Have you ever felt spiritually broken? Maybe you are feeling the pain of a broken promise or a broken relationship. Are you wondering, like I have in the past, if the damage will ever be mended?
Perhaps you and I are in a place of being misunderstood by people we are around. Or, worse yet, feeling ignored by God Himself.
Maybe we feel we are being judged by God and feeling His wrath in our bad decisions.
Perhaps you feel you have messed up so much that there is no more hope for you.
“Hope deferred, or paused, makes the heart grow weary and sick, but when the desire or answer comes, it is a tree of life.” Proverbs 13: 12.
Hope? Weariness and frustration? A sick heart coupled with our dreams which seem shattered? All true, but not permanent according to God and His Word for our lives.
This pain of unfulfilled longing is real and alive in your soul, but that is not the permanent condition.
Regardless of the type of our brokenness, perhaps you and I are at the point where we have been waiting for so long that we are beginning to doubt whether our circumstances will every change. This was the condition of one man in the Bible.
John 5: 1-8, “After this, there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades (a row of columns supporting a roof,)
(Quick note: For many years, archaeologists could not find this pool, so it was a point of criticism among skeptics questioning the historicity of Scripture, but late in the 19th century, this pool was discovered, exactly as described in this text.)
Verse 3, In these lay a multitude of invalids-blind, lame, and paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had. Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew he had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’
The sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me.”
Jesus said to him, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk.’ And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked.”
I often wonder as I put myself into the shoes of the crippled man. “How long must I wait for my miracle Lord?”
Good question.
Thirty-Eight years for that crippled man. That is 456 months. 1,976 weeks. 13, 832 days and a maximum of 331,968 hours, constantly crippled and hoping for his shot at the pool of healing.
That is NINETEEN MILLION, NINE HUNDRED EIGHTEEN THOUSAND AND EIGHTY MINUTES equals a total of 71,705,008,000 s2. All those seconds of suffering. If you can tell me what that means I will be impressed with your math skills.
Think about it. This crippled man who had his hopes up and his faith high in believing that that pool of healing waters would fix him permanently. He must have strived in his faith and physical strength to crawl to get his first shot at healing, but was denied for such a long time, never getting in first, but coming up short. Feeling like a failure, I am sure.
“How was he coping in his suffering?” We will never know. Except Jesus showed up.
To cope: A set of thoughts and behaviors people use to manage stressful situations and the emotions they cause. There are different types of coping mechanisms, such as problem-focused coping, which addresses the stressor directly, and emotion-focused coping, which manages the emotional distress. Effective coping strategies include practices like mindfulness, exercise, journaling, seeking social support, and taking a proactive, problem-solving approach to challenges.
Can you and I picture for a moment this poor crippled man at the Pool of Bethesda. Do you and I believe in those conditions and in that era, that any coping mechanisms would work?
Of course not. He did not have a pen and paper to journal on. His ability to deal with the emotional stress was overwhelming. No one to talk to. No Christian counselors available. No prescription drugs for his bi-polar diagnosis. No one and no hope.
Enter Jesus, the answer to his long-waited healing. This crippled man walked again.
When Jacob returned to Esau, and seeing the four hundred men that Esau had with him, he was in need for his own type of healing. Esau ran to meet him and embraced him affectionately and kissed him. Both were in tears. After being introduced to Jacob’s family, Esau asked, “And what were all the flocks and herds I met as I came?” Jacob replied, “They are gifts, my lord, to insure your goodwill.” “Brother, I have plenty Esau answered.” “Keep what you have.” “No please accept them Jacob said, for what a relief it is to see your friendly smile. It is like seeing the smile of God!”
Esau finally accepted the gifts. Genesis 33: 1,3-4, 8-11.
Jacob’s tremendous fear gave way to relief. The last time Jacob had seen Esau, Jacob was in fear for his life. With the passing of time, both of them had changed. When Jacob faced his brother, he found that there was still affection, even though they both remembered the pain.
