Tag: god

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 About All The Promises?

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Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits—who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases. Psalm 103:2-3

God is holy and cannot lie. He is good for every promise that He has made.  God can, and will, heal every infirmity.  It is a certainty.  

Yet, I haven’t seen Jehovah Rapha heal every time I’ve asked for it.  Have you?  Instead, I’ve discovered that sometimes He heals now, ahead of heaven, and that is glorious! But for the rest of our infirmities, healing awaits on the other side.  Living in the ‘not yet’ doesn’t nullify any promise.  As Wayne Watson sang so long ago ….  “Home free, eventually. At the ultimate healing, we will be home free.”  

There are other passages in the Psalms that can be confusing as well. In Psalm 91, God promises that ‘nothing will harm us, and no danger will come near our tent.’ Yet, eleven of Jesus’ disciples died as martyrs.  Five missionaries were speared by the Auca Indians in 1957.  The persecution of Christians, right now, is on the rise. How can we understand these verses amidst the disappointment our hearts feel when God withholds what we believe He has promised?  

My father fought in WWII in the European theatre.  Before leaving boot camp, he memorized all of Psalm 91.  On the front lines in France, in a fox hole, he recited the passage all night long as the bullets whizzed by and mortars exploded in close proximity.  He saw buddies next to him die and was shocked the following morning to discover that he was the only one in his company still alive.  Did God honor Psalm 91?  Yes.  Yet I’m sure there were other soldiers, also believers, who clung to Psalm 23 and other promises.  Some, like him, survived.  Some did not. 

We can know this about Jehovah Rapha.

  1. All promises will be fulfilled.  Some now.  All later.  
  2. We should ask boldly for God to move now because we never know if His answer will be an immediate ‘yes’. 
  3. If God has us in a time of waiting, He will give us the grace to be more than a conqueror, forging through the pain to glory. 

Jesus came to suffer, to be crushed, and to show us the path to glorification.  God’s promises were an umbrella over Jesus’ life.  Some intersected His daily life with the miraculous.  But everything else was perfectly fulfilled when He breathed His last and entered glory.  We follow in His footsteps to ask for, and witness stunning, miraculous events.  And we also follow in His footsteps to lean into His Father with childlike trust.  He will give us the grace to endure with hope, no feelings of betrayal marring our countenance. 

I trust You, even in the waiting. Amen  

It Is a Certainty We Can Count On

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Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps”. Psalm 135:6

Jehovah Rapha is our glorious healer.  He heals all things in eternity, but some He heals ahead of time. Beautiful stories are recorded for us in the Old Testament.  Naaman was healed when he dipped seven times in the Jordan river.  A young boy was raised from the dead when Elisha laid over his lifeless body.  The children of Israel were healed when they looked to the serpent on the pole.  King Hezekiah was healed from a terminal illness and given an additional fifteen years to live.  But just as many times, the righteous prayed for healing but weren’t granted it in their lifetime.  Like us, they held on to their glorious hope and found the fulfillment of God’s promise when they entered Abraham’s bosom.

When Jesus came, He spent much of His ministry healing people.  Blind people were given sight. Tumors disappeared.  The dead were raised.  Fevers left.  The lame, relegated to begging for a living, stood on their feet to begin a new life.  While His healing was widespread, He didn’t heal everyone either.  For those who were left lame, or with a thorn in the flesh like the Apostle Paul, hope was deferred, and God’s grace carried them to the end.

God is all powerful and can easily facilitate healing.  But healing is the exception.  Let’s face it.  We’re disappointed and continue to groan under the fall.  

When I was 29 years old, my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer.  I begged God for her healing.  He didn’t grant it on this side of heaven.  In 2003, my father died of lung cancer. Again, I pleaded with God for healing and felt sure that He would extend my father’s life.  He didn’t.  I stood firm, waiting for this miracle, all the way to his last breath.  It didn’t happen.  

You have your stories too.  Perhaps you are in prayer, even today, for the healing of someone close to you.

