Joni and Friends 13th September 2022 Daily Devotional, Tuesday Message
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TOPIC: Show Me How to Live!
How are we to deal with specific, repeated, heartfelt prayers that seem to go unanswered? We can allow ourselves to be “worn down” by our discouragement, leaving us dull and defeated, or we can focus our hope on Jesus alone, keeping the flame of faith bright and alive, believing that he is working day by day on our behalf and for our ultimate good.
Months after my injury at age 17, I kept waiting and waiting for “something supernatural” to stir in my life, bringing me a miraculous healing from my paralysis. Not long after I was released from the Maryland hospital, my sister Jay and I attended a Kathryn Kuhlman healing crusade in Washington D.C., at the Washington Hilton Ballroom.(Joni and Friends 13th September 2022)
The ushers escorted me to the wheelchair section, where I sat amongst dozens of other men and women in wheelchairs, with a variety of physical challenges. When the organ crescendoed, Kathryn Kuhlman swept out on stage in a spotlight, and everyone in our section got so excited. It seemed that people were getting healed around the auditorium, and I remember feeling like I was back at the pool of Bethesda, shouting, “Jesus, come over here! In the wheelchair section! Heal us, too!”
But then the meeting was over, we were escorted out, and I found myself in a long line of disappointed people on crutches and in wheelchairs, waiting at the elevators. What now? How could I go on like this? Why hadn’t he healed me? All too soon, a bitter root—an angry, negative spirit of complaining—began to get a grip on my heart. In the midst of all the sulks and bitterness, Christ the Healer seemed so far away, so distant from me.
Finally one night in the darkness I cried, “Oh God, I can’t live this way! Please…. If I’m not going to die, you’re just going to have to show me how to live!”
That was my first plea for help—a cry in the darkness for God’s peace and a sense of his purpose for my life. But it opened up much brighter days when my sister would come into the bedroom, open the drapes, set me up in the wheelchair, wheel me into the living room, and park my chair in front of a music stand, holding a big Bible. With a rubber-tipped stick in my mouth, I would sit there all day, flipping through the pages of the Bible this way and that, trying to make sense of it all.
The truth is God had heard my cry that night, and he began a supernatural process of healing that would be so very much deeper than physical healing, drawing me closer to himself in ways that would never have been possible otherwise. He may not always say “yes” to specific requests at specific times, but he will always say yes to the cry of a hungry heart that needs him more than anything else.(Joni and Friends 13th September 2022 Daily Devotional)
Beside Bethesda
I’m feeling terrible—I couldn’t feel worse!
Get me on my feet again. You promised, remember?
…My sad life’s dilapidated, a falling-down barn;
build me up again by your Word.
…I grasp and cling to whatever you tell me;
God, don’t let me down!
I’ll run the course you lay out for me
if you’ll just show me how.
- Psalm 119:25, 28, 31–32 (The Message)
Whatever your circumstances today, whatever the specific needs and concerns of your heart, pour them out before the Lord. He WILL answer, and the depth, wisdom, love, and timing he will show you in response to your cry for help will be so much more than you could have ever designed for yourself.
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