Whether we are physically disabled or called an invalid, or we are emotionally crippled; simply put, is really the same. Pain is pain whether it is physical or mental or emotional. Yes, physical inabilities because of birth defects or accidents or trauma to the body is real and quite hard to deal with.
I should know. I was handicapped all my young life. All the way to prison and beyond. From birth to the day of my Salvation in Jesus Christ I was crippled in my addictions and my broken heart was the driving force behind all of the insanity I purposed.
I needed a pool like the crippled man needed. I needed and wanted desperately to fall into a pool of healing. I was in a desert without an oasis.
Like Esau, I never knew I needed to accept a gift, or gifts like were presented by his brother Jacob. These twin brothers were physically the same, but emotionally and spiritually different.
I desperately needed a drink from the well of Salvation, and my day came when I met Jesus. It is HIS living water that has sustained me now for the last 48 years since that glorious day in prison when I received Jesus as my Savior at my young age of 21.
Jesus did not just heal this man at the pool. He did not walk by him and heal him. He stopped and engaged him. He noticed him. He sought him out. He engages with him in a dialogue asking questions. Jesus listened to his plight.
Jesus Christ asks over 300 questions in the gospels alone. He is a question-asker. He is a listener. Why? Because Jesus already knows what is in the heart of a man. (John 2: 25.) He does not need to ask questions. Why would someone who already knows all the answers, ask over 300 questions?
Hearing is a skill by which we must practice better. First, hearing is loving. Jesus loves the man, and one of the best ways to love is to listen.
Secondly, hearing is revealing. By listening, Jesus was helping the man understand his own heart. He was drawing him out! Jesus knows what’s in the heart of a man, but sometimes man does not know what is in the heart of himself. Sometimes, Jesus asks us questions and listens to help us understand our own hearts!
This is part of the power of prayer, by the way. Often as God listens to us in prayer, He reveals our own hearts to us.
Thirdly, hearing is healing. Someone who is broken-hearted, might be able to be fixed without being heard, but they cannot truly be healed without being heard. Jesus was a carpenter and probably tightened a lot of loose pieces of wood in his day, using the techniques available to Him. I guarantee Jesus never asked those pieces of wood any questions or listened to them. But when Jesus walked up to this man who was suffering, He didn’t see another loose piece of wood that needed to be tightened. He saw a lost sheep that needed to be shepherded.
Jesus does not see us a problem that needs just a fixing. He sees us as individuals who need fostering. This is great news in our personal brokenness.
This “long-awaited healing” that we suffer (at times) to gain hope in, is responded to by Jesus in a personal, one-on-one way. Jesus does not quickly jump into fixing mode. He does not cut you off midway through your grieving and start dishing out advice. He does not fold his arms and frown at you as you explain your suffering, like, "Well, maybe if you stopped sinning, your life wouldn’t be so hard” or Jesus does not shift the topic of your pain, to HIS.
Jesus does not treat us like a piece of home-made furniture, leaving us alone to weather the rain without a protective varnish applied to our hearts.
According to the testimonies of the Gospels, Jesus is an eager listener. He actually cares about our pain. 1st Peter 5:7 says, “Cast all of your cares on Him because He cares for you.” Jesus is the most present presence you will ever meet. In fact, Jesus doesn’t only hear the words of our mouths, but He hears the cries of our hearts, even before we know how to put them into words. He is a comprehensive hearer-and that gives us hope in our suffering and tears. He knows how to wipe those tears off from our pillows at night, and they will never stain the pillowcases of our hearts.
Jesus is a comprehensive hearer and a comprehensive healer.
Jesus asked the crippled man, “Do you want to be healed?” Of course, Jesus knew he needed healing, but He wanted to get a response from the man he loved. He asked the question, to get an answer, not an excuse or a description of how he just could not get to the pool in time for his healing.
Jesus wants us to cry out to Him.
In times of our personal struggles, this assurance of knowing that “all things will work together for good,” does give us hope, despite the feeling of the 38 years of suffering. Remember the nineteen million plus minutes that crippled man suffered in his hopes that seemed fully deferred.