God will fulfill every single promise He has made.  What do we do with Psalm 103:3?  “I will heal all of your diseases.”  We don’t run from it or misinterpret it.  We live in it and expect its fulfillment ~ but in context with the whole counsel of God’s Word.  More on that tomorrow. 

I’ve seen miracles.  And I’ve been disappointed, Lord.  Help me when I stumble over You.  Amen

Abram and El Eyon

Published on by Christine Wyrtzen1 Comment

What is it like to worship many gods?  I can say that I have no clue, but that’s not true.  I must avoid worshipping idols all the time.  God ~ plus materialism.  God ~ plus others’ respect.  God ~ plus keeping the peace.  John Calvin said, “Man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.”  

Abram knew all about that!  He was the first in his family to leave his family’s gods to worship the ‘most high God.’  The gods of his youth were deities held sacred by the people of Ur, the place of his birth.  Abram’s father even sold small statues, likenesses of them, to make a living.  

The gods of Ur were said to be distant. No wonder Yahweh captivated Abram’s heart by speaking to him directly. When God spoke, he was told to leave the land of Ur, which meant leaving everything familiar, including his father’s religion.  Abram obeyed immediately.

But it was sometime later when Abram formally left polytheism and became the father of monotheism.  Abram had just rescued his nephew Lot from captivity.  Melchizedek, king of Salem, came out to meet him.  He blessed Abram and said, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High [El Elyon], who has delivered your enemies into your hand!”  This ‘most high God’ came into full view, and Abram realized He was the only God.

Centuries later, idol worship was one of the main issues in the Protestant Reformation. Luther preached against worshipping shrines, statues, icons, and relics in the Catholic Church, which were significant sources of income for the Vatican.  

Abram’s life can seem far removed from mine and deemed irrelevant.  While I may not carry around an idol that belonged to my family, my heart says differently. A company with a father’s name on it and expectations for his children to serve and perpetuate his legacy can quickly come before my loyalty to God.  So can honoring a matriarch who rules the family or condoning and whitewashing family sin patterns.  

I must make up my mind about whom I’m going to serve.  El Elyon won’t share His glory with anyone.   

From the rising of the sun to the place of its setting, people may know there is none besides me.    I am the Lord, and there is no other.  Isaiah 45:6

Paved With The Finger of God

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While spending the night on the way to Bethlehem, I wonder if Mary thought of her home and her comfortable bed. The ground wasn’t very forgiving to her aching body. Joseph probably didn’t sleep much either, trying to do what he could to soften the place where Mary lay. We can imagine his kindness.

Joseph had to wonder what would happen when they arrived in Bethlehem. He could tell that the baby’s birth was near. He probably felt alone and weighed down with responsibility for their safety. For strength, perhaps he took a deep breath, reviewed the stories of his ancestral fathers, and trusted God.

Their safety was not dependent upon his own ingenuity. God was the Father, just out of sight, ensuring the safe arrival of the Promise. The redemptive plans of God, from before time, would break open upon the Earth and nothing would tamper with divine sovereignty.

My life has also been planned from before the creation of the world. God said so. My calling is as secure in God’s hands as the calling of Joseph and Mary. I can often feel the weight of responsibility, believing that I have more to do with determining my tomorrows than God does. I fear that my own ingenuity will make or break my future. Not so. The presence of God hovers near. His breath warms my way. I cannot miss the way if I am prayerful, if I am listening, because my Bethlehem is always within reach. My roadway has been paved ahead of time by the index finger of 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

Wild, Yet Wonderful

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God is wild and wonderful.  He is also unpredictable.  He exalts the likes of Judah, the treacherous son of Jacob.  He blesses adulterers like King David.  He forgives betrayers like Peter.  He saves persecutors and murderers like Paul.  Judah, at the end of his life, offered to give his own for the life of another brother.  His father, Jacob, lived long enough to see Judah choose righteousness. The common thread in all of these stories was a heart of repentance.  God’s forgiveness was, and is, so radical that an entire past is put under His atoning blood.

