“Is anyone among you sick?” (James 5:14).
It’s amazing how important that you think you are, until you are rendered unable to do anything. I was sick recently and reduced to praying feeble prayers in a weakened condition. Throughout the illness, I was reminded of several things:
I am always dispensable.
He continues to do amazing things through others around me, despite any input whatsoever on my part.
I am not the one who is important, my thoughts, words, “wisdom” – it is His alone that matters. Even when I am “formless and void” with a very real death upon what I can do, He is still moving.
I was reminded that just as He gives breath, He can limit it as well and throughout it all, His works are good.
“It does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has the mercy” (Romans 9:16)
Faith grows when you have nothing else to do but believe.
Waiting in silence becomes a necessity rather than a struggle.
Nothing clamors for your time when you realize that your body literally can do nothing. It’s like an energy “fast”, purifying your spirit of impurities caused by self initiation.
Fenelon put it succinctly:
“Your only task is to bear the weaknesses of your body and mind. Strength is made perfect in weakness. You are only strong in Him when you are weak in yourself. Your weakness will be your strength if you accept it with a lowly heart. The point of trusting Him is not so that you can do great things to feel good about, but to trust Him from a place of deep weakness. Here is a way to know if you’ve actually trusted Him with something – you will not think about the matter any longer, nor will you feel a lack of peace.”
Discouragement in my life is rooted in self-effort.
That which is done in the Spirit will never result in discouragement. His vine cannot produce that fruit. I can trace the root of life’s disappointments to self-drive.
I am seeing more and more of how subjection to Him is the whole key to everything.
In prayer for instance, when I subject all and any answers to His ultimate will, I indeed can ask anything and find it will be done (either that or the desire will fade).
Rather than words, prayer becomes a state of being: a place where I stand under His authority.
Intercession is asking that the same state of submission occur in the lives of others.
He understands what each life needs to accomplish this shift in authority. I cannot. I am often blind to it in my own life. He alone knows the next step; I can only see the needed result.
That result is always the same: I need the attitude of Christ Himself.
His humility is a process… “becoming obedient“, not the state of being obedient. It is on the path along “becoming” that you die daily. As long as I am in this fleshly body, I must remain in the state of becoming as well.
Been sick lately? What did you learn?
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