Sunday, July 15, 2012

Walking Upright

    The place had to be crowded that day! After all it was the Sabbath, the day that all devout people…religious people…came to the synagogue…the church house. Why did she come? What possessed her to be there? Did she come every week? Was she looking for relief or was she simply doing the thing that you are supposed to do? I want the inside scoop! I can’t even imagine her surprise when the man who was teaching that day, called over to her, across the crowd, to come to him. What made her different from everyone else that day? She was a woman that had been dealing with a sickness for eighteen long years. This sickness was unusual to be sure; she was bent over and unable to straighten up. Everyone must have known this woman around town; we tend to focus on oddities as human beings. This sickness, this oddity, was caused by a spirit and kept her in a position of being bent, held down, unable to stand up straight and walk erect. Jesus spoke to her that day, with the same voice that spoke the world into existence, “Woman, you are freed from your sickness”. He then laid His hands on her and immediately she was made erect!

     Jesus called her a daughter of Abraham, that was WHO she was! Because I am "in Christ", my position is secure! There is nothing that the enemy of my soul can do about my position in Christ, so his attempts are always to keep me bent over so that I can’t walk upright in the fullness of who I am in Christ. I have been this woman! Multiple times I have recognized that I was living bent over, carrying around guilt, shame, past hurts and bitterness on my back; all the while talking to myself, “just straighten up and get it together, Kim!” I was completely unable to talk or will myself into walking upright. In the past year Jesus has been lovingly showing me the things that have kept me bent over and touching those places so that I can walk upright. I have been known to do my Braveheart impression of screaming F-R-E-E-D-O-M at the top of my lungs!! I do it in the privacy of my home, but Jesus hears it and I know the full meaning of it! How often do we keep doing the things we are supposed to do, walking bent, while Jesus wants us to hear Him speak and rest in His completed action of the cross…our salvation….our redemption…our freedom.

      Even in this His Sovereignty shines through. Had I never walked bent over, I would never know the goodness of walking upright!

His truth, my good, 
Kim 

 Luke 13:10-17, Galatians 5:1