Our personal relationship with Jesus is just that. A relationship. Unlike a marriage, or a sibling relationship, only one party to the problem lies with us, not Jesus. He is the hope and healing to make the relationship work that He has with us, and our relationship we have with Him. It is a relationship like a two-way street we drive on, except He has no potholes or ditches to drive in or through. Let Jesus take the wheel.
“What shall I do now in my suffering?” Instead of “Why me God, how about, I-will-just-trust-You?”
Easier said than done when we suffer.
I wish I had the testimony of a young boy turning into a man of God who withstood his own pain and let-downs, and broken promises. I did not withstand anything when I was 20-33. It took 13 years of wilderness and my backslidden ways in sin, to come to my senses.
I was in a hog-trough eating pods like the prodigal son. The difference for me was I did not have a Godly father waiting on the porch at home, to kill the fatted calf, and put a robe on my shoulder, and a ring on my finger, and sandals on my feet. I did not get celebrated by my daddy and hear him say to Joe, “My son who was once lost is now found. He was dead, but now alive.”
My daddy was dead. Gone when I was 18. I had no one to help me. I had to learn the hard way. I am not comparing my suffering to you and your sufferings. Pain is pain. Self-inflicted wounds are hard to heal, and wounds and daggers to our heart make us bleed from the inside out when they do not come from our sins or bad decisions.
Our long-awaited healing begins when we surrender to the fact that not all situations in life turn out exactly how we wanted and prayed for. If God truly knows what is best for us, then our will must die to His will. Though I felt I was in God’s will at times, and was truly in it, I still fought the fiery darts from the evil one. It hurt because my armor was not on tightly, and even if it was on tightly, I suffered with the slings and arrows of life itself. I was hurt, and it seems at times, that hurt never heals.
It will. In time. The statement that “time heals all wounds” is not always just.
I can look back on my life and see clearly the way God has orchestrated all the pieces of this symphony. If the drums in our spirit make a good sound, it is because God is beating those drums. Like the real drums I played back in my youth, the scars and dings on the heads of the drums and the wood-sparked drum itself, bore witness to my hitting them repeatedly.
My cymbals had dings on them too. The drum sticks broke from time to time, but I kept going and beating the drums to get the sound out of them that became good. The strings on the violin must be replaced too and lubed up with the proper linseed oil or walnut oil to keep them in perfect condition.
God knows how to make the symphony sounds work together without His beating on the drums or smashing the cymbals so hard that they warp. He does it with class and sensitivity. I beat the physical drums I played on. He made my heartstrings, and my spiritual drums make the right sound over time, when I allowed Him to tune me in to His will.
All of this takes time. “OH, how I wish I could go back into my early twenties and learn what I know now.”
It is not to be.
I pray for you as you read this.
Your long-awaited healing is ever present with the Lord Jesus Christ. I know most Christians do not want to hear a scripture like Romans 8: 28 in the midst of their storm. Nevertheless, this scripture still stands the test of time. All things will work together for good, for those who love God, and are the called according to His purpose.
The question is, “Will be endure these hardships like a good soldier?” Can’t run from the battle or we will be labeled by the world as a “yellow belly.” Not a bird called a sapsucker.
We are human. Though the Spirit of the Lord Jesus dwells in us, does not keep us from feeling the sting of hurts in this life. I would to God that I could take away the pain of those I love. I see it. I feel it to a degree.
The only hope I know is that Jesus is there for those who hurt and grieve.
He is love and He will never stop loving us.
Quitting is not an option unless we want to go it alone.
I pray that “Holy Spirit” will engulf you, kiss you, hold you tight and never let you go. Jesus left the Holy Spirit here on earth for us to rely on in the midst of our sufferings.
He will never leave us or forsake us.
Jacob and Esau. Joseph and his brothers. King David and the Lord. God created in all of them a clean heart. He did renew a right spirit within David.
Give the Lord time to help you. He is the Master Healer. It may seem “long awaited.” Hold on tightly to His promises. He will do what His Word says it will do. He promises this to you and me. He never breaks a promise.
