As You Go

Have you ever felt stuck?

Are there times when things in your relationship with God feel stale, or even stagnant? There was a time when you knew Life and now things just feel a bit flat. At times like that we can just withdraw a bit, hunker down and hope that sometime soon God will do something. At the moment, with varying grades of lockdown and all the stress and uncertainty, things probably feel a bit flat for most of us. I certainly have had days where life seems a bit humdrum, frustrating and pointless. There is a phrase that comes to mind, the sort of thing you see on trite Christian tea towels (as if a tea towel could get saved 😂) ….. the phrase is “If God sees seems far away, guess who moved” Annoyingly true though! It’s not Him that’s gone quiet, it’s not Him that’s left me. He promised to never leave me. It’s not Him that’s moved away.

There’s little point then, in waiting for God to do something. There’s an answer to our problem to be found in some of the miracles of Jesus.

At the wedding at Cana, where Jesus was just a guest, the wine ran out (John Ch. 2). If you look closely, this is what happened. Jesus told the servants to fill six stone water jars with water. Then He said to the servants, “draw some (water) out and take it to the master of the banquet” [NIV]. It was still water when they drew it out – towards the end of verse 9 we are told that the servants drew water. However, when the master of the banquet tasted it, it was wine. It changed from water to wine as the servants went from the six big stone jars to the master.

In Matthew Ch 12, Jesus comes across a man with a shrivelled hand. He said to him “stretch out your hand”. Now the whole point is that the hand was shrivelled up, shrunken and curled in. That hand had never stretched out in its life. It couldn’t. If the man tried stretching it out the shrivelled-ness prevented it. He had long since given up trying to use it. But Jesus said stretch it. As the man tried, for the first time in years, life and ability flowed back into his hand. As he kept trying to stretch it, the hand was restored. The more he stretched, the more restored the hand became. This is important. He didn’t stretch out his hand because it had been healed. The hand was healed as he stretched it out.

In Luke Ch 17 Jesus met with ten people who had leprosy. They asked Him to heal them and His response was “go show yourselves to the priests” (Leprosy is highly infectious and the Priest had the job of excluding people from society if they had it, and re-admitting them if they were healed – Leviticus Ch 14). Luke tells us that as they went they were healed.

Last one. John Ch 4, near the end. A man comes to Jesus and asks for healing for his son who was some distance away in Capernaum. After some chat, Jesus told the man to go back home, and that his son would live. Whilst he was still on his way his servants came to tell him that the boy had recovered

Here’s the deal. If we want to see restoration, if we want an end to staleness or whatever it is, we need to start to move toward God. And as we go He will meet us.

You know when children play hide and seek, and the one hiding is so desperately impatient to be found. They can’t keep still or quiet. They let themselves be found. That is how God is describing Himself in these verses. As we start to look for Him again, or even as we start to look to go deeper with Him, as we go, He says “ I will be found by you” ‘I will make sure of that.