No family is perfect. In the past few days, I’ve heard from more than a few who say that they have not seen their grandchildren in years. They grieve over that and feel embarrassed in public when others ask if they have children and grandchildren. Is the Gospel of Jesus Christ relevant to them? Is it relevant to us in the very places we long to see the righteousness of God revealed in the lives of our family members? Oh yes.

This Christmas, as we hear the Christmas story and are tempted to zone out at the reading of the lineage of Jesus, let’s wake up and sit on the edge of our seat.  When Judah’s name is mentioned, we can rejoice that God works in family messes.  No one is out of His reach.  We should never stop praying for forthcoming repentance.  God is good for every promise He has made.

For every family ‘Joseph’, there are tears of joy.  For every family ‘Judah’, there are tears of faith.  You are God over every family drama that is brought to your feet in prayer.  Amen

Able To Read The Times

Published on by Christine Wyrtzen1 Comment

Jesus also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you say at once, ‘A rainstorm is coming,’ and it does. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat,’ and there is. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky, but how can you not know how to interpret the present time?  Luke 12:54-59

How is it possible for someone close to God to miss the obvious? This was Jesus’ message to the crowd. They were skillful at interpreting weather-related signs but inept at interpreting the times.

When Saul pursued David to kill him, the number of those who stood by David was small.  But a group of men called the ‘sons of Issachar’ perceived things correctly.  They saw Saul for who he was ~ a disobedient king under God’s judgment.  They saw David for who he was ~ God’s anointed man who should ascend the throne.  From all circumstantial evidence, it would appear that Saul was suffering the threat of a coup led by a renegade named David. However, these 200 men read the two men accurately.  

The children of Issachar, men who understood their times, knew what Israel ought to do.  I Chronicles 12:32

What kind of spiritual acumen do I possess?  The men of Issachar looked at Saul the way God looked at Saul.  His throne or his crown did not sway them.  They could see his behavior and leadership style and know he was out of God’s favor.  They looked for the anointing but couldn’t find it.  They also looked at David and saw past his poverty and rag-tag militia.  They perceived the spiritual markings of a kingly anointing.

Not everything is as it appears. Influential people are often a house of cards.  They can crumble after just one confrontation.  The meek are often perceived as weak but may rise to rule over us if God promotes them.  Jesus is coming soon, and understanding the times has never been more critical.

Oh, for divine eyesight.  Train me.  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

Why We Can’t Give Up

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“Behold, I am doing a new thing.  Don’t you perceive it?  I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”  Isaiah 43:19

When life has always been one way for many years, the thought that it can be different is hard to grasp.  We quit praying.  We stop dreaming.  Our faith shrivels.  We simply cease believing that God can, and will, do a new thing.  Technically, we may know that He can because He is God.  But our hearts live in dangerous territory ~ we fear His heart for us has switched off.  He doesn’t love us enough to bless us with a different experience. Does this accurately describe where you are today? I lived this way for two decades. 

On the wall in our family room is a beautiful piece of calligraphy.  “Behold, I am doing a new thing.  Don’t you perceive it?  I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”  Isaiah 43:19  Of all messages I get to share with others who are in despair, this is at the top of the list.  ‘Don’t give up on God!  He is the One who makes something out of nothing.  He is the One who turns deserts into springs!  Just because it’s always been this way doesn’t mean there can’t be a miracle.’

I say this passionately because He did this for me.  At a time when it appeared my life was over, God met me and encouraged me to embrace, by faith, the promises I hadn’t yet made mine.  Today, I can’t recognize my old life and the people who used to be in it!

 We must stay open to the expectation of God’s hand of blessing.  What we’ve never had – God can easily produce.  What has never been – can be – with a Father who finds it easy to make something out of nothing.

Lord, You know the places in my life where faith is difficult. I struggle to trust You in spite of everything You’ve already done.  But I will not lose heart.  Your power to maker a way is not in question.  Amen