This is the question Jesus asked the man by the well in John 5:1-9. We all can be made whole by God's power in Jesus Christ. Jesus makes His people spiritually, emotionally, and physically whole. This blog is dedicated to the emotional wholeness Christ can bring to us simply by letting the Holy Spirit renew our minds.
When I Googled wholeness, I got two definitions: 1. "The state of forming a complete and harmonious whole; unity;" and 2. "The state of being unbroken or undamaged."
I think it is best to start with the second definition because it will help explain the importance of the first. "The state of being unbroken or undamaged." That may apply to babies, but it certainly does not apply to any reading this blog. We have all been touched by life, really, we have all been touched by sin, which is what causes brokenness. We are broken because of the sin of our world and the experiences we have had which have deeply wounded and affected us in negative ways. We are broken because of the griefs and losses we have encountered. We are broken because of the sins of others such as violent crime, hate, and greed. We are broken because of our sins if we are not saved through faith in Jesus Christ. We are broken because of our sins if we are saved through faith in Jesus Christ but have not confessed our sins and asked the Lord to cleanse us from all unrighteousness regarding them. And we are broken because sometimes God must break us to perfect us - to make us whole.
We physically survive being broken. We learn to live with our griefs, time heals a lot of our hurts, and we learn to overcome some of our sins. But despite all of that, brokenness can linger and continue to affect us even after we think we have "gotten ourselves together." And that is where our second definition comes in. "The state of forming a complete and harmonious whole; unity." Wholeness is not a natural part of living, brokenness is. Wholeness is something we must form in response to our brokenness. We can choose to say, "Yes, I want to be made whole." We can choose to not stay broken. We can fight a better fight than perhaps we have thus far. We can make it our business to decide that we do not want to be broken, tore up inside, resentful, begrudging, or pretentious any longer.
So what do you do? You've decided that you don't want to live broken any longer. You don't want to live with the sting of rejection or a sense of not having really accomplished anything. You don’t want to live with sickness and disparity as your constant companions. You don't want to live with the emotional pain you have been living with. You don't want to continue to put on a false sense of 'having it all together.' Your desire is to be as whole as Jesus Christ can make you.
What do you do?
That's a good question and if there was a one sentence answer we'd all be there already. But what I have learned is that wholeness is a journey. When we think back to the man Jesus asked the question of, we know that Jesus told him to get up, to take up his bed (mat), and to walk. So that at least gives us a path on which we can start the journey. We can decide that we are all going to get up. We may have to figure out together what that actually means, and no doubt it will mean something different to all of us, but we can take the journey to discovering what our individual 'get up' is and we can collectively get up. Next, we will have to take up our mats or our beds- those things we are hanging on to and thus laying down on.
Are you holding on to resentment, hurt, distrust, or a sense of betrayal? Are you accepting a situation beneath that which God would willingly give you if you would just get up? Are you living with low esteem, a lack of confidence, or a lack of hope? Do you feel stuck? Do you feel alone? Do you feel powerless? Again, this will not be a one size fits all, but we can take the journey together and each one of us discover what our mat is: what we are holding on to and thus laying down on. And when we discover what it is, we will simply obey Jesus and take it up.
To take up our mat means we must hear a different message than the one that put us on our mats. The man in our scripture was laying on his mat because he heard his body when it said, “I can’t walk anymore.” We hear a lot of things in life and those things either inspire forward action from us or they zap all action out of us. We get bogged down by the weight of what we hear. But it’s not just the messages we hear that steal our strength, it’s that we believe them. We accept them. We stop fighting and we start repeating the message that put us on our mat. The man heard his body say, “I can’t walk anymore,” and then he heard his situation say, “I don’t have anyone to help me,” and he believed both, accepted them and responded appropriately to them – he laid on his bed.
I see taking up our mat as confronting those messages that are not telling us who we are in Christ; confronting those messages that are not affirming God’s strength in us, God’s love toward us, God’s power with us, God’s purpose in us, and God’s grace upon us. So, we need to take up the messages, roll them up and put them behind us. That’s what they did in the days of our scripture. They would roll up their beds and put them on their backs and they would walk.
We walk by following Jesus. When I think about it, it is our lack of following Jesus faithfully that gets us into a broken state. So, when we stand up and we take up our mats we don't want to fall short of the third step; because if we fail to follow Jesus faithfully, we will be broken again and have to start the whole process over.
I cannot wait to take this journey with you. As you follow Jesus you will discover what wholeness is to you and what it feels like in you, and how it gives you so much more peace, so much more power, so much more... love. It is going to be an awesome journey because we are following an awesome God. We've already started our journey with this first post, and I believe that great things are in store for all of us.