Tuesday, May 14, 2019

Healed!

Tuesday, May 14, 2019

Meanwhile, Peter traveled from place to place, and he came down to visit the believers in the town of Lydda.  There he met a man named Aeneas, who had been paralyzed and bedridden for eight years.  Peter said to him, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you!  Get up, and roll up your sleeping mat!”  And he was healed instantly.  Then the whole population of Lydda and Sharon saw Aeneas walking around, and they turned to the Lord.  Acts 9:32-35

There is healing, and there is HEALING!  That first, rather subdued mention is the gradual, sometimes tedious journey our bodies take to knit back together or fight off a germ-riddled sickness.  More serious still, is the relapsing flu or cold that just hangs-on…or the allergies that return with that magical yellow dust in the trees.  This healing may take a lifetime…or only ceases when we stop breathing in and out. That is different than the kind of healing Aeneas experienced.  When Peter spoke the words Jesus Christ heals you, the healing was immediate and complete.  Aeneas went from paralyzed to perfect in a heartbeat.
The healing, I believe, came in between Peter’s sentences.  In fact, the second sentence, get up, roll up your sleeping mat, was an instruction that followed the announcement.  The sequence was “Jesus heals you,” then healing and strength came to his body, and then the command:  “here’s what you do about that”.  There is meaning for us in every part of this event that took two seconds and changed the course of history for a man and two towns.
From Lydda to the plains of Sharon, distance of up to 50 miles, this instantaneous healing of Aeneas turned people to faith in Jesus at a time when the movement was still in its infancy.  The paralyzed man had been sick for eight years.  The people who knew him also knew the sound of his grunts and groans as he hauled himself from one aching, bed sore position to another.  They knew the pain on his face, and the smell of his presence.  And, in an instant, Aeneas, that odious reminder of approaching death, a fixture in that corner of the city square, is standing, and rolling up that mat…usefulness in the community and joy in his soul are written all over his face.
Now, that’s a heartwarming story about one man, but it pales in comparison to what happened to the community, and the movement of turning the world upside down for the cause of Christ.  Up and down the coast the message of Aeneas’ healing stirred faith in the hearts of people.  So many people turned to faith in Jesus Christ that Luke’s hyperbolic recording of the response was that the whole population believed and turned to the Lord.
Whatever you’ve seen or heard about some slick, televangelist faith-healing hucksters, try to remember that Christ does heal, and his healing takes us from hurt to health in an instant. 
For You Today
Let’s carry all this about healing just a bit further…there’s a bigger fish to fry than physical healing; Jesus once gave us another statement and instruction:
The statement:  It is finished!
The instruction:  Go into all the world…tell them about healing from their sin!
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image: Pixabay.com  
             Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from The New Living Translation©

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