I’m just trying to be honest. One of my greatest challenges is the supernatural. It’s a challenge because the world of the bible seems filled with the miraculous and the world (and the body I live in) doesn’t. Why is this? A confident part of my Christian family has the answer. With utmost certainty, they explain my escalating pain as a satanic attack. They imply it has lingered for 14 years because of my deficient faith. They reject my assertion that God has withheld no good thing from me and that there is redemption in suffering. Our conversations are often brief.
Another, equally confident part of my Christian family believes miracles and the gifts of the Spirit are not functioning in this current dispensation. That there are miracles in scripture and not in life create no tension for them because miracles were for then, not for now. For them, all is as God intended it to be. God is sovereign and the world is functioning consistent with their expectation. If they were to intercede for me, they would pray, “Lord heal Rob, if it by Thy will.”
For many though, myself included, God is still perceived as willing and able to do miracles. I have decided the challenge I sense while considering the supernatural is the normal state of affairs of one being awakened. The key is how I relate to the challenge.
If you were to ask me, why do I have constant joint and back pain, I would have to say that I have no clue. If you were to ask me why am I not healed (if God still heals) I would again say, “I have no idea.” If my friends were of the listening type (not all of them are – certainty seems to impair listening), I might explain that I have been unwilling to view God as either obligated or indifferent to the healing I have requested. Pain and suffering are simply a mystery as is the unshakable confidence of my Christian family with their irreconcilable positions on suffering.
If you read MwM, you have recently heard me say, “the truth is in the tension.” For those being transformed nothing could be more natural than an inner tension between the temporal and the eternal. As we are endeavoring by faith to live in an invisible eternal kingdom, a collision with the visible and the temporary is inevitable.
The phrase that stands out to me most in today’s passage is, “Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” This was spoken by Elisha, a man who was practiced in seeing the bigger picture. While his attendant was seeing an overwhelming force and anticipating the worse, Elisha saw an even more overwhelming force and was at peace. Was this an isolated event recorded to preserve a miraculous moment in history? Or, was it recorded to give us a vision of an even more solid reality – one that is just beyond our natural view – one we are to acknowledge and relate to by faith?
One last question. We know Elisha asked for and received a double portion of Elijah’s anointing. As we consider that Christ is our life and that the Holy Spirit lives in us, what multiple (or fraction) of Elijah’s anointing do you think we have? My prayer this morning is the same as Elisha’s.
Father, I pray that You would open our eyes that we may see and that we might assess the battle with new eyes; that we would discover a new fearlessness and boldness growing within our hearts as we discover You, the Lord over all, dwelling within us. Help us also to repent of our dependencies on logic and reason as our primary weapon against the threats that gather around us. Help us to see the victory You have won and the overwhelming army you have assembled that surrounds us in even our most threatening circumstances. Amen.