PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: THE LORD OF THE DEEPER HEALING

By:  Ron Woodrum

     Everyone knows the name of Joni Erickson Tada.  Everyone is aware of her swimming accident that left her as a quadriplegic now for over 50 years.  Everyone knows that she has faithfully served the Lord; sang at Billy Graham crusades; Spoken at the Pastor’s Conference at Moody Bible Institute; Painted beautiful pictures with the brush in her mouth; and many have read her books that glorify the Lord Jesus Christ.  We are aware that recently she was diagnosed with cancer, and has been battling that with chemotherapy and radiation.  What you may not know is what her deep reflections of all these trials have been these many years.  She recently shared her testimony at Moody Church.  Her testimony was quite revealing.  It is our guest Perspective this morning.

As Joni was wheeled to the podium she read the story of Jesus healing the paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda in John 5.  As she read the words “this lame man had been paralyzed for 38 years” (she said, ” I wonder what he thinks of 46″-the conference was 5 years ago).  Then Joni began her message.  She said, “after my swimming accident that left me a quadriplegic, while I was still in the hospital, friends would come in and ask me what Scripture could they read for me.  I always had them read this passage.  I loved the part where He asked him, ‘do you want to get well?’…then in a display of His power Jesus commanded, ‘Get up and walk’, and he did!  When my friends read that passage I cannot tell you how many times I would strain my muscles, trying to make them move, and sing a hymn I had learned as a child, ‘Savior, Savior, hear my humble cry.  While on others thou art calling, do not pass me by’.  But I never got up out of that bed and walked!  It seemed back then that Jesus had indeed passed me by!  I was released from the hospital and went to live with my sister on her Maryland farm.  One morning while she was being my care-giver we heard that Kathryn Kuhlman, (the Benny Hinn of that day), was coming to Washington, DC. at the Washington Fulton Ballroom.  I had to go.  I wanted a good seat up front.  This was my chance at the Pool of Bethesda.  But we were escorted over to the wheel-chair section with a number of people with crutches, canes, walkers, and wheel chairs.  We all waited with great anticipation.  The lights dimmed.  A spotlight came on the stage, and out came Miss Kuhlman, in her long sweeping white gown, to a crescendo of organ music.  After some hymns and music, the spotlight moved to a far corner of the ballroom where there was something going on…people getting healed?  It appeared so!  We kept waiting for the spotlight to come over to the wheel chair section.  Please come over here!  I know we are the hard cases, but please come over here!  The spotlight never came.  Soon the ushers came to escort us out of the wheel chair section to the elevators so we would not clog the hallways as the crowds would be dismissed.  I listened to the organ music still play as I sat number 15 in a line of 35 disabled people to board the elevator.  I thought…’something is wrong with this picture.  What kind of Savior?  What kind of healer, what kind of deliverer would refuse the prayer of a paralytic?’  When I got home I soon felt this spirit of bitterness sweep over me.  No one could do anything right for me.  Jesus the healer felt so distant.  Yet even in the bitterness I could not but help sing…’abide with me, fast falls the eventide, when darkness deepens, Lord abide with me’. Somewhere in that darkness i cried out to God, ‘If I… If I can’t live this way, then Jesus you are going to have to do it for me!  I can’t do this quadriplegia. Please show me how to live’. 

     Of course, I was still interested in healing.  I still wanted to know what God’s word said about it.  One day, while reading Mark chapter one, I read how Jesus healed the sick and disabled til way past sunset.  The next morning the crowd returned.  They looked for Jesus but He could not be found.  When they found Him, He was at a solitary place.  They told him about the crowd that was so desperate for his physical healing.  In verse 38 Jesus said, ‘Let’s go somewhere else, to the nearby villages, where I can preach there because this is why I have come!’  That’s when it hit me!  It is not that Jesus did not care about all those disabled and sick people.  He did.  But that was not his only focus.  He came to preach the gospel.  A gospel that offered something deeper than physical healing.  He offered a healing that went to the deepest need of man-spiritual healing…being made completely whole! No wonder I was so depressed.  I had been coming to Jesus just to get my problems and paralysis fixed!  Jesus cares about suffering people.  He spent most of His time on earth relieving it.  But the same Gospel of Mark that told me of Jesus healing blind eyes told me of him telling some to gouge out the eye if it leads you into sin and away from Him.  I now got the picture.  Physical healing was always important to me, but to God my soul had always been the bigger deal.  I began searching for a deeper healing.  I began to pray Psalm 139 ”Search me oh God and see if there be some wicked way in me!”  Cleanse me from sin and set me free!  Every since then God has been answering my prayer for deeper healing!  So now you will hear me often quote from the Reformed Episcopal Church Book of Common Prayer which reads, ‘Almighty God, we have erred and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep, we have followed too much the devises and desires of our own hearts.  We have offended against Thy Holy Law, we have left undone those things we ought to have done, and have done the things we ought not to have done.  There is no health in us!’ I began to pray for that kind of spiritual health!

