Strong

 There are some things I wish God would have promised. No, not the prosperity thing; by the time you hit your stride and are in your thirties, that sort of nonsense should have lost its luster. You come to realize that the juice isn’t worth the squeeze, and don’t focus on it so much. There are many unwanted things that come along with riches because they are like magnets drawn to them.

One of the worst is the fake friends you accumulate, who will stab you in the back, in the front, in the side, or wherever they can the instant they think they can no longer profit something from you. Another is the family you never knew you had that comes out of the woodwork, each with hands outstretched and a story that will bring you to tears faster than hitting your thumb with a ball peen hammer.

Then you have those looking for any excuse to slip, fall, and break a hip so they can sue you, the government wanting its pound of flesh, and the list goes on. So, no, it’s not the prosperity thing I wish the pulpit pimps were right about. What I do wish they were right about is the good health to everyone all the time. That’s what some of them insist that God promised, and I wouldn’t mind it in the least if it were so, but He didn’t, and some people get needlessly shipwrecked because it’s not happening for them.

Just so we don’t bury the lead, God never promised good health to everyone all the time. If this was the case, no one would ever die, grow old, become feeble, or start missing a step or two. Yes, I believe in healing, and I believe in the power of prayer, but nowhere in the Bible was it a blanket promise accessible to one and all at any time they felt the need to request it.

It becomes something fowl and off-putting when dollar amounts begin being attached to whether or not the gift of healing will flow through one’s television screen and make one walk again. Just as you can’t buy forgiveness or salvation, you cannot purchase healing. Whenever someone mentions money in the same breath as the gift of healing or accessing thereof, that’s your queue to run in the opposite direction.

 Don’t dawdle, don’t wait to hear them out, and don’t try to find the meat amidst the bones because there is none. If ever there was any meat, it has long gone to rot, and all you’re eating is maggots in a bun.

I understand that desperation, I do, and anyone that offers any semblance of hope seems like a lifeline, something to cling to and hope for, but we were never promised eternity, this side of eternity. This life is a fleeting thing, a breath, a whisper, a moment in the ocean of time, one we would do well to make good use of sooner rather than later.

Job 12:7-10, “But now ask the beasts, and they will teach you; And the birds of the air, and they will tell you; Or speak to the earth, and it will teach you; And the fish of the sea will explain to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this, in whose hands is the life of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind?”

If anything, we can take comfort in the full knowledge that the breath of all mankind is in His hands, and nothing is done without His knowledge.

There is a season for all things, and the third chapter of Ecclesiastes has a pretty good summation of them. Among these is a time to be born and a time to die. We can fight the reality of our mortality, or we can accept it. We can fight the reality that the older we get, the harder it gets to maintain the health we took for granted when we were younger but to cling to the notion that God promised perfect health in perpetuity is to believe something He never said.

Few things in life are worse than being paralyzed. Imagine not being able to walk, move your arms, or do anything for yourself, being wholly dependent on others for everything all the time. Such was the condition of the man whose friends lowered before Jesus by digging a hole through the roof of a home in Capernaum.

When Jesus saw the faith of the four men who had lowered the paralytic, He was moved, yet He did not say be thouest healed, and with a flourish of His robe, knock the man unconscious. Jesus beheld him and said, ‘son, your sins are forgiven you!’

But he was paralyzed! Surely the healing part would have been of paramount importance for his quality of life. Surely the ability to walk and bring a cup to his own lips with his own hands was more important than anything else. Couldn’t the forgiveness of sins wait until after he was healed?

Jesus frames the picture in such a way that it’s undeniable, which is of greater importance. Between being made whole and having one’s sins forgiven, the forgiveness of one’s sins trumps everything else.

It was only after doing the most important thing first that Jesus told the man to arise, take up his bed, and go home.

The onus must be on one’s spiritual health first because one’s spiritual health has eternal ramifications. We suffer in the flesh but for a season, but eternity is forever. That is something worth remembering every time life becomes less than ideal.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.