Last night my life group (a group of families from church that meet once a week to share our lives) prayed for my back. For those of you that don’t know, my back has been giving me so many problems. It has given me pain, consistent migraines and made me unable to move for days on end. I have prayed for healing before for others, sometimes it has worked, but more often it has not. I don’t know though, having someone lay hands on me and pray was a really unique experience for me. My friend put his hand on my right shoulder, unknown to him, that is the side that is giving me most of my issues. And he prayed. He prayed for healing in the name of Jesus. It was so crazy that as he was praying, I could feel my back start to realign. Now don’t get me wrong, I have no idea if I am “healed”. As soon as he was finished praying for me, I sat up and my upper back (again the place giving me so many issues) popped about 10 times. The muscles surrounding it are still really sore this morning and my head is still hurting, but my upper back almost never “pops” on its own, that many times, usually if it does, it is a small pop here or there, but this was a large pop, and multiple. Again, I don’t know if God has officially healed me, how amazing would it be if He did? It made me think back to the days where Jesus was healing people. Lets just imagine for a moment…
(Story from Acts 3) As a child, you couldn’t run with the other children, your legs wouldn’t allow you to stand, let alone run. Your legs would hurt you all the time, adjusting your whole life around your legs. Your parents had to adjust their lives and try to make life work for you. You just couldn’t move them. All you ever wanted to do was to be normal, you wanted to be able to walk down the street and not have to be carried, you wanted to be able to contribute to your family, talk to someone without the fear of them judging you. But you never could, because your legs were paralyzed. You couldn’t be “normal” because you weren’t born “normal”. To eat, you had to beg, to beg, you had to rely on others to carry you to the temple gate. You couldn’t get there on your own. You are there, feeling sorry for yourself when two men walk up. They look familiar; you put your best pathetic face on and ask them for money. They respond and you give them your attention knowing that you are going to get money. That money might feed you for a day. Then they say, "I don't have any silver or gold for you. But I'll give you what I have. In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, get up and walk!" (Acts 3:6) He grabs you by the hand and you feel something, for the first time in your legs. You have never felt this before, you feel a strength, the muscles forming, the bones moving. The man pulls you up to your feet, you are hesitant at first because people have tried to help you before, but you find that you don’t even need them. Your legs and feet have become strong. You are able to stand on your own, and not only that- you are able to walk, leap, run! You felt the miracle, you experienced it, it is real. You start “walking and leaping” (Acts 3:8). No one had to teach you to walk as you watched babies have to learn. No physical therapy to rebuild your muscles or your strength was needed. You had this life changing experience, you have been healed!
We may not see drastic healings take place now a days. We may not see people standing up from their death beads, or walking out of the grave like Lazarus. Although those miracles can still happen in the name of Jesus, the miracles today are usually shown in different ways. It could be a diagnosis before something escalates to too far, someone beating cancer, someone’s leg healing when they say that it wont happen, getting pregnant when they told you it was going to be hard or impossible… the list can go on and on.
This story isn’t dead though. We were all lame once. We all didn’t have working legs and had to rely on others to take us to the gate to beg for our lives. We all had sin that encompassed us and made us not be able to live the life we are meant to live. But then we have Jesus come in and our lives change. We go from the lame sinner on the mat begging for our lives to someone that has a transformed life. We went from destitute and destruction to divinity and delight. We were transformed from the lame person to the loved person. When we asked Jesus into our lives, we were taken from helpless to hopeful. The question is, what are we going to do with that? Are we going to forget that we all were that lame man begging and that we are miraculously healed? Do we forget what it was like to be lame and take the fact that we can walk again for granted? Do we just assume that now that we can “walk” that our lives should be normal?
Do you think that the lame man that was able to walk after YEARS of suffering was ever normal? Do you think that he settled into a normal life? Do you think that as soon as he left there, he went and got a job and never spoke of the fact that his legs didn’t work, but now they miraculously do? I don’t- he went walking and leaping and praising God. He followed them into the temple and praised God. 5 years down the road, I think that it affected his life forever, 10 years, 20 years down the road, I bet he was still telling his story. I am sure that the story was a party favorite, one that was never far from his lips.
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