“We all need Him to heal what’s broken in us, but it requires pain, it means that we have to stop running, to stop just surviving and come face to face with the root of the infection and then let God heal it.” ~Cheyenne Hasty
“Mommy, mommy, no!! I don’t want to get blood work done! No! No! No!” I held my daughter in the chair, trying to calm her down, hoping the phlebotomist wouldn’t soon give up on waiting for her to cooperate. She had to have blood work done, and she wasn’t about to willingly offer her arm to be poked. She was terrified, hysterical, and almost to the point of hyperventilation. I kept trying to remind her that the pain wouldn’t last long, and that the longer she delayed, the longer she was prolonging the process. She had to have it done. There was no going around it, she had to go through the pain for a moment in order to get the results needed.
We can be like that, can’t we? We often do anything and everything to get away from dealing with our pain, to get away from dealing with the brokenness we carry. As humans, we’ve become so conditioned to suppress anything that addresses our past. We’ve so often been fed the lie of, “move on, get over it, you’re weak to look back, leave the past in the past, push forward.” Now, what I’m not saying is that we should consistently remain in a place of living in the past, but what I will shout from the rooftops is this: if we leave our broken pieces undealt with from the past, they WILL have their ruthless place in our future. As a close friend of mine often states in her holistic health practice, “if you treat all of someone’s topical health symptoms, but don’t address the very issue (the root) causing all the symptoms, then it’s all for nothing. You’re not dealing with the actual problem or addressing the main issue.” It’s the exact same with us as intimate human beings. When we choose to run from the very things that need uprooting and healing in our hearts, we only further damage ourselves in the process.
Additionally, in the process of avoiding our own pain, we so often cause harm to those closest to us as a result (even unknowingly at times). We all carry baggage and deep heart issues that have shaped the way we live, and respond, but more importantly, they’ve shaped the way we view God. As it turns out, the very pain we desire to run from is the very issue that’s inflicting more pain upon us.
God is a God who desires to know us intimately and fully (John 17:3). He already knows the deeply rooted sin inside of us, and the shattered pieces we don’t allow anyone else to see. He knows the parts of our lives that are heavy, agonizing, humiliating, and shameful. His desire isn’t to crush us by having us face the broken pieces of our past, but rather uproot and expose to us the very things causing our wrong views of Him, while also cleansing and healing us in the process.
In the Bible, in the book of John chapter 5:1-8, we’re told of a place where many people would go to a pool known as Bethesda to receive healing. The people were sick, blind, lame, paralyzed, and just waiting for an angel to go down and stir the water. Whoever was first to step into the water during this time was healed. Verse 5 tells us that there was a man there who had an infirmity for thirty-eight years. He sat there, day after day, year after year, hoping to be the first to step into this pool. This man had no hope of ever making it to the place he sought for healing. Then, verse 6 tells us, “When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, Do you want to be made well?”
Jesus sought this man out. He went to the very place where this man thought he could find healing, and revealed Himself as the only source of hope and healing. The man’s long awaited healing would never come by his own attempts, but through the love of a savior who came to make the blind see, the deaf hear, the diseased healed, and the lame walk. Jesus was the only answer to his infirmity.
Jesus is still the one and only answer to the helpless, sinless, and broken state we find ourselves in today. Wherever you find yourself today, whatever place you are in as you read this, can I ask you, “Do you want to be made well?”
“For whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” ~ Rom. 10:13