affix to yourself names of sad memorials; your griefs have tainted your memory.  Do not aid them to sting you. Call the well by another name.  Remember Jehovah Rapha, the Lord that heals both you and the waters. Record His mercy rather than the sorrows and thank the Most High God.

What Happened Then?

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When the shepherds had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child.  Luke 2:17

What a person experiences long after a spiritual mountaintop is often withheld from a storyline.  After the shepherds saw the heavens open, and after they found Jesus, and after they witnessed what they saw, what happened next?  Did they continue to believe?  Did they keep track of Jesus until his parents took him to Egypt?  We’re not told.  

But we know the nature of mountaintops and valleys.  We know that not all the shepherds would have gone on to worship God with their lives. Holy moments dim with time.  Daily living consumes.  Holy moments are rare.  Holy men who go on to finish well are even rarer. 

My own storyline has been dotted with more God moments than I deserved, and yet, they didn’t always carry me through the dark times.  There were moments I still doubted and battled hopelessness.  It wasn’t that I didn’t remember the mountaintops.  I did.  But I couldn’t connect with them like I did just after they happened.  

We’ll never know how many shepherds were on the hillside.  We’ll never know if all of them left to go to Bethlehem.  We’ll never know if they were all equally impacted by the baby in the manger.  And we’ll never know how many went on to live changed lives from that time forward.  But some did.  God picks who will be privileged to witness the supernatural.  For some of them, it will be the defining moment that forever changes the direction of their lives. 

Take me back to the moments I need to review to be strengthened and re-purposed.  Amen

Near To The Father’s Heart – Part 1

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No one has ever seen God. But the unique One, who is himself God, is near to the Father’s heart. He has revealed God to us.  John 1:18. NLT

The expression John paints of Jesus being near to the Father’s heart is not new to us.  Today, we use the same expression to describe a feeling for our children.  ‘Near and dear to our heart’ implies that the relationship is not like most others.  Encounters with them ~ we carry with us.  Words they speak to us ~ we hold dear.  Pain they express ~ we embrace and lift to the Father constantly in prayer.   

To be near to the Father’s heart literally means that Jesus was ‘in the bosom of the Father.’  A bosom is defined as three things.  Today, let’s look at the first one.

The bosom is part of the upper body between both arms.  The heart, specifically. 

I don’t know what you face today.  It may look like a routine day to you so far but for every person who faces scary unknowns, God has you near to His heart.  You have not been pushed away, put down, or even relegated to a place near Him yet out of sight.  He has embraced you and drawn you up to His chest.  

When your heart beats, He feels it.  

When His heart beats, you feel it. 

In all their distress he too was distressed, and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and mercy he redeemed them, He lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. Isaiah 63:9

Father, I need this today.  You’ve picked me up, taken me with you to my divine appointments today and when turbulent, You draw me into the stillness of You.  Amen

The Little Reconciler

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All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ.  2 Corinthians 5:18

What a package of explosive potential lay in the manger.  He was the little Lamb and the little Shepherd, each one offering life altering implications for those who needed a Lamb slain for their sin and for those who were lost and needed a shepherd to show them the way home.  

Baby Jesus could do far more than that though.  He was also the little Reconciler who had the power to bring together two enemies and make them, not only compatible but, intimate.  Reconciliation rarely has such stunning outcomes.  It is one thing to bring together two parties who are at odds over an issue.  It is quite another thing to cause two people, far apart in every way, to eagerly join hands and become one in their thinking and feeling.  

Oh, how deep was the fracture in the Garden of Eden.  God had made man perfectly.  It was he who wanted more, who bought the Serpent’s lie, and then opened his mind to evil.  It was a world he was not created to understand nor be compatible with.  Yet, evil corrupted him and he began to choose everything that God wouldn’t choose and to think all things God wouldn’t think. Alienation ensued and the two were separated by a great gulf.  Holiness could not reconcile with sinfulness without a miracle.  God’s answer?  Send a Reconciler who could also be the Lamb to forgive sin and restore the sinner to what he once was ~ holy before God.  That would be the game changer.  The perfected nature would not want to sin and would indeed hate sin.  His mind would be washed completely of defilement to think and feel like the indwelling Spirit who inhabited him again.  