     Some time ago Ken and I had the chance to go to the Holy Land.  As we were going to the Old City of Jerusalem Ken pushed my chair down a cobble stone road, to the right was the Temple Mount, and to the left…to the left… was the Pool of Bethesda!  I said, ‘Oh Ken you don’t know how many times I have had a vision of being right here.  I leaned on the guard rail.  Ken had to go down to the cisterns to see if there was still any water that would fill it.  While I was left alone with my Savior, with tears running down my face, I prayed, ‘Oh Jesus, thank you, thank you for a no answer to my request for physical healing.  You knew what you were doing.  Your deeper healing has purged so much sin, so much selfishness, so much bitterness, I know I have a long way to go, but I am not the Joni I was yesterday, and I want to be the Joni you want me to be! I would not trade it for any amount of walking’.  That is the deeper healing.  That is the real healing.  So, if you need healing, and you see yourself maybe number 15 in a line of 35 people waiting for your problems to be fixed, and he doesn’t remove your physical suffering, look deeper.  Let God give you strength for each day.  Let Him heal you from the inside out…let Him transform you from glory to glory.  That is the deeper healing…and one day it will be complete in every way, not in just a temporary way.  Choose the deeper healing!”

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE:  “HELPING GOD PAINT HIS MASTERPIECE”

By:  Ron Woodrum

     The year was 1787.  A group of Baptist Clergymen were meeting to debate whether it is the responsibility and duty of Christians to spread the Gospel.  William Carey, after reading the sermons of Jonathan Edwards, and the Diary of David Brainerd, was feeling an overwhelming call to share the Gospel with those who desperately needed to meet the Savior.  He was trying to enlist others to join him in the Divine endeavor.  It was at that meeting, that a very hyper-Calvinist Baptist Clergy, by the name of John Collett Rylands, told William Carey, “Sit down young man, when God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without your help or mine!”  That statement did not dissuade William Carey and neither should it give us hesitation.  In Matthew 9 we read about Jesus weeping over the multitudes of lost and perishing people of His day.  He was visibly shaken and wept over them.  He then told his disciples to join Him in the activity of praying for, and persuading those very people to come to Him.  He issues the same challenge to us today.  What a privilege for us.  Followers of Jesus are co-laborers with Him in His ministry of Seeking and Saving those who are perishing!  But we must, as true followers of Him, possess the qualities that were in the nature of our Great God and Savior Jesus Christ.

John Ruskin, famous poet and art critic, once said that a great artist must possess three qualities: (1) An eye to see and appreciate the beauty of the scene that he desires to capture and catch on canvas.  (2) A heart to feel and register the beauty and the atmosphere of the scene (3) A hand to perform -to transfer to canvas what the eye has seen and the heart has felt.  Those same qualities were resident in our Savior and necessary to all who would follow and join Him in the work of taking broken pieces and building them into beautiful possibilities.  Jesus focused on those who needed Him.  He had an eye that identified them.  He never looked past them!  He focused on them.  The images He saw broke His heart!  The eyes that saw them soon filled with tears of compassion for them.  Jesus saw the blind men; Jesus saw the lepers; Jesus saw the deaf; the dumb; the paralytics.  He saw the hated publicans; he saw the prostitutes; He saw the woman at the well; He saw the demoniac at Gadara; He saw Zacchaeus in the Sycamore tree; He saw the woman with the hemorrhage; He saw the Centurion weeping over his child that had died.  Someone has said, “Eyes that look are common-Eyes that See are rare!”  Jesus had eyes that saw.  Really saw!
But what Jesus focused on moved Him to feeling.  They broke His heart!  Matthew 9:36 says “When He saw the crowds-He had compassion on them!”  The word compassion means “to feel with”.  Their needs touched Him deeply. The disciples were known for being able to see the needs of people but not moved to compassion.  They could ignore the woman with the issue of blood.  Jesus said, “Who touched me”.  They were bothered by the “little Children” and wanted to keep them away from Jesus.  Jesus said, “Permit them to come to me, forbid them not!”  They wanted to send the multitudes away hungry, but Jesus said have them sit down, “we must feed them and meet their needs!”  That is our compassionate Savior!  A.W. Tozer said that the problem with not focusing on the desperate needs of others, and not feeling compassion for their needs is because we are too occupied with our own needs and happiness.  He called it “our irresponsible pursuit of happiness” that keeps us preoccupied with ourselves.  We would rather enjoy our own happiness than to be gripped by other people’s needs, hurts, and sorrows.  We never focus on them, so we never feel with them. Our Savior did both!  Someone has said that television and movies have had a deleterious effect on the emotions of our generation.  Constant familiarity with scenes of tragedy, horror, violence, and simulated emotion has made our emotions so superficial that it is difficult to feel anything deeply. We see terrible scenes, are shocked for a moment, then turn to the next program.  We have grown emotionally superficial, and that has spilled over into our spiritual lives!  Not Jesus.  A weeping God!  What a concept!  Tears streamed down His cheeks, as His heart broke for the very ones He would be crucified to save.

Jesus’ focus led to His feeling.  But His feeling led to His forming.  He in turn moved into action.  He had an eye to focus; a heart to feel; and a hand to form and perform a work that would transform lives.  Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan.  There was a victim in great need-perishing.  The priest saw the victim-but “passed by on the other side”.  The Levite too saw him, stopped and looked closer, but “passed by on the other side”.  But Jesus said, “The Samaritan” (and his enemies called Him a Samaritan-see John 8), had compassion, stopped and did all that was necessary to save the fallen one.  Then He told all of us to “go and do likewise”.  Without the eye to “focus”; the heart “to feel”; and the hand “to form, perform, and transform” we will not follow through.  Jesus told His disciples “to look on the fields” white and ready to harvest.  Then pray for laborers.  It is hard to pray for laborers and not be willing to join the workers who are involved in the good harvest.

The prophet Jeremiah talked about sinners lives being “vessels that are marred”.  But he emphasized that the Potter does not throw the broken marred clay away.  He is gifted at taking those broken, marred, fragile clay pots and transforming them into beautiful and useful vessels again by the touch of the Potter.  (See Jeremiah 17).  Paul picked up on this theme when He talked of Salvation in Ephesians 2:8-10.  In verses 8-9 he states, “For by grace ye have been saved, through faith, not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast”, But he doesn’t stop there.  Instead he says that those “saved by grace” are God’s “workmanship”.  That word is beautifully expressive.  It is the Greek word “poema”.  The word means a “piece of artwork”.  A poem; a sculpture; a picture; something created that reflects the nature and skill of its creator.  When our lives are formed, conformed, transformed by the hand of God we become His masterpieces.  Our new lives bring Him great glory.  As the heavens reflect the glory of God as His creation; so our transformed lives as “new creatures in Christ” bring Him glory.  C.S. Lewis understood this when he said that “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which if you saw now would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.  All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations…immortal horrors or everlasting splendors” (Weight of Glory).

If we have those three ingredients-eyes to focus; heart to feel; and hands to touch and form we can be co-laborers with our Savior in winning people to Him by the transforming Gospel.  Instead of listening to John Rylands tell us “God will do it without us”.  Let’s make ourselves available so that He can do it with us and through us.  Someone has said, “Without Him we can’t-Without us He won’t!”  The answer-We Can Do It Together!

Several years ago I heard Charles Swindoll tell the story of a mother who took her young child to hear Padereski, the famous Polish pianist that was performing at a black-tie affair.  She wanted her son to hear him perform so that he would be impressed with what he could become.  But he got weary of waiting and squirming restlessly in his seat.  While his mother was talking excitedly with the person seated to her other side-the boy disappeared.  Strangely drawn by the ebony concert grand sitting majestic and alone in the center of the stage-he made his way to it and sat down on the tufted leather stool, placed his small hands on the black and white keys and begin to play “chopsticks!”  The crowd reacted- “Get that boy away from there!”  “Where’s his mother?”  “Somebody stop him!”  Backstage Paderewski heard the uproar and the sound of the simple tune.  When he saw what was happening he hurriedly made his way to the stage, walked up behind the lad.  He reached his arms around him and began to improvise a countermelody.  As the two made music together the master pianist kept whispering “Don’t quit. Keep going”.  Together they made music that amazed the audience.  So with us!  With his touch together we can make a beautiful masterpiece!