Have you ever heard testimonies from\nfellow Christians about powerful healing experiences and secretly doubted or\njudged them? Or have you perhaps felt threatened by or resentful of the joy and\nfreedom they seem to possess? I admit that I have!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For every person who has a\npowerful healing story there are dozens of others who have been reaching out\nfor years and (it seems) experiencing no answer. Whether we have a physical\nailment, anxiety and depression, a repeated sinful habit, an addiction, or\nrelationship struggles, we can find ourselves suffering painfully for many\nyears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reaching out and not being attuned\nto, not being heard, or not being cared for is one of the most painful human\nexperiences. It can feel far safer to close ourselves off, to believe that\nhealing doesn\u2019t really happen, or to claim that it happened \u201cback then\u201d with\nJesus but no longer happens today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It doesn\u2019t help that plenty of us\nChristians are prone to exaggerate or embellish, to draw attention to ourselves,\nor to avoid facing our brokenness by hiding behind a healing story. Even when\nreal healing has happened, it can be tempting to tell a glamorous healing story\nthat turns a blind eye to our ongoing struggles and avoids facing the toilsome\nwork still ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Isn\u2019t it fascinating that\nsometimes God works powerful graces so swiftly and suddenly, and other times he\nseems to keep us waiting for SO long?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lurking in the background here is perhaps the greatest theological mystery, namely, the interplay between God\u2019s omnipotence and our human freedom. He is the all-powerful God AND he always honors the freedom he has given us. This means that the Holy Spirit works with amazing swiftness, but always in a way that respects and honors our human dignity, our desires, our receptivity, our readiness, and our freedom to choose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ambrose of Milan comments on this swiftness of the Holy Spirit, reflecting on Luke\u2019s Gospel account of the birth of Jesus. The angel Gabriel comes to Mary and declares her to be full of grace. He invites her to say \u201cyes\u201d and become the mother of Jesus. She freely and wholeheartedly surrenders. Immediately God\u2019s eternal Word becomes flesh in her womb, as the Holy Spirit rushes upon her in a new and special way. The result? She sets out in haste<\/em><\/strong> to the hill country. In the words of Ambrose, \u201cFilled with God, where would she hasten but to the heights? The Holy Spirit does not proceed by slow, laborious efforts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Holy Spirit acts with utmost swiftness. Whether impregnating the Virgin Mary, forgiving the sins of the Apostles on Easter Sunday, exorcising demons, healing the sick, or raising the dead, the Holy Spirit needs no time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is we who often need time. And\nGod honors us in that need!<\/p>\n\n\n\n I know for myself that my \u201cyes\u201d to God\u2019s invitation, my surrender to him, seems to come with strings attached. I have experienced many grace-filled moments in which I have given everything to him. Yet I keep discovering that I have secretly crossed my fingers behind my back. Somehow I have maintained a contingency plan, withholding some small parcel for myself just in case he doesn\u2019t come through for me. It reminds me so much of the scene in Lord of the Rings <\/em>in which Bilbo Baggins is called upon to surrender the highly corrupting Ring of Power, passing it to his nephew Frodo. Bilbo agrees and then gets up to leave the house \u2013 only to be confronted by the wizard Gandalf with the words, \u201cYou have still got the ring in your pocket.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like Bilbo, I can so often\nrespond, \u201cWell, so I have.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And God waits \u2013 not with disdain\nor disappointment, but with eternal kindness and patience. He desires me to\ndesire him. As a loving Father, he patiently watches me grow, without jumping\nin or coercing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Receptivity in freedom is not a \u201cone and done.\u201d Even for Jesus and Mary, who were so utterly receptive to the Father\u2019s will, so totally open to being led by the Holy Spirit, receiving was an ongoing reality. Mary was already \u201cfull of grace\u201d (Luke 1:28) when she said yes to God \u2013 receiving ever greater blessings. She pondered God\u2019s mysteries in her heart as she kept growing in her wisdom and understanding (Luke 2:19, 51). Luke twice tells us that Jesus himself grew in wisdom and in grace (Luke 2:40, 52).<\/p>\n\n\n\n To be truly human is to grow our whole life long. Our human existence is dynamic, not static. We are freely invited by God to become who we are. We are created in God\u2019s own image and likeness, and called to receive love freely and give love freely as we grow in communion with God and each other. We are intended to love and be loved with ever greater depth and fullness and fruitfulness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Desire and receptivity are key concepts here. We all have holy desires, sown in us by God the Father, who is always drawing us to himself (John 6:44) \u2013 often in undetected ways, but always in a manner that honors our freedom to say yes or no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As we well know, our good and holy\ndesires often get twisted and tangled up. Augustine of Hippo beautifully\ndescribed the experience in his Confessions<\/em>.