healing encounters
Hello, dear friend! How is life going for you? Yes, I want to know all about your job, your loved ones, your thoughts on the state of the world and our country. But really, how are YOU? Perhaps I am really wanting to know what it is like to be you. What causes you to feel joy? What causes you to feel fear? When do you get excited? When are you bored and just going through the motions? I want to know these things for a couple of reasons: 1) I am interested in hearing about you and want to know how to care for and pray for you, and 2) selfishly, I may want insight into MY life by hearing about yours. For us to find a common struggle and bear one another’s burdens would be great. Then I would, at the very least, not feel so alone.
Dare I ask how your relationship with God is going? I don’t want to intrude, but see, I am often not sure what I am doing with Him. There is always some new approach in some new book all my church friends are talking about, but it is so hard to keep retooling how I think about God.
Did you grow up in a church? What did they teach you there? At mine they taught me to accept Jesus into my heart so I don’t go to the bad place when I die. They taught me to be a good boy/man. Drinking, smoking, and cussing were to be avoided at all costs. It was good to do extra good things, like mission trips and caroling at the old folks’ home at Christmas, but generally good works were optional for the really good Christians. All sins were already forgiven so we were instructed not to worry too much about it when we were bad. Well, except for sexual sins; these were a big deal. Oh yeah, and listening to secular music.
I don’t know what your faith looks like now, but I know I often revert to some of these ideas about life with Christ. But sometimes I get so tired of figuring it all out on my own and doing all the heavy lifting myself. You don’t know my story very well, but I was given a lot of emotional responsibility at a very young age, so seeing what needs to be done and just doing it comes pretty naturally to me. However, at some point, I just want God to see me, delight in me, and hold me in His arms. I have read some things in Scripture that indicate He can do just that, but boy is that hard to believe!
Yes, I’ve known from a very young age that Jesus loves me. What I have struggled with is how He tangibly does this, and, perhaps more importantly, how I can receive His love. I feel like the invalid in John 5 who sat at the Pool of Bethesda for 38 years without ever touching its healing water.
In the painting by Carl Bloch, Christ Healing the Sick at Bethesda (1883), Jesus approaches the invalid and lifts the blanket covering him. It’s clear that Jesus is seeking the man out, not the other way around. The man had likely given up on ever being healed. But despite the man’s cynicism, Jesus comes to him and heals him in a way the man could not have imagined by saying “Take up your mat and walk!” And he did this without using the “essential” healing waters nearby! Just as the invalid plotted time and time again how to get down to the water, for years I have strategized in my own strength what I need to DO to know the love of God. For so long I have been so close to a source of healing but have not been able to experience it fully.
I’m still learning, dear friend, to sit and wait. It is so scary. I often wonder, What if no one comes? When the fear hits me that no one is coming to take care of me, I frequently turn to other distractions, because I can make that temporary pleasure happen without anyone’s help. But I wonder what would happen if I just watched and waited. Would He seek me out and come to nurture and care for me? We have a whole host of witnesses, scriptural and otherwise, that would say Yes! I pray He teaches me to wait well so I may see just HOW He does actually love and care for me. I will pray this for you, too, my friend.
Ben is honored to sit with men and women in the midst of the inevitable and unavoidable struggles of life. Prior to coming to Barnabas, Ben counseled at the Oviedo Counseling Clinic in Florida. He has been trained to walk with people through many types of struggles but finds himself regularly working with couples, men dealing with sexual issues, men and women dealing with interpersonal and relational struggles, and those who deal with anxiety and depression.
