Greg Raking Friend’s Yard
It always comes up in Christian Support Groups: Isn’t there anything I can do to hasten this healing process? Yes, and here it is.
One of the most awesome mysteries of a Christian’s faith is that of servitude. A slave is ruled by the one who owns him/her. But a bondservant has chosen to serve another out of love or loyalty. Fear has been replaced with free will.
The Golden Rule works sometimes as it suggests that as we do unto others, we are hoping or even expecting that others will return the favor. Of course, we all know that there is no guarantee of this occurring.
In serving Christ, however, we can expect GOD to return the favor of our service with His most favorable hand.
We need to ask God to show us what gifts we have to share with others in our support groups as well as our communities. This service may be a special prayer or merely a hug. Our gifts of servitude do not have to be monumental, just shared. As we get busy serving others, we will realize that something magical is taking place; little by little we are healing.
When Joni Eareckson Tada was a teen, she dove into an unfamiliar part of a lake that resulted in a horrible accident, leaving her a paraplegic. Initially, she struggled with depression and questioned why a loving God would allow such an accident to occur. In a video recording, Blessings out of Brokenness, Joni stated that it was not until she was willing to accept that God loved her and He wanted to be in control, that her circumstances started to change. She said, “Mending occurs as one opens up his/her heart to others and reaches out to aid in someone else’s healing.”
Joni stated that “the wheelchair was not the disability; rather, it was the attitude one has toward the limitation.” She chose to accept the fact that God often uses suffering as a way to put us through an emotional fire in order to get our attention and then remove the impurities in our lives in order to use us. Once we accept this process, the healing can begin.
Are you spending as much time helping and serving others as you are in prayer and thought about your own problems? If you want to hasten your healing, ask God, with a pure heart, who you could serve. Sounds like a crazy formula; yet it works.
Read more about the miracle of serving in Chapter 10 of my book.