P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

FAITH AND A RIGGED SLOT MACHINE

Once in a while, a rather interesting mailing comes along — and everyone on our block faces a marvelous opportunity. Because I — yes, I, Lonnie Melashenko — can soon make a fortune playing slot machines. The person writing the letter assures me that he has personally made thousands upon thousands of dollars just pulling on that one-armed bandit in luxurious casinos all around the world, using his patented “Triangle Scheme,” and nothing would make him happier than for everyone else on his personal mailing list of special people (like me) to start doing the same thing.

All of this ignores the obvious truths, of course, that: A) slot machines take away a certain fixed amount of money, and can’t be beat. B) Anyone who really knew how to upset the odds and win money from slots would just quietly keep doing so and say as little as possible about it. And C): If everyone in the world could win free money out of slot machines, soon there would be no casinos left anywhere, and no place to keep doing that, which takes us back to Point B and the need for the one guy who DOES know how . . . to keep his mouth shut.

Well, friend, Las Vegas, Nevada is a long ways from Capernaum and our paralytic friend who did just line up four cherries, hit the million-dollar jackpot, and get healed. But as we thought yesterday about some of the reasons why Jesus Christ went around healing people, this question inevitably has to come: Why DOES He do it? And then, secondly, why doesn’t He do it all the time? Why do some paralytics stay paralytics, and why do many Christians die of cancer or in plane crashes?

There are some heart-stopping stories in the book, Surprised By the Power of the Spirit, by Pastor Jack Deere, who used to be a professor of Old Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. And he tells a story that comes right from his own family album. He and his wife, Leesa, learned that they were going to be parents. It was a Friday night when they found out, and, of course, they spent the night celebrating. However, the very next day, Saturday morning, it looked like she was going to miscarry. The doctor examined her and said, “I’m sorry, but there’s almost no chance.” They got a second opinion, and the doctor said: “I’m afraid I concur. Actually, this is a blessing, because if the baby lived, it would almost for sure be severely deformed. God is sparing you a lot of heartache and sorrow here, not to mention suffering and expense.”

Well, Jack, disheartened as he was, could see the wisdom of that. He began to settle into that reality. But his wife, Leesa, shook her head vehemently. “No!” she said. “Don’t tell me this would be a blessing! I don’t accept that.” And let me quote directly her little speech:

“I love this baby with all my heart. The worst thing in the world that could happen to me would be to lose this child. I don’t care how defective this child is or how this child is born. I will spend the rest of my life caring for this baby if God will just let me have him.”

And Deere was dumbfounded. Here his wife had only known she was pregnant for about 12 hours. How could she already be feeling such love, such compassion? “I felt like I was standing on holy ground,” he confesses. And then he remembered the Old Testament word raham, which the Hebrews used for the compassion of God. And the interesting thing is that raham actually means “womb.”

“Most likely it came,” Deere observes, “from a Hebrew husband’s observing the intense feelings his pregnant wife had for the unborn infant inside her womb. He knew she had feelings and a love for that child that he could not yet experience.”

(By the way, the baby was born and was a fine, healthy son.)
Now let’s think again about this paralytic man lying on that cot. His body is a wreck. He wants healing. His illness likely came from his own life of sin, so he desperately wants and needs forgiveness too. And as we’ve wrestled with the questions of — What did this healing prove? Why did Jesus do it? Wasn’t healing this man going to just hasten His own crucifixion? — I think we can come down to something pretty simple here. The fact is, Jesus healed this guy because His heart melted with compassion. That’s pretty much the sum of it. He saw him, He ached with pity for this lost, lonely lamb . . . and He said: “Take up your bed.” Maybe it made a big spiritual point about forgiveness. Maybe it gave somebody faith. Maybe it helped jump-start the infant Christian church. But the bottom line was that this sad little man needed help, and Jesus just couldn’t help but give it.

Maybe you remember a story back in Matthew 20, where two blind men are crying out to Jesus: “Help us! Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us!” And Jesus did. He didn’t have to conjure it up; He didn’t put on a big show. He saw their blind state, and His heart was moved. He was like a mother with a deformed little fetus growing inside. Verse 34 says:

“Jesus had compassion on them and touched their eyes.” He was “deeply moved,” says another version. “Immediately they received their sight and followed Him.”

Of course, this takes us right to the great heartfelt cry of the universe — and also back to our cynical little slot machine mass mailing. But hurting people today have a right to ask heaven: “Why the paralytic . . . and not me? Why these two blind men . . . and not my sick child? Jesus, why did You resurrