Raw (Chapter 3)

It was one of those moments. An average day with an average routine. Nothing seemingly out of the ordinary. But then-as quick and as powerful as a bolt of lightening-it hit. So powerful it literally knocks the breath out of you for a moment. But so fast you have to stop and ask yourself if that really just did indeed happen. And it did. Not only did it happen, but that split second-no!-half a second-was enough to alter your entire world. Your entire faith. 

The day before I had been talking back and forth with my friend Annie over e-mail. We'd been discussing some things I struggle with and she'd told me to take those things and sort of suspend them in air and walk around the other side of them and look at it from another angle or two. I was processing that and asking the Lord to reveal truth to me. And at the end of the night, I set it aside and sort of out of my mind. 

The next day, however, I worked very early and was supposed to be traveling a bit of a distance to visit a ministry that specializes in prayers of healing. My friend Jessie knows the people who work there and I'm not getting help or answers to my health problems with doctors, so I agreed to try this. Unfortunately, my car just keeps breaking down and i had no way of traveling even 2 hours away. It was suggested I rent a car for the occasion, and as I drove home from my early opening shift I debated that possibility. As I wrestled with it, I thought to myself, "All that trouble just to be prayed for. Is it worth all that money just for some prayer? Isn't that a bit extreme?" That's when it hit. Like lightening. 

It felt like I was standing still and the entire world began to spin around me. I realized almost before the thought finished what I was thinking. What I actually believe. Or, rather, what I DON'T believe. Just prayer. Just. Prayer. J-U-S-T prayer?!?! What the heck.....??? In a flash, I realized that I do not in any way have the faith I once thought myself to. I've been spending time and money at appointment after appointment with doctors of western medicine who are actually making my problem WORSE and have not spent any time or desperation seeking out those with the training and understanding of the healing power of prayer as my answer. I have actually allowed myself to believe that doctors can do more
for me, that prayer won't actually work. 

As I looked through the gospels yesterday and today, I watched Jesus heal the sick. Deliver the possessed and oppressed. Destroy death and disease. Redeem any variety of things. Completely shatter the world that the religious leaders of the day had built. And then turn around and give His followers complete and utter authority to do the same. He even makes the statement that they will do all this AND MORE-because the Holy Spirit will live within them. And I am questioning whether the act of coming before Christ's throne will do much for me. Who am I kidding? Where have I gone wrong? What voices am I listening to?! The church's. My upbringing. This culture. 
As I realize and plead with Jesus to teach me how to live in the full authority He's given me, I ask you-where's your faith at? With your big stuff? With the small details of your day? Are you actively living in the authority and power that Jesus himself handed over to you before He left this Earth? Are you in tune to the Holy Spirit's movement and active work every day? Or are we all falling to distraction and American Christianity and complacency and the soft, cozy, cushy Jesus that never gets bold and loud and authoritative and crazily active about the way things are going? Are our actions moving and flowing in tune with His? When's the last time you experienced His movement in the day? Living here is by far the most comfortable, clean, warm, convenient life we could ask for. So why, then, are so many not content? Why miserable? Stressed out all the time? Depressed? Distracting themselves from thinking with
T.V. and food and video gaming?Something's not adding up. I still have so far to go until I've firmly grasped the truth and actually begun living it out. But I'm determined to refuse infiltration by, well, by everything around me. It's going to take daily diligence. But if I've learned anything at all about Jesus, it will be the most exciting and thrilling ride I could ever take. Anyone out there up for serious change? Let's talk. I'd love some company as I walk along this path.