\nIn our unloveliness we plunge ourselves into the lovely things God has created\n\u2013 things which cannot even exist without him. We run far from him even though\nhe is never far from us. And ever he pursues us, ever he invites us to open up\nand receive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Desire stretches our hearts. The more we receive and truly experience the living God, the more we thirst for him. Thirst for God is quite possibly the most painful human experience of all \u2013 and the one that keeps enticing us to stretch out our hearts in receptivity. The more we willingly thirst, the more we can receive him, and the more the Holy Spirit is then unleashed to rush upon us, to flood us, to possess us, and to lead us in haste to give freely and sacrificially to others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n God alone knows all the reasons why healing does or doesn\u2019t happen in any particular case. In some cases, we may never know in this lifetime. Often, however, what feels like a delay to us is actually a deep honoring of our desires, our receptivity, and our freedom. I believe that the single hardest human thing for many of us is to open up and receive. It is so hard to do what the Virgin Mary did in her fiat<\/em> \u2013 to receive love vulnerably, freely, and wholeheartedly, setting down all our well-crafted defenses, permitting God and others to be and to stay intimately close.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Quite often, we find ourselves in\na bind. One part of us deeply aches for connectedness and communion. We ache\nmore than anything else for someone to draw near, to see us, to hear us, to be\nintimately close to us. And then when a good and trustworthy person actually\ndoes that, we freak out and sabotage! I am astounded at the lightning speed\nwith which my defenses engage in situations like this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The great spiritual question is the question Jesus asked at the pool of Bethesda to the man who had been crippled for 38 years: \u201cDo you desire to be well?\u201d <\/em><\/strong>Of course we do! All of us desire to be well, to love and to be loved. God created us for these things and planted these desires in us. But many of us are also chained by our pride and self-reliance, our hiding and self-protection. We need Jesus to break those chains by the power of the Holy Spirit. He will eagerly do so, and with even greater swiftness that our defensive reactions \u2013 if and when we deeply desire it. Some of us need many years to grow in those desires and reach a point where the strength of our desire is greater than the strength of our defenses. The Holy Spirit will never force himself \u2013 but thankfully he only needs a tiny crack to enter. Faith the size of a mustard seed is enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many of us may need a long time and much breaking up of the hard soil before we are receptively willing to permit the Holy Spirit to act upon us and possess us. Likewise, after powerful moments of healing, the real work is only just beginning. Whether the healing received is physical, emotional, or spiritual (with spiritual healing always being the most important and most amazing), we are then invited in freedom to grow and mature and bear fruit. Only Jesus, through the anointing of the Holy Spirit, can liberate us. He breaks our chains, rolls away the stone that is blocking our self-created tomb, calls out forth, unbinds us and pulls off the masks that have obscured our vision. Once these obstacles are removed, his desire is for us to keep growing in our desires, to keep receiving and giving, and to bear fruit. He wants us to be true sharers in his love, his freedom, and his dignity. We are not robots of puppets. We are no longer slaves but are led by the Holy Spirit to live in the glorious freedom of the sons and daughters of God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Conversations about faith and good works so easily get sidetracked if we don\u2019t look at them in terms of Love. From start to finish, it is all God\u2019s work \u2013 starting with the very desires themselves that he sows in us, continuing with the period of preparation (as long as it takes) for receiving the gift, rushing ahead in powerful moments of healing and grace, sprouting forth with new life, proceeding with everyday moments of patient and laborious growth, and culiminating with superabundant fruitfulness. From start to finish, God honors our dignity and freedom, inviting us freely to grow and mature and bear fruit in love, as we become who we are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Have you ever heard testimonies from fellow Christians about powerful healing experiences and secretly doubted or judged them? Or have you perhaps felt threatened by or resentful of the joy and freedom they seem to possess? I admit that I have! For every person who has a powerful healing story there are dozens of others … <\/p>\n