In a lecture I heard last week, the speaker pointed out that Jesus healed the invalid at the pool in John chapter 5 when he (the invalid) did not know Who Jesus was, Who He is, nor did he have any faith in Him… Jesus healed him anyway. He only knew Jesus and confessed Him aloud after Jesus found him at the temple and identified Himself to the man.
One of the things I have been (wrongly) thinking, was that Jesus heals people only when they have faith and ask Him.
That simply is not true!!!!! Praise God for His Word that reveals His truth!
In my own story, I became bulimic (among many other issues/bondages!) when I was 16 years old. My life was consumed with food (literally!) — what I would eat, when I would eat, how I would hide it, how I would get rid of it (read: vomit it up), and how I would hide that, too. Pretty miserable time – and it lasted 24 years pretty much full-time. I had become an atheist at the same time — definitely a God-hater.
In the fall of 1999 as an internet novice, somehow (a God coincidence, perhaps?) I found online an eating disorders group that was fairly close to my home. I had tried everything to get help for my bulimia without any success. I began attending the group just before Thanksgiving. Part of the requirement for being in the group was that you had to share your entire story — and I believed to my core that anyone who knew my story, knew ME, would run screaming from the room never to return. I was given until Dec. 15 as grace, but then had to tell the whole messy story of my life. I really wanted help/freedom and so agreed to tell it then.
No one ran screaming from the room. WOW!!! They all instead loved on me, accepted me and we began a relationship as a group that lasted nearly 4 years. The lie I had been believing was brought to the light …. and miraculously I was completely healed on January 1, 2000. I was totally free of bulimia — no obsessive thoughts about food. No overeating and a complete shift to eating instead for the fuel of life… not the be all, end all of life that it had been.
I became a Christian January 10, 2010 — and only now do I realize that the miraculous healing was done entirely in the healing power of Jesus and His Holy Spirit. Just like the invalid, I did not know the God Who healed me, but in His goodness, grace and love, He reached out and touched me and healed me anyway.
Our Lord is our amazing, awesome and oh, so very loving Savior. He IS the God Who heals! Praising Him for His mercy and His grace.