Do You Want To Be Healed?

I joked in my last blog entry that I’d been noticing a lot of similarities between myself and Biblical cripples lately—maybe that meant God was trying to tell me something? But, over the last week or so, I’ve realized my kidding was right on the square.

As many of you know (and as some of you are about to find out!), I’ve struggled with captivity to self-loathing my whole life. I am harshly critical of myself—my sin, my looks, my personality—pretty much everything about myself. This has affected me in every area of my life, diminishing my joy, extinguishing my love, and, for all intents and purposes, throttling the very life that Jesus died to bestow upon me.

Last Friday, I found myself becoming discouraged and depressed and falling prey again to the same lies that have plagued me my whole life—you’re not enough, you’re not enough, you’re not enough. Whatever that enough might have been, whether beautiful, smart, funny, loving, godly, passionate, it was always the same lie. “Sure, Christ may have died for you, but you’re still not enough. There’s no way He can take your life and make anything of it. You’re ugly, sinful, and an all around failure. Just give it up now. There’s no point in trying.”

As I felt myself on the verge of tears, in the midst of the lies screaming at me, I heard the still small voice of the Savior: Go outside and pour yourself out before Me. Now, let me tell you, the weather in Hungary has been pretty cold—this particular day, it had been storming on and off all day, and the weather was not especially inviting me to go outside and cry out to God.

But, against my natural self, I bundled up and walked around outside until I found a tree at whose base I knelt in the ground. In that moment, in the cold and dark and wet, I cried to my LORD for help, to be set free from this prison that had been my reality. And then, in the midst of my cries and confusion, I heard Him speak again: Do you want to be healed?

Startled, I found myself hesitating momentarily, but then stuttering, “…Yes.” Fifteen minutes passed, during which I walked around the castle, still praying, reading my Bible, meditating. And then, again, I heard the LORD ask, Do you want to be healed? This time, my answer came with more certainty: “Yes.” At this point, I was more calm and at peace, and was searching through the Scriptures when I came to two Psalms: Psalm 142 and Psalm 116. Psalm 142:7 reads, “Bring me out of prison, that I may give thanks to your name! The righteous will surround me, for you will deal bountifully with me.” As I prayed for the LORD to bring me out of prison, I happened to flip open to Psalm 116—“I love the LORD, because He has heard my voice and my pleas for mercy. Because He inclined His ear to me, therefore I will call on Him as long as I live…Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the LORD has dealt bountifully with you.”

The stunning simplicity and beauty of these verses brought tears to my eyes then and now as I read it again. The LORD had heard my voice and was tenderly coaxing my soul into His glorious rest—Return, Rachel, to your rest; for I have dealt bountifully with you.

Getting up and walking back to the castle, the LORD asked me one final time: Do you want to be healed? Yes, LORD, I do. I want to be healed from my crippled life. The problem in my life is not a matter of seeing or hearing—I have seen and heard the gospel, seen and heard that Christ died for me and that because of that, I am saved. But, I am crippled. What I should be able to do, I cannot. The truth of the gospel, though seen and heard and understood, has not brought empowerment to my life because of the disbelief of my heart and the lies I have believed, particularly these ones.

Like the cripple in Mark 2, the cripple in Acts 3, and the cripple in John 5, I have not been able to walk in peace alongside my Savior in the freedom He set me free for.

But I am here to proclaim:

The LORD has set another captive free. The LORD has made this cripple walk.