Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time there was a little boy. The boy was about six, and he had many hobbies. He loved to read, play outside, and play a game called tickle-monster with his dad and siblings.

One day, the boy was sitting at the kitchen table watching TV when his mother asked him if he was squinting. The little boy instinctively knew that squinting wasn’t good, so he said no. But his mother couldn’t be dissuaded and as she came closer it become clear: the little boy was squinting.

Soon after, the boy and his mother went to visit the optometrist.  Now, it’s important to know that the little boy didn’t want glasses. He wanted to be able to see out of his own two eyes. Surely there was some way his eyes could get better, wasn’t there?

Once he had gotten his glasses, which he believed made him look ugly, he went to his mother and asked how long it would take for his eyes to get better so he wouldn’t have to wear glasses anymore. She told him she wasn’t sure. 

Not comforted by this answer, the little boy continued to believe that his eyes could get better. After all, surely God wanted his eyes to get better, right?

Question #1: What would you tell the little boy?  Thought of an answer? Okay, let’s continue the story.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick… (Proverbs 13:12)

It was not long until the little boy wasn’t so little. In fact, he soon became a teenager.  He still wore glasses, although he’d been through many pairs by now.  For the first couple of years the boy had approached the yearly visit to the optometrist anxiously, hoping for the day when he’d receive the good news that his prescription was getting better, that he wouldn’t need glasses much longer. 

That day had never come.  As disappointment piled on disappointment, eventually the boy concluded that his eyes just weren’t getting better. Not one to beat a dead horse, the boy decided, with what little hope he had left, that God would just have to heal his eyes in one fell swoop.

So he prayed. And prayed. And prayed again then prayed s’more. And nothing changed. He didn’t get it. He’d been raised in the church, had heard good things about God.  He examined himself every time he prayed, looking for any unforgiveness that was corrupting his heart, preventing his healing.

Still nothing happened.

He didn’t understand. Jesus healed blind men in the Bible. There were conferences where people were being healed of cancer and other disabilities. He knew God could heal him, but he just couldn’t figure out why he wouldn’t. He just didn’t understand.

Question #2: What would you tell the boy now, the same thing or something else? Get and answer and let’s go the end of the story…

The boy is now a young man, fully immersed in the college life.  He’s been realizing that many of things he thought about God simply weren’t true.  God wasn’t mad at him for all the bad things he’d done, he loved the boy just as much as he loved Jesus.  In fact, the boy was learning that God not only had the ability to heal his eyes, but also wanted to heal them.

Even though some people teach that God causes sickness and suffering to come upon people to teach them a lesson, the young man was learning this wasn’t true. He discovered that sickness and disease were of the devil, and that God desired all men to be healed and made whole, to have life, and life more abundantly.

But despite all this wonderful news, the young man’s eyes still weren’t healed. So the young man began to think, to try to rationalize why he wasn’t healed. He knew what people had told him about God and healing but he also knew his experiences. After much consideration, the young man made a mistake. He decided to use his experiences to interpret the Bible. He decided that God was waiting for a particular moment in the future, something significant and noteworthy, and then the young man’s eyes would be healed.  After all, the only logical reason a God who wants people healed would delay healing is to glorify himself, right?

Wrong. But I’m getting ahead of myself...

My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh. (Proverbs 4:20-22)

One summer day, the young man read this scripture. And he reread it. “Attend to my words…incline thine ear unto my sayings…” These were things the young man had never done before. So he decided to look for more teaching on healing. And then, during his search, he happened upon this scripture:

…faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God (Romans 10:17)

Faith. The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (whatever that means).  But slowly, as the young man began to read his Bible (out loud so he could hear it) and learn about the principles of faith and healing he began to see a pattern.  When someone was healed in the Gospels, Jesus had a curious habit of saying things like, “your faith has made you well,” or “only believe.” 

Now the young man didn’t want to be overly presumptuous, but he had a hard time believe that the people in Bible times had more faith than he did.  After, all he was the Christian, not them.  But he couldn’t deny that they had something he didn’t. So he kept looking. And then one day, he found this.

Who his own self bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes you were healed. (1 Peter 2:24).

Past tense. “I am healed... I don’t feel very healed,” he thought to himself.  But perhaps therein lay the answer.

Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him. Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you. (Mark 11:23-24)

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2)

 

Some of you may have guessed it by now but this story isn’t fictional, it’s autobiographical.  I am that little boy, or rather that little boy grew up and became me. Why do I tell this story? I tell it because I’ve realized that how I feel and what I believe doesn’t always line up and I’ll bet anyone reading this can understand that. I’ve certainly prayed for things and wondered if God heard my prayers. But in Mark, Jesus doesn’t even entertain the idea of God not hearing a prayer. In fact, he says that the key to getting what you ask is believing that you already have it once you’ve asked for it. And herein lies the key to faith. Being assured that something that isn’t currently manifested in the material/physical realm (aka the world) is currently manifested in the spiritual realm and that the spiritual realm can affect the material realm.  

I know that statement is a little confusing so let’s think about it like this.

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped [expected] for, the conviction of things not seen…By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible…By faith even Sarah herself received ability to conceive, even beyond the proper time, since she considered Him faithful who had promised. Therefore there was born even of one man, and him as good as dead at that, as many descendants as the stars of heaven in number, and innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore.” Hebrews 11:1,3,11-12.

Faith is believing that what God says trumps what you see, hear, taste, smell, or touch.  It’s that simple.  You feel unrighteous? Well the Bible says you are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus (2 Cor. 5:21). You feel sick? God says you’re healed. Now here’s the catch and what I didn’t understand: what you believe impacts what you’ll see manifested in your life. I believed that I wasn’t healed and got what I believed. But God’s word says I am healed. Now some of you may be thinking, “Well, you were wearing glasses, how could you be healed?” Good question. It is indeed a fact that I wear glass to correct an astigmatism.  But God’s word is truth and the truth is greater than fact. God never denies the reality of the situation, but he also isn’t limited by it.  Remember Genesis 1:2-3

The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.

If God acted like we do most of the time, there would still be darkness over the face of the deep.  Thankfully, this is not the case. Instead, God invites us to see things from his perspective. God saw darkness but wanted light.  It was a fact that in the physical realm there was no light. But it’s equally a fact that after God spoke, there was light. Why? Because God’s word is his power, it’s the ultimate authority if the universe.  Everything obeys words and the Bible says out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. In our most unguarded moments, when the façade is down and we’re completely ourselves, we’ll always say what we truly believe. And we get it. In secular terms, we call it a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

As a Christian, I had to decide if I was going to treat God’s word as the authority of my life, or my senses. Because you see, we live in a world in contradiction to the word of God.  Acts 10:38 says “You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.”  Let’s look at 1 John 3:8 “The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil”.   Sickness, genetic defects, cancer, etc. are all works of the devil, products of sin. 

When Jesus died on the cross he freed us from the curse of sin. Isaiah 53:4-5 prophecies of this freedom saying, “Surely our griefs [sickness] He Himself bore, and our sorrows [pains] He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten [struck down] of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced [wounded] through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being [peace] fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed.”

This is great news!! So great I don’t know this wasn’t ever preached in church!  Isaiah is telling us that when Jesus died on the cross he not only took the punishment of our sin so we wouldn’t have to, but also took any all sickness and pain that we could ever experience so we could experience full healing and restoration.

I want you to go back and think about that little boy. What would you have told him when he asked if his eyes were going to get better? I know what I’d tell him. But it really doesn’t matter what any of us would tell him, because that time is long gone.  But rest assured, what he didn’t know then, he knows now. My eyes have been healed. I believe that. I believe it so much that I’m telling anyone who’ll read this, even though as I type this I’m wearing glasses. But I understand that I have 14 years of wrong believing to erase. Every day, as I meditate and focus on what God says about my situation instead of what my senses tell me, my mind is being renewed. Because what I understand now, that I didn’t understand in the past, is that belief always precedes manifestation. If God says I’m healed, then I’m healed. So I’ll agree with God that I’m healed.  I’ll confess it publicly and privately. And I’ll thank and praise God for it. As I’m faithful to attend (give precedence) to God’s words, as I listen to and speak his words (which build my faith), manifestation is inevitable. It’s a ticking time bomb that’s already been set off and no one can stop it.

Now, to conclude, I didn’t write all this solely to provide a glimpse behind the curtain of my life. I chose to share this experience because I understand that as we go through life on this earth situations are going to come up that cause us to make a choice. The choice is simple: Believe what God says or believe the world. And I don’t mean mentally affirm it. I mean believe it like you believe two plus two is four.  Stand on it even when everything you’re experiencing is screaming otherwise. Let God’s word and nothing else be the ultimate authority on what you believe.  Read it and listen to it, allow it to renew your mind of all faulty beliefs. It’s not an easy thing to do, but I’ll guarantee you that it’s worth it. After all, if God is for us, who can be against us?