A very nice lady in her senior years said to me recently that she’s been praying to God a long time to heal her right leg. Her last words to me were, “…And I’m still waiting.” This is a sentiment we no doubt hear expressed from many believers, particularly those over 50 that may be dealing with minor health challenges. We need to look under the hood of this, because the idea of praying and waiting long periods of time for the manifestation of the blessing is one that has become a fixture in our way of thinking. When it comes to meeting our future spouses and being delivered from sickness, ailments, and disease, many of us believe that God has delayed the blessing, when the issue is that we have stalled in our faith.
Some of us have never witnessed God heal someone miraculously, and because we haven’t seen it, we’re challenged to believe it. We may not have heard of sisters in Christ fasting and praying for six months and meeting their destiny partners shortly thereafter. Because we’re not witnessing and hearing about the miraculous in the lives of those close to us, it’s possible that our believing has flatlined, and we need to pump some life into it.
“How did I get here, Lord? My heart has been scarred from years of fractured and broken relationships. I’ve been abandoned, talked down to, relegated to the sidelines in so many ways, and I’m just waiting for the weight of all this to move out my way so I can breathe. I want my life to be light and free, like the air You allow to flow in and out of my nostrils. I no longer want to feel powerless and hopeless, Lord, but these seem like constant companions, like I can’t shake them loose for nothing. How did I get to this place where my dreams, once so relentless in my heart, are now like a mist that flutters about and teases me only every now and again? No one understands my pain. I’m disappointed and sad, and I don’t even know how I got here.” The very nice lady didn’t say these words to me, but ‘I’m still waiting’ painted a portrait of pain way beyond that of her right leg.
When Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, their sinful actions didn’t remain outside the perimeters of their physical bodies. When they bowed to the devil and disobeyed God’s Word, sin entered their bodies and brought death with it. They were not ignorant. They knew better. As Adam and Eve walked together with the Holy Spirit in communion and fellowship, the Spirit taught them many things because this is what he does. The Holy Spirit is our Teacher. Jesus Christ said in John 14:26(NCV), “But the Helper will teach you everything and will cause you to remember all that I told you. This Helper is the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name.” God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He does not change. Because of this, we can have some idea of Adam’s and Eve’s days. They were learning from the Holy Spirit and working in the garden of Eden, because that is what God told them to do.
Regarding things that were forbidden, God gave Adam only one commandment, and Genesis 2:16-17(ESV) lays it out. It says, “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “16 You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” From the Word of the Lord, we can understand that once a wrong decision or choice is acted upon, sin enters the body. Without repentance, sin sits, festers, and corrodes us from the inside out. Praise God for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who rescued us from this terrible fate! Through Christ, God handled our sin issue. Our problem is that even though we’ve been rescued from the curse of death and darkness, some of us are still going back to our old ways and picking up old dead things.
When Adam and Eve sinned, they followed the next course on the path that sin lays, which is shame. They hid themselves from God because sin brought an awareness of nakedness, of not being covered by holiness and sacred connection to our Heavenly Father. They were ashamed of their sin, and this was a new and dark development. Shame had not entered the picture until sin came on the scene. Disobedience opened their eyes to sin, and all its cousins. So, they fell. They were out of place and lost their holy positioning, and Genesis 3:9(ESV) tells us, “9 But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?””
“Where are you” indeed. Of course, God knew the physical location of Adam and Eve, because God knows everything. When we examine the translation of these words in Genesis 3:9, we discover that God is making a statement regarding His relationship with Adam and Eve. Sin caused their disconnect from Heavenly Father, and the catastrophe this set-in motion was conveyed in the Father’s question to them. That vulnerability, innocence, and humble dependence on God was lost, and even though many of us are saved today, we’ve lost it too.
2Corinthians 5:17(ESV) tells us, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” Our old nature was crucified with Christ when he sacrificed his life on the cross. The Apostle Paul said in Galatians 2:20 (ESV), “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” This is us! We were with him when he nailed our sins to the cross. The flesh has been crucified, and we are new creations in Christ, but some of us didn’t let some parts die. We’re holding on to them and they are harming us.
The disappointment and nagging heartache are always just beneath our resolve of “I’m okay.” They leave us with just enough hope to make it through the day but not enough to live confidently and boldly in Christ. Pain is not a natural state, and neither is loneliness, but they are the familiar. We see these, pain and loneliness, so often in the eyes of others, and sadly, even after some of us are saved, there’s no difference between the fainting faith of those deeply wounded and us. We’ve acquiesced to the level of their apathy and melded our unbelief with their doubt, and this is mainly because we’ve kept some things, some habits, some wrong thoughts, some errors in our hearts and minds. We didn’t kick doubt and wrong believing out the door. For some of us, the heavies that we should have repented, surrendered to God, and released are still hiding out in our hearts and minds.
Our Heavenly Father does not want us in pain. He does not want us to be lonely. Wherever we are in our life’s journey, we must be completely sold out to these truths. Where are we in our faith? Where are we in the level of intimacy we’ve developed in our relationship with God? Where are we in our heads and hearts, and have we released the bitterness, the jealousy, the envy, doubt, lying, and all the other negativity God commanded us to let die? These, and anything like them, are at the root of all our pain, and if we’re wise, we’ll pray for a revelation to see them, confront them, and let them go so that God’s love can heal up our broken places. ■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
New Century Version (NCV)
The Holy Bible, New Century Version®. Copyright © 2005 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.
“Where Are You?”, written by Reverend Fran Mack. Edits by Kim Times and K. Stephens for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2023. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.