Before I get started I want to call your attention to a book, written by a highly educated and articulate dietician who also happens to be my daughter. The book, Grace, Food, and Everything in Between, by Aubrey Golbek, MS, RDN, applies many of the things I like to talk about to the area of food and dieting, and so much more. If you click on the title, it will take you to its location on Amazon, where you can purchase it. And, of course, I recommend that you do.
I know it’s been a long time since I have posted. And this has always been my beef with bloggers. Just when you get interested, they stop writing. I wasn’t going to be “that blogger.” But I do have an excuse. Some day, I will tell you about it. I do remember, even if you don’t, that I had promised to talk about the things that God has freely given you in my next post. The short answer is that God has given you “all things.” You have everything. So, maybe I should stop right there. And I am tempted to, because anything I add would risk qualifying it in a way that the Bible does not. But I hear you saying, “Hold on. If I have everything, how come I don’t have anything? Why am I not healed? Why am I still facing this insurmountable obstacle?” So, here goes.
First of all, I am never going to know why there is a gap between what the Bible says you have and what you can currently see. That is not for me to know. But, let’s look at the passages that I am referring to and see if we can glean anything that may be helpful for your situation.
“Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God” (1 Corinthians 2:12)
“He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32)
To summarize these two passages, we might say that it is the Spirit of God, who lives in us, Who reveals what He has given us. And all things are ours for the asking, because there is no gift that is greater than Jesus, and the Father has already given us Jesus. Once we understand that it is the Spirit who convinces us, not of our sinfulness, but of our righteousness (as a gift through Jesus), then it is possible to hear the Spirit when He reveals to us what we have because of righteousness. I know some of you are wondering what I am talking about. Look at the verses again and see if you can find a phrase that is common to both passages. It is “freely give!” I believe that if you can understand “freely give,” then you can freely receive. The best way I know to explain this is to tell you a story. It is the testimony of a man who was healed of a cancerous tumor visible for eight years on his chest. I saw this man give his testimony on Andrew Wommack’s web site, and you may still be able to find it there. The man, whose name is Mike, “claimed his healing” for those eight years, but things seemed only to get worse. Mike went to church with people who believed in healing, and some of them would bring “words from the Lord” about his situation from time to time, often telling him of things he might still need to do. This part is not in his written testimony, but I heard him say this, and I think it is key. At one point a man from his church came to his house with a “word from the Lord” about one final thing that he still needed to do before he could be healed. Mike had finally had enough of this and he lost his temper. He said, “I don’t need to do one more (expletive deleted!) thing.” At that moment Mike finally knew he was healed. The next time he looked at his tumor, it had started getting smaller. Within a month or so it was gone. I admit that I like this story because it is a little bit subversive (with the cursing and the losing of the temper at the guy with the word from the Lord). Mike’s own written testimony said that he had been trying to “earn” his healing, and I think, many times, well-meaning Christians confuse faith with trying to earn a reward, like a kid trying to behave so his mom will give him a treat at the grocery store. To “freely give” means to give without regard to merit.
Oopsie!
[I know I am getting into a controversial area, here. Most Christians believe God heals. There are a few “believers” out there who don’t believe in healing. Since I am not really trying to argue theology, I will ignore them for now, except to say that I don’t think I need to argue this point. Either people are getting healed or they are not. It looks to me like they are! And since there is no passage of scripture in the New Testament that says healing was a temporary gift from God, then the burden is on the naysayer to prove that what many people say has happened to them hasn’t really happened].
O.K. I’m going to wait a second to allow everyone who doesn’t believe in healing or miracles, or that God answers prayers for “things” to leave the room. Now, the rest of you, did you catch the key that I was talking about in Mike’s story? Let me tell you another story, and this time, maybe you will see it. I was watching a well known female Christian speaker give a talk about faith. She said that when she was a young Christian, she was “believing God” for a mink coat (see, I love this story. The whole idea of “believing God for a mink coat” is so irritating to so many people in so many ways). Her friend, who didn’t know what she was praying for, came by the house and said, “Look what the Lord gave me.” It was, you guessed it, a mink coat. As she pretended to be happy for her friend, she felt a surge of jealousy, and she started to recite in her mind all the ways that she was a better Christian than her friend and was more deserving of the coat. Can I quote Wonder Woman here? “It’s not about deserve. It’s about what you believe.” Do you think it was by chance that the wrong person ended up with the mink coat? And was it really the wrong person? This is what is offensive about the gospel: the idea that you can get something that you don’t deserve. And since about five minutes after Jesus ascended into heaven, people have been trying to turn the gospel into something you’ve got to deserve. You say, “That wasn’t about the gospel. That was about a mink coat!” But it was about the gospel. Nobody gets healed because they deserve it. Nobody receives anything from the Lord because they prayed hard. The Father does not have to be talked into blessing you. He is flooding you with unmerited favor right now. You say, “How do I get it to rain on me?” If I say, “faith,” you might get the wrong idea. Do you know that Christians often end up getting offended over talk of “unmerited favor.” Why? Because we think Jesus is just the way to get in the door, but the “Christian life,” once we’re in the door, is still a merit system. We still think it is about our behavior.
One more story. This one from the Bible. Do you know what is the first recorded healing in the Bible?
Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech and his wife and his maids, so that they bore children. (Genesis 20:17)
Where is Gerar?
To set the stage, Abimelech was King of Gerar. Abraham and his wife, Sarah, were staying in Gerar for a short period of time. Abraham had a beautiful wife, and he was afraid of getting killed over her. So he told a little lie. It wasn’t the first time he had told this lie. He told the king that Sarah was his sister. After all, she was his half-sister. So the king took Sarah into his harem. God came to Abimelech in a dream and said, “You are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken for she is married.” Now, from my human perspective, it seems unfair of God to be angry with Abimelech and not with Abraham. In fact, the king protests his own integrity in the matter. God’s response is essentially, “That’s why I didn’t let you touch her.” Then God says this to the king, and this is where it just doesn’t seem to line up with our current Christian thinking (aside from the harem and marrying your half-sister, and all):
“Now therefore, restore the man’s wife, for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you will live. But if you do not restore her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours.” (Genesis 20:7)
So, if Abraham is a prophet, as God tells us for the first time, this would not be a moment to put in his ministry brochure:
“The prophet Abraham is coming to our town this Sunday to hold a week of meetings. Last week in Gerar, he lied about his marriage and almost got the whole royal court killed. We can’t wait to see what God will do this week!”
In other words, Abraham, the father of faith, is not exactly showing us his good side (including his explanation to the king), when God calls him a prophet, and says, “He will pray for you.” What were they healed of when Abraham prayed? The inability to have children. What were Abraham and Sarah unable to do? Have children.
I think we miss a lot of important stuff in the Bible because we insert our own religious notions into the text. The Bible is the most studied book in history. People have devoted their ives to studying it. And why not, since God wrote it. It’s not so much that God is hiding things in the Bible, but truth is hiding in plain sight, because we read it with a “condemnation” filter. The vast majority of Bible experts have told us that the main focus of the Bible is to exhort us to keep the commandments so that we will be blessed (or trust Jesus, and then keep the commandments so you will blessed). But the Bible itself tells us that the only purpose of the commandments is to teach us that we cannot. Abraham was in the middle of a major fail, when God chose that moment to record the first healing. And there’s more.
In verse 18, it says that the Lord had closed the wombs of Abimelech’s household because of Sarah (note that the Bible never says that God had closed Sarah’s womb). In the very next verse, which is verse 1 of chapter 21:
“Then the LORD took note of Sarah as He had said, and the LORD did for Sarah as He had promised. 2So Sarah conceived and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the appointed time of which God had spoken to him.”
Abraham and Sarah, a childless couple, had been carrying around a promise from God that they would have many descendants, a promise made 25 years before. And God chose this moment to keep His promise.
Was God choosing to bless a lie? Is it just as the Apostle Paul’s accusers claimed:
“Let us do evil that good may come”? (Romans 3:8)
Or did God want Abraham to be conscious of his own failing? No. I don’t think that was it, either. Put yourself in Abraham’s place. How do you think Abraham felt when God came to his rescue at his weakest moment, lifted him up to a place of honor in the king’s eyes, and even made sure he carried away a chunk of the king’s wealth (Gen. 20:14-16). I think he felt loved by God. I think he started to understand grace. Wouldn’t you?