Saturday, March 24, 2012

Invalid

 "Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaiccalled Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.”  And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. " -John 5:2-9


 Invalid.

They were invalid.
I don’t remember catching that before.
They were INVALID.
That hit me SO hard.
Invalid.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes….often times, I feel like I’m invalid.
Because, I don’t know about you, but sometimes God wants me to do something and I feel like I can’t.
I’m too weak. I don’t have enough strength. I’m not mature enough. I’m too self-absorbed. I haven’t been in the prophetic atmosphere long enough.
I’m invalid.
 And it makes me want to scream and/or burst out into tears. I’ve had so many amazing prayers prayed over me about my destiny and my future…and I feel invalid. I’ve had so many amazing Spirit-filled occurrences and prophetic things happen over the past year that neither I nor anyone else truly knows how to make sense of…and I feel invalid. I’ve slipped up, stumbled, and downright fallen….and I feel invalid. I’ve been broken and built up walls around me with the shattered pieces…and I feel invalid.
Invalid.
Invalid.
INVALID!!!!
                When I read John 5 recently, that word made me almost start to cry. I went to bed thinking about how it had hit a tender spot in my heart as well as remembering past experiences with this passage and their significance to what I was dealing with now. I was rudely woken up at 7:50am to the fire alarm going off in my building. I ran out as fast as I could (which resulted in my being dressed in PJ shorts, a tshirt, rainboots&my winter coat). After about 10-15 minutes of standing outside we were allowed to go back inside. I dragged myself back towards my room. My thoughts were focused on getting back to my warm bed and making up those 15 minutes of lost sleep. As I reached for my doorknob, I noticed something that I hadn’t notice in my mad dash out the door. Someone had left a note on my door. It was a printed stationary piece of notepaper. On it read, “God made you as you are to use you as He planned.-J.C. Macauley “. I picked up the note and just stared at it. I was moved not only at the kindness of whoever left this on my door, but also by the fact of how perfectly timed this was. I put the note back on my door where I found it so I could easily see it (&because I was extremely tired and knew I might entirely forget its existence). I shook my head. Sometimes it (actually) scares me how well Jesus knows me.
That note reminded me how a few chapters later in John, Jesus meets another “invalid”. A blind man. Jesus says, “It was neither the sin of this man nor the sin of his parents that he was born blind but that the work of God might be displayed in His life.” Hm.
He sees past our brokenness. It’s not that He doesn’t see it at all. He sees the broknness. He sees why we view ourselves as invalid. But those reasons have all been redeemed through the cross. Sure, He sees it…but He chooses to see how He’s going to redeem and use those factors in our lives for the glory of God. I often forget that….to be honest, I actually forget it most of the time. And each time I remember it gets more and more liberating.


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