Good morning!

            Each of us has at one time or another asked the Lord for healing or a financial blessing. When the healing or financial blessing does not occur, people tend to walk away believing they had been m. Have you ever wondered how the Lord heals our land and/or our lives? Does it mean, today you are sick and tomorrow you are well again? If we are praying for a financial blessing, does the Lord open His checking account and fill your account? In an online article, the writer talks about the seven unrealistic expectations Christians should forget immediately (Christian Living) among them is, “misunderstanding scripture” by over-applying it or taking it out of context. Realistically, healing and restoration always require the petitioner to put forth effort through obedience and faithfulness whether the request is physical or spiritual healing (Phillipians 2:1-12).

I was talking with a fellow sailor 40 years ago about Jesus Christ and what He had done in my life. The man resolutely refused to talk about Jesus because he felt that Jesus had failed him. Ten years earlier when his marriage was on the rocks, this man and his now ex-wife made Jesus No. 1 in their lives for 30 days with the agreement if Jesus did not heal our marriage, they would walk away and never mention that name again; unfortunately, the marriage dissolved. Does this mean that the Lord had no plans to heal their marriage and wanted it to fail? The simple and most direct answer is, “Yes the Lord wanted to heal the marriage, but it would require work on behalf of both parties.” It would be nice if all we had to do was ask Jesus to heal our brokenness and, boom, and the next morning we woke up healed. However, we would end up in the same condition we were in before we met Jesus and, sometimes, worse (Hebrews 6:4-6).

My encouragement for you today is that you seek to grow in the Lord and be obedient to what the Lord is asking you to do. Your journey will always be froth with troubles, failures, and setbacks but, tripping over your two feet is not the end of the journey, those failures are stepping stones to Higher ground (Hurnard, 1993).

I.H.S.

MK