The baby didn’t automatically reconcile enemies at His birth.  God’s timetable moves slowly.  It took thousands of years for God to send this Lamb.  It would take thirty-three years more for the Lamb to die for the sins that separated creation from His Father.  But how necessary the three decades were.  The only way for people to trust the Lamb and forsake their sin would be to know Him.  They would watch Him live and hear Him speak. They would experience God’s love, grace, and mercy through direct interaction.  His Light would woo the sinner and warm up their icy relationship.  Light would either draw men to His Father or repel them.  Not all would come to hate their sin and mourn their estrangement.  Most would not, in fact.  

Ah, but for the ones who did, for them it would be different.  The great gulf that separated them from their Creator would break their heart.  They would own their sin that caused the breach and trust the Lamb to bring them to the foot of His cross.  His blood would wash them clean and present them faultless to His Father. Complete compatibility. Impeccable restoration. Perfect reconciliation.  

If there is tension in our relationship, it can be fixed now.  Thank you, Jesus. Amen

Remembering Who I Am

Published on by Christine Wyrtzen1 Comment

REMEMBERING WHO I AM

But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.  Romans 13:14

         I live in the ‘now but not yet’ as a Christian.  I am seated with Christ in the heavenlies but I also live here.  I was made holy at my conversion but I am told to be holy.  Satan was defeated on the cross but He won’t act like he’s defeated until He is judged at the last day and thrown into the lake of fire.  I was clothed with Christ when I made Him my Savior but Paul reminds me to put on Christ daily.

         This is the battle.  Truth must be reviewed, embraced, and intentionally lived out every day.  This morning, I remember who I am.

  • I am adopted, not an orphan.
  • I am free, not a slave.
  • I am forgiven, not condemned.
  • I am dead to sin, not trapped by former habits and sinful thought patterns.
  • I wear His robe of righteousness, not a tattered robe of shame.

I see the day ahead of me.  I review my new status as a child of God and decide to live like it.  Knowing I can’t do it by myself, I call upon the Spirit of God inside to rise up and enable spiritual life.  I ask Him to flood my desires with His desires.  I ask Him for the grace to be who I am.  I put on Christ like a cloak and it is not a heavy overcoat.  It is lightweight.  It fits perfectly.  I feel ten feet tall when I wear Him.

         Since I am a child of the ‘narrow way’, I know that I will stand out like a sore thumb.  I won’t be making the choices of the majority.  I won’t be thinking like the masses.  I will be peculiar.  I will confuse.  I will draw criticism.  And for that, the Spirit is ever close to comfort and encourage.  I won’t be tripped up by other’s rejection.  I expect it and won’t abandon the way of the cross when false expectations attempt to entrap me.  To ‘put on Christ’ is to live His life; fraught with miracles, glory, but also scorn and rejection.  Every step into the dark was redeemed on Calvary and glory awaits every child of God who lives for the ‘not yet’.

In spite of the challenges, wearing You is my deepest joy.  Amen

Jesus Taught Me How To Relate To Abba

Published on by Christine WyrtzenLeave a comment

Jesus taught me how to live as a child of God. He was a Son; I am a daughter. If I want to know how to relate to Him, I follow His example.

Jesus made no autonomous decisions. The Son is able to do nothing of His own accord; but the Son is able to do only what He sees His Father doing. Jn. 5:19   His choices were often surprising. He chose only one man to heal at the at pool of Bethesda though many dreamt of it. The rich young ruler departed from Jesus’ with a sad heart  yet Jesus didn’t go after him. Jesus wasted no steps because Abba ordered them.

Did Jesus have memory of His intimacy with the Father? Did He remember the Garden and the fall? Did he feel the urgency of the ages in needing to redeem mankind? Or did God subject his mind/memory to finite time just as we live? I’m inclined to think that way. Whatever Jesus seemed to know about history, about Abraham and about the Torah, He knew from studying. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. Heb. 5:8

Jesus’ journey to the cross never eroded His trust in His Father.  He probably did not have all the details surrounding his coming crucifixion. He knew He was born for that purpose.  He trusted, He obeyed – and the seeming cruelty of God’s path for Him didn’t cause Him to stumble in His relationship with His Father. Can you imagine how He felt when He studied Isaiah 53 and other prophetic passages? He thought, “This is talking about me. This will happen to me.”

Abba, I will follow Jesus.  I will be submissive to You.   And I will not stumble over You when life gets really difficult.   Amen