Can Jesus fix you up? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.
How many of you growing up or maybe even still today hear that when you have a burden, you should just take it to the Lord and leave it there.
Any idea how someone is supposed to do that?
I never figured it out. It was like you were supposed to be worrying about something and then when you took it to God, it would have been completely gone from your mind. It would be nice if that happened to more of us, but the reality is is that we know it does not.
Of course, we also know that we all have problems. All of us have issues and a lot of us have a subscription. Am I then saying that if we have Jesus in our lives that that should play no part whatsoever in dealing with our problems? Aren’t we regularly encouraged to come to Jesus with our prayers?
Well, yes. Of course we are. I am also not saying that prayer is a waste of time or that knowing Jesus will not help you with your problems. I believe that we Christians should be people of prayer and I believe that knowing Jesus can help you with your problems.
So where is the happy medium?
To begin with, notice that we usually think we come to Jesus and He helps us with our problems and we get on with our lives. Back when I lived in Charlotte, I knew some boys who were twins. They were even groomsmen in my wedding. We were and are good friends and I’d spend Sunday nights with them.
Their Dad happened to be a doctor. I had a good relationship with him, but he was also my wife’s doctor. One night I was having really bad stomach pains and my wife, who can’t drive, called him up due to the fact that I was screaming. When he got there, he decided I should go to the Emergency Room to which he took us since my wife can’t drive (As it turns out, I had to have my gallbladder removed). This doctor was a constant friend to us as we prepared to move here.
What kind of friendship would it have been however if my only talk to him was “Will you help me with my problems?”
Now we do go to doctors for that on an instrumental basis. Sometimes friendships do form. Sometimes they don’t. At that point, the doctor does what he does as a service to keep his job and so he can bring home the bacon for his own family.
Jesus is not like that in the Bible. The reason doctors exist is to serve us when we are sick. The reason Jesus exists is not to be our servant. We rather exist to be His servants. The way we live often shows that we have that system in reverse.
When we treat Jesus like this, we are in fact saying “I am coming to you and asking you to fix me up so I can get back to living my own life of ignoring you.” This is the same thing many people do when they are in financial stress and suddenly find that they need to turn to God.
The reality is Jesus is under no obligation to fix anyone. There are several good reasons he might not want to. When we treat Jesus as if His purpose for being is to just fix us, we are diminishing His sacrifice and resurrection and all that He has done. We are making the Lord of the universe our personal repairman.
What can we do? One step in this is to realize that if we want Jesus, we need to want Him for more than just what He does. Jesus is Lord and when we come to Him, we are to respect Him.
Many of our problems also need the aid of those who He has gifted. God has gifted many people in the body to be wonderful counselors and we should seek to partake of their services. I myself have seen a counselor a number of times and it’s quite helpful. To this day, when there is a problem, I can often call a good friend and get their input. There is nothing anti-Christian about going to other people. In fact, it is anti-Christian to not do so as we are to bear one another’s burdens. None of us is to be a Lone Ranger.
What does this mean for us? It means we can accept it if Jesus does not take away our problems. If He does not, we can be sure based on Romans 8 that He is going to use them for our good to conform us to His likeness. We know ultimately He will take away all such problems in the eschaton, but we are not there yet. When the last day comes, we will be free, but until then, our ultimate problem is sin and our way of dealing with it is to receive forgiveness and seek to be more like Him.
The reality is that we have instead shaped Jesus to be our servant. He is not. We are His. Jesus can heal us, but it is not so we can live for ourselves but rather so we can live for Him.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
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