Lately, I’ve been seeing my life differently. It’s become less shades of gray and more black and white. You see, for years the lie has been told to us that the world exists in shades of gray. There isn’t always a right and wrong.
But recently, a shift in my thinking has occurred. Since last October, I’ve really begun to examine concepts and thoughts in my life. I thought I was really getting the hang of “Christianity” until I learned about a lot of the religious ideas that began to sneak into my life. So, I reexamined everything.
What exactly do I believe? Why do I believe it? How would I act if what I believe is the truth?
You see, when we look at the answers to those questions, we may find that we don’t believe what we claim to believe.
This all works because God is an absolute God. There is no middle ground.
The same is true when it comes to your belief in Him. You may think He exists. You may even think He was a great teacher. But those things are irrelevant, because the question is not, “Was Jesus a great teacher?” but, “Is He the Son of God and the Lord of your life?” You can try to dance around it all you want, but unless the answer to that question is yes, you aren’t going to go to Heaven.
Another common thing where people search for this middle ground is healing. Where healing is concerned, we will pray for people. We will say we believe they’re healed. You will even see people testify that they’re healed, but they go right back to whatever state of being they were in before.
Sometimes it’s even worse than that. I have seen numerous instances when you talk to a person who is a Christian, and they are struggling with some sort of illness or disease. When you pray for them, you ask them if they are healed. The response is typically, “I sure hope so,” or, “I believe so,” with only the faintest trace of hope and expectation in their voice.
No, that isn’t the way we live our lives.
In Mark 9, we see the story of a man who brought his son, who suffered with seizures and being unable to speak, to Jesus and His disciples. When the boy came in contact with Jesus, we see that the demon in his body manifests itself, and throws him to the ground. The boy is writhing on the ground in front of Jesus, the disciples, his father, and all the other people from the surrounding towns. Take a look at the exchange that takes place between Jesus and his father.
He asked the boy’s father, “How long has this been going on?”
“Ever since he was a little boy. Many times it pitches him into fire or the river to do away with him. If you can do anything, do it. Have a heart and help us!” Jesus said, “If? There are no ‘ifs’ among believers. Anything can happen.” Mark 9:21-23
I love that statement by Jesus. “There are no ‘ifs’ among believers. Anything can happen.” When you take that and put it side by side with what Jesus has given to us in the Lord’s prayer, and various other places in the New Testament, it gives the idea that “anything you desire can happen”. There is a ton of power in those words, but it is all worthless if we don’t look at verse 24:
“No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the father cried, ‘Then I believe. Help me with my doubts!’”
This man didn’t know how to get to a place of absoluteness but he knew he had to get there, so he cried out to Jesus and asked Him to take him to a place of absolute belief. A place from which there is no turning back.
What happened? If you read on in the rest of the chapter, you find that the boy was healed and the demon cast out.
You see, the fact that this man was willing to be absolute with Jesus put him in a position to receive. There are no ifs among believers.
‘If’, when used in a questioning sort of tone, should be removed from our vocabularies. It has no place there.
The woman struggling with 4th stage, inoperable breast cancer doesn’t have to rely on ‘ifs’ any more than the child with the common cold. They must rely on the absoluteness of God to get results.
One of my favorite preachers, just due to the fact that he is so bold concerning these types of things, was talking about healing and faith. He was talking about being so radical that we actually believe God, to the point that we don’t even look to anything in the world to answer our situations. Someone asked him, “Yea, but what if it doesn’t work?” and his response, quick as could be, was, “You have to take that out of the equation.”
Do you see how that’s the same? “What if it doesn’t work?” “If you can help me”.
Absoluteness will put you in a position to receive from God. In the Bible, we never see Jesus walking that line. He simply would tell people, “Your faith has made you whole,” or, “Go and show yourself to the priest.” There was never a middle ground.
We must take, “What if it doesn’t work?” out of the equation. There is no room for it in our lives. We simply can’t play around with it. Either Jesus bore our sickness and disease on the cross according to 1 Peter 2:24, or He didn’t. There is no middle ground, no compromise.
Take a look at your faith. Reexamine yourself, look at what you believe like Paul told us to do (2 Corinthians 13:5). If you’re a Christian, it’s time to walk in everything that has been provided for you boldly, with no allowance made for failure. Then, and only then, can you remove the faith-killing phrase, “What if it doesn’t work?” from our lives.
When you’re at that point is when you see results. You may think I’m being harsh, but lets look at healing again. I can ask you if you believe Jesus has already taken care of your healing on the cross. You can dance around the question and try to avoid giving a straight answer all you want. My goal is to pin your back to the wall and force you to say, “Yes” or “No”. The reason why is simple, yet one of the most important things we can see in our lives. If you say He didn’t take care of it on the cross, then you have every right to go around being sick. But, if He did take care of it, (and He did. It’s literally all over the Bible) what on earth are you still doing being sick? A cold has no more right to be in your body than cancer.
I had an experience with this around the same time I was learning about these things. I found out my junior year of high school that I had fractured my L4 vertebra 4 times in 5 years, all without my knowledge. I just thought it was pain from football. However, with the fracture, the doctor told me that if I fractured it one more time, they would have to fuze my spine at 16 years of age, and I would never be able to participate in athletics again.
Long story short, I rehabbed it and was fine, except for the occasional pain I would get in my back. Severe pain. Especially if I had to sit for long periods of time.
After learning about the absoluteness of God, I decided, “Jesus already took care of this pain, there’s no need in me dealing with it.” And then I prayed, “God, thank you for sending Jesus to the cross to take care of my back. Whatever is causing this back pain, you have no right to be here, in Jesus’ Name. Thank you, Father, for straightening out any situation that would cause me pain in my back, in Jesus’ Name. Amen.”
That was it. No “spiritual goose bumps”. No hour long praying in tongues session. Just a short simple prayer, and I went about my day like I normally would, except that I put pressure on the Word. I was in a position mentally where I would not allow myself to not feel better. This had to work because there was not another option.
Immediately, my back pain disappeared! I haven’t had to struggle with it since, after nearly 15 years of near constant back pain. I had actually forgotten what it felt like to be pain free!
That changed my life and put me on a journey of expectation in the Word. I’m always expecting God to come through in every situation, because He has promised it. He must do it, according to His Word. Anything contrary to that makes him a liar.
So, put your trust and faith in the absoluteness of God. An absolute God will always get absolute results.