Straighten up!

“And this Is God’s plan: Both Gentiles and Jews who believe the Good news share equally in the riches inherited by God’s children. Both are part of the same body, and both enjoy the promise of blessings because they belong to Christ Jesus.” … V. 10 “God’s purpose in all this was to use the church to display his wisdom in its rich variety to all the unseen rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” Ephesians 3:6 & 10, The Holy Bible, NLT

I will be the first and the last to say, that I’ve lived my life on one mode, at a time; either I’m on! it’s go! go! go! moving in one direction, going way to fast, or….creeping like a student on academic probation and a slack attendance record while on the way to take the final to a class, you’ve should’ve dropped already! yeah…by this point I feel that you get me. *Le sigh* However, moving fast or slow when the other is needed is only half the problem, the other problem is that I’ve rarely ever just stepped outside of my ability to try something opposite my comfort. For the most part, I bring everything down to my comfort level and work within that limit, because that’s what I know, and most of us do it; I mean how can I fail at something I know?! (ask Peter smh, per my last blog!) well, for those of us who are having trouble with stepping out of the familiar without bringing our comfort blankets, let me introduce you to this woman in the Bible…no she doesn’t have a name, but you may be familiar with apart of her story, especially if you or your mama or nana, is a T.D. Jakes fan. (Get ready, Get ready, get ready!)

Luke 13: 10-17, tells her story and if you don’t know anything else about her, you’ll remember verse 12, when Jesus says: “woman, thou art loosed!” ( I can hear T.D and Juanita Bynum hollering in one ear and my mom in the other at these conferences) The short of the long, is that this woman was crippled. Her bones were so misshapen until she couldn’t stand straight and had been this way for 18 years! Now, this deformity wasn’t from bad genetics or some freak accident, but a demonic spirit caused this! (ISSA WORD BY ITSELF!) Somehow, she made her way to church every week and on this particular day she walks into the temple while Jesus is there teaching. HE calls her over, and heals her on the spot. She is able to straighten up and starts dancing and having Baptist fits all over the church house! The last end of the story if Jesus checking the synagogue leader for having an attitude that this woman was healed on the sabbath, since doing any work on the sabbath was against Jewish law. Yet, Jesus puts him in his places and everyone moves on.

This story had never blessed me to the extent it does now, until God assigned it to me in study. When thinking about this woman, the fact she made it to church every week was astounding, let alone live and maintain throughout these 18 years. After reading this again, along with the above scriptures, I found it amazing that she represents Ephesians 3:6. Your body is crippled, but your mind remembers being upright; imagine the battle !Her mind is in one place, while her body is in another until she surrenders to reality. God’s plan is to bring those things outside of HIM, into HIS promise and to share the inheritance amongst all of us as HIS children; and that’s exactly what Jesus does with her healing her body. This screams a few things to me:

1. The demon that caused this condition affected her entire life. To think, this woman has to know relearn how to live while bent over. Cooking, walking, bathing, even going to the restroom in a bent fashion! Imagine putting on/ removing clothing, chores, shopping and then traveling on top of this! She had to rearrange her household to accommodate her condition.
2. In order for her to make her way to church every week, she’d have to remember the way. I can see her on the first day, when she decides to go to church with the condition. Whether she’s walking or hitching a ride, she has a responsibility to use her new perceptive to pay attention to detail now. The things she didn’t have to take into account, have now become confirmation, she’s going the right way.
3. Although she was born with “normal” corrective posture, the memories of her former life only helped with what she could remember seeing, not much in the practicality of life. She may remember the how the church looked and can identify that’s her destination but her memories of getting ready for church then, doesn’t help her now and she has to adapt to a new way of living.

while going throughout life, we can become so focused on one perspective, until God allows something to readjust our posture to show us a different side to the same picture, the same job, same friends, same business, same idea, we’ve been working the entire time. The funny thing about working one perspective, is that we feel successful for working out the routine, we’ve customized with our own comfort in mind. In reality, we’ve created a fence, limiting ourselves from expansion and then label is as being focused. We can either be focused on how we see something or we can focus on asking God to expand our perception and help us by pouring his multi-faceted, or as the scripture says “manifold” wisdom into our hearts and the work of our hands. See bigger. See better. See beyond.