Help My Unbelief: Asking Jesus for Healing

Like when you think back to your own sort of life, your own faith, maybe at one point, sort of the idea of God was he was kinda like Santa Claus. You know, naughty and nice and rewarding those people who did sort of what they're supposed to do or maybe he was more like a cop as you got a little bit older. Like, he might bust me for whatever stuff I'm doing. And then you start getting these other words that kind of intersect with the idea of faith. Things like the word savior and you're like, who needs a savior anyways? I just need to work harder or whatever else I might have come across with that idea. You start asking questions, what do I need from God? And then you start asking the more important question maybe perhaps is what is God requiring of me? [00:26:05] (31 seconds)  #ReimaginingGod

We start asking questions about when we are at one stage of our life. We ask questions about truth and beauty and about pain. And some of those answers we got early on in our life, they no longer make sense anymore. And when we don't understand something, we we we kind of there's a question we can't answer but we still demand all the time because we need things to make sense to us even when they don't mean to make sense to us. And the question you and I will constantly run into over and over again for the rest of our lives because things don't always make sense is why? Why? Why? Because all of us, we believe we're entitled to understand everything. Like, where there's has to be a reason. We're owed an explanation and maybe at some point in your life, you encountered a thing that was incredibly trying, a really difficult moment. [00:26:36] (48 seconds)  #WhyDoWeAsk

Somewhere where there was clearly no explanation and someone said to you, because they didn't have an explanation and they thought it would help you, they just said, well, everything happens for a reason. They thought they were doing you a favor but it just felt more empty because it assumes that there was a good enough or big enough reason to justify whatever unspeakable pain you were in in that moment. Well, must have happened for a reason. But some stuff, it turns out, just doesn't make sense. I mean, some of the best stuff, some of the worst stuff. Think about the things that we did for love, things that we do still for love, things that we are still the amount of vulnerability, the places we put ourselves in to be loved. And we start thinking about those other questions about that don't make sense about why why God? Where the places where God didn't did intervene in our lives and where he didn't intervene in someone else's or vice versa. [00:27:24] (50 seconds)  #SomeThingsDontMakeSense

Where God showed up and where he didn't show up and we're like, wait a second. Why? Why? Why? Like I said, it turns out some stuff just doesn't make sense. Here's the bible on the subject. Isaiah 55 famously verse eight. For my thoughts are not your thoughts neither are are your ways my ways declares the lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. My ways are not your ways, which means no matter even if I gave you an explanation, you still wouldn't understand them. That's what God says. One area that makes probably the least sense in the entire Bible as we come across it over and over again is the subject of healing because it lacks the appearance of logic and reasoning. Like, even to people in the in the times of the Bible, for a lot of us, we look at the bible and we go, well, it made sense to them back then because they don't have all the kind of modern stuff that we got. We understand things. They didn't understand stuff. And so it made some but when we look at the bible over and over again, what it seems the one theme that seems to start to show up over and over again is that suffering makes more sense than healing does. [00:28:14] (61 seconds)  #DivineMystery

You know, for a lot of us, we have an understanding, a belief, or an understand like a kind of a a way of being where we kind of go, it makes sense to pray for people who are hurting but just doesn't make any sense to expect them to get better. It's okay to pray for hurting people but not to expect God to heal them. That's how a lot of us live. But this is a vital part of Jesus' ministry. In fact, throughout Jesus' ministry, he's doing something new of which healing is kinda pointing at this particular idea, and none of it makes sense. It just doesn't make sense. [00:30:47] (37 seconds)  #ExpectHealing

This isn't a son who's worthy of marriage. People would not have wanted to be met with him at all. It's a person who must be by act by by sort of attribution by dotted line. His family must be cursed because of something they did in previous generations. And in every case, wherever this person would go, he would have been sort of marked as a shameful person as if it wasn't enough to already suffer. There's this desperate dad and a hurting kid and the people are arguing and you can just imagine the dad going, debate whatever it is you gotta debate later. All the speculation and all the reasons and everything, maybe people tried to give this guy a reason. Hey, here's why your son suffered. Do know why it is? Everything happens for a reason. He tried to give the reason why. What reason would be good enough for that? Keep on reading. [00:34:08] (43 seconds)  #ShameAndSuffering

So I looked at the disciples. I came to them and I asked them to do it. The disciples tried. I've been trying everything I can possibly do because I love my son. I've done everything I could possibly do. I asked the disciples to do it and they failed and presumably these people would have had some kind of success elsewhere because they tried like we got this and it wasn't working. Jesus then looks at the disciples. You unbelieving generation, he says. How long shall I stay with you? How long should I put up with you? Now, initially, when you have this idea, he's speaking probably most likely to the disciples, but he begins to expand it a little bit, it seems like. The word unbelieving here, it's an interesting word. It doesn't just mean, like, thoughtful skepticism. Like, hey, you're kinda rethinking some things. It it's more probably accurately translated as, like, refusing to recognize god's work and refusing to join Jesus in it. That's what he's saying. [00:34:57] (49 seconds)  #ConfrontingUnbelief

God's on the move. And somehow or another, you, disciples, and now expanding to the rest of the group, you're missing out on it. You teachers of the law, you crowd, the disciples, all of you guys are missing out on it, and you're refusing to join Jesus during me and what's happening here. Here we go. Keep on reading. Bring the boy to me, Jesus says. That says 20 on there, it should say 19. Anyway, bring the boy to me. So they brought him. And when the despair saw Jesus, it immediately threw at the boy into a convulsion, he fell to the ground and rolled around foaming at the mouth. Jesus asked the boy's father, how long has he been like this? How long has he been in this particular condition? From childhood, he answered. [00:35:45] (38 seconds)  #JesusOnTheMove