He is frustrated and angry because his vision for his month is not going as planned. Caught in a whirlwind of emotions, he lays there. Counting the number of holes in the ceiling tiles above him he begins to process and explore his soul. What is he missing? Slowly he realizes, realizing that he needs to act. A fiery passion to leave his comfortable bed, filled with things that will cover up a deep wound with a superficial bandaid. A wound that just needs to breathe yet society tells him to he needs to cover it. Having the appearance of healing is better then actually healing. Instead ripping the bandaid off that was actually hurting him, he decides to run away from the zone of safety, pursuing heavenly rest in earthy activity.
Motivated to DO Gods work he puts on his shoes. Thoughts cross his head as he runs for the first time in months…
“Why is God not being clear? What am I doing wrong? What am I supposed to do?”
Coming into clear focus he sees a man in need. Behold….lying on the ground is man who is covered with a blanket of hopelessness. Broken and wreaked, laying there waiting for something, waiting for anything, waiting for me.
He runs back to his bed to collect the comfort food that once inhibited a unhealthy action, using it for a healthy introduction. With a sense of urgency, he sprints back to his fellow brother in need.
“Here’s a cookie for ya!…..Don’t worry it’s good” he said.
*eating one as well to prove it‘s editable*
A cloud of confusion started to form, he reaches out and places the cookie into the mans hand. Finally life, he reacts. Reacts with a sniff, as if he was trying to poison him with kindness.
The broken man needs no fixing by a cookie. Giving it back….
“Must be on a diet”, he whispers to himself
The one thing that was meant to bring connection brought the sense of not enough.
The cloud of confusion turned into a cloud of prayer. With the man speaking no words to him, he relies on the Holy Spirit to do all the talking between them.
During this, the broken man is looking to become the high man. Searching high and low for his medicine that will take all the pain away. Seeing this opportunity to redeem the whole cookie situation, he helps the man find his drugs. Just as his pain percolates out through drug abuse, he shoves the leaves into his mouth, allowing the chemicals to carry away the thoughts that consume his mind.
Provoking a smile in a situation that is anything but. Prayer continues to rain from his mouth over the man. Trying to communicate on a level based on trust in the Lord. Seizing the situation, laughs begin to echo in his ears, so he stops praying and starts seeking.
“Can this man speak? Does he hear me at all? Can he see that I am a friend?”
“Small small”, the laughing local says. “You are crazy to be speaking to him you fool”
The laughs subdue and after a lengthly goodbye, he prepares for tomorrow.
Before the sun even rises, he rises outta bed. Motivated and expecting things to happen. Like a tiger hunting for a miracle he prances on the opportunity to be the hands and feet. This time he brings water, something everyone needs regardless. Prayer cloud is in the forecast, praying for thirst and acceptance he makes his way to the battle ground.
Rejection. Absolute rejection. It’s a thing best served double time. Not even water will quench the thirst of hopelessness in his eyes.
Just then, “I am your friend” he proclaims to the man.
Slowly the man begins to reach for something, unable to see, or choosing not to see he reaches. His fingers crawl over a walking stick. Time freezes.
As the broken man turns into something far more. Taking just one swing at him, he misses. Able to see the stick cross his face just inches from making contact. Strangely there is an absence of something.
Fear.
Zero fear in his soul results in the broken man standing all the way up, looking directly into the eyes of the man who just wants to give some water and cookies. For that brief moment, confidence that he was protected, no enemy could ever penetrate his armor. Full of spiritual confidence he stands his ground.
The broken man sits back down and appears to calm down, instead grabbing for a cup. A cup filled with feces, piss and sh*t gets catapulted out and whips by him and onto the street. Close but no cigar.
A pair of laughing locals come up and see the man, the man who has just swong and flingged, both in the past few moments.
“I don’t recognize the language he is speaking”
“He is crazy you shouldn’t be talking to him, he is crazy in the head.” They both proclaim with broken English.
He begins to feel comfortable with the laughs. Often times laughter from the world just tells him he is onto something. Realizing that preparation leads to participation in the Lords work.
The days continue on, turning into a week of praying from a distance and walking by, persistently sneaking and leaving his water bottle and food near his bag that holds everything he owns.
Thats where this story ends, not necessarily happy or full of redemption. One day when he returns he no longer can see a broken man. Just a space that reeks of trials and troubles. It is a visual representation of struggling with no hope or no savior.
This story is a creative expression of an event in Myanmar I found myself in. It was in the midst of a really hard month. (It will end up being my 11th favorite month of the 11 month journey I am on). But I was struggling to find ministry, I remember leaving my bed craving to have some sort ministry. Having the fear taken out of a scary situation…I have learned a lot about what this looks like. I have learned that you can operate without fear if you prepare and practice. Prepare by realizing that you are called for this, its a divine privilege to DO ministry. It’s a privilege to get swong at and flingged at for the Lord. Your life is your ministry and everything you do, even off the clock can impact what your Ministry will look like. Practice! Stepping out in faith and wearing God on your sleeves because you know that he is the source of all healing. You are just required to show up. You cant pick and choose who you impact, you can only choose to be obedient. And with showing up it’s continual. Never give up when you first don’t see something. Would you show up tomorrow? When you get feces flung at you and a walking stick is inches away from taking off your nose, you still need to show up and they still need you to show up.
There is a great bible story in John 5 that talks about a healing at a pool. A man who was sick longer then most people lived at the time, 38 years in total he was struggling to find healing. He was in a building was a place for the disabled and paralyzed people to lie. This one person in the room full of hundreds find a stroke of luck when Jesus walks by. Jesus said six words that should have dramatically changed his future. “Do you want to get well?” The paralyzed man foolishly replies with an answer that makes zero sense, cause of zero faith. “I cant get into the pool because each time I do someone else jumps in ahead of me.”
How many times have we been asked a question by God like this and respond in the same foolish way?!
God didn’t ask to say why you aren’t healed He asked DO you wanna be healed? The question of rather or not God can do its not up for debate, its rather you have enough faith in Jesus and not the pool. The man had the ultimate healer right in front of him but still couldn’t see. Are we sometimes just as paralyzed as the man at the pool? We often forget how to say yes….yet we learn it in between 11-14 months based on studies. But that doesn’t transfer to our spiritual language, even after 38 years sometimes.
In between verses 8 and 9 Jesus provides the healing. Telling the previously paralyzed man to “get up and walk”. And walk he did, he walked raway not even realizing that it was Jesus Christ who healed him. Jesus then found him later on and told him to stop sinning or something worst might happen to him. How powerful is that! The miracle happened in between the verses. The man waited 38 years….what if he had given up after 37? The result would have been the same if he never tired at all. Healing would of not taken place. Also, outta the hundreds of broken people near the pool, only one got healed. All of them were so focused on the pool for healing without realizing that Jesus Christ is in the building!! So…
Will you be looking at the pool or at Jesus?
Are you gonna hear the laughs or the cries of someone in need?
Are you okay with not getting results when you think you should?
Are you okay with letting go of fear and grabbing hold of authority?
Loving like God loves is a tough cookie to crumble, but fourtunatly God wants and desires us to love one another as He has loved us. We are able to do so because “We love because He first loved us” (1st John 4;19). We need to be able to act in faith and not operate out of a place of fear. I mean come on.
Fear would have not returned that next day.
Because
Faith stays when sh*t flies.
So I wanna ask you, would you come back tomorrow?
Knowing that even the next day, results may not come. You will get feces thrown at you, laughed at for loving the unloveable, and be attacked but not broken down by the enemy. Show up…not because they need you to, but because God wants you to.
