Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Jesus Heals an Official's Son (and my anxiety problem)

"When the man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death." John 4:47

The official in this story had to walk about a days journey to Cana from Capernaum to bring his problem to Jesus. Imagine the father wringing his hands and pacing back and forth for days while all attempts to bring his son out of the illness fall short. Now his son is at the point of death and he had no confidence that his son would last while he went to Jesus. He had to leave and possibly not be there for his son's final breath. Why did he leave? Because he knew that pacing back and forth and worrying wasn't really helping. No solution was actually being effected by the worrying father hovering over the doctor's (or medicine man's) shoulder as they checked on the boy. He left so he could bring Jesus into the situation. He left to call on the sympathetic High Priest to come and remedy the whole situation.

Oh, what a lesson there is for us here! I often quite literally pace in my room worrying about my future (my son). Will I graduate? Will I get a job?--and for the sake of this page loading faster I won't make the list any longer but trust me the list is long. So what do we do? We realize that we aren't helping the situation and go get Jesus! Friends do you feel the weight of anxiety and worry to the point where you can't even think straight and you say, "I need to get out of the house!"? Heed that inward call to get out of the house but make sure you go find Jesus while you're at it. Leave the whole ordeal which is out of your control anyways and go get your Lord. Go talk to Him and ask Him to fix it. Quite often the thing making us worry is the moment by moment realization that these things have never been and will never be in our control. So leave them. Leave them and go as far as you have to in order to get through to God. The father in this story was willing to take a one day walk while his son was dying. Are we willing to take and entire day and devote the matter to prayer? Physical location has never been the issue. Jesus healed the son from 30 miles away. Heart location is the issue. Bring your anxious heart out of the problem and pry its grip away for a moment and give it to Christ. I trust that you will find Jesus quite willing to deal with the issue and rebuke your unbelief much like he did the official. But upon returning home you will find it was exactly what your heart needed to hear. Friends, leave your house of worry and go find Christ in the secret place because only he can heal your son.