Healed Twice

The healings recorded in the Gospels just fascinate me because they seem to travel to the depths of our pain and the roots of our fears.

This one account is in my brain this week. Every time I read it or think about it I get more out of it.

"Jesus said to him, 'If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.'

Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, 'Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!'

When Jesus saw that the people came running together, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it: 'Deaf and dumb spirit, I command you, come out of him and enter him no more!'

Then the spirit cried out, convulsed him greatly, and came out of him. And he became as one dead, so that many said, 'He is dead.'

But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose." - Mark 9:23-27 NKJV

Jesus dealt with this boy's issue in two parts but he also dealt with the father's issue in two parts.

If Jesus wasn't still standing there the boy would have never gotten up.

You can say what you want about the child's condition. The scriptures make the claim that this issue was spiritual and not medical at the root. People have medical conditions that seem like this. I'll go with what the Bible says and I dare not read into the scriptures and come at them from a so called 'modern' approach. Talk to some folks from India or Africa. This in happening right now with people. Children under spiritual attack.

That child was damaged from the first phase of this healing. Jesus needed to be there to lift up that child. He healed him twice. That happens to us also. We are healed from what happened to us. It is purged out of our life but then we need a lifting up into a new life.

Then there is the father. God addresses the root issue of his heart... his unbelief. Disappoint after disappoint after disappointment had done something to him. Barriers had been placed in his soul and the man had allowed those barriers to be erected. Now Jesus was here striding through the crowd with authority. Glowing hope and exuding absolute confidence. A window formed in that man's soul and he started to hope again. So much so that he spoke over top of the disciples who were doing what they thought was best and left his child and went to Jesus directly with the issue.

First God healed the man's hope.

But then the second healing came when the child became as one dead and was lifted up.

What must it have looked like to that father to see his child laying there? Dead... or so it seemed.

Jesus did what He did when He 'saw that the people came running together' so the whole crowd must have gasped as that father's life collapsed in that moment. How many times had that father burned himself in the fire getting his son... or dove into the water to rescue his boy only to have him die now that hope had been revived?

But, Then just as it was all falling apart Jesus took the child's hand and the child arose. The child was healed but the father was healed also. His years of struggling with the impossible ended in a death and a new life began with a resurrection.

We hate impossible problems. We fight against them. We surrender to them. We use them as an excuse for self indulgence and lose our power with God. We answer them with renewed commitments to greater discipline.

They will always be present in a life of faith.

We want deliverance from the impossible problem but God wants us to become available so that the impossible problem can be used to deliver us from our old identity. Then we can be lifted up into the new person God has already made us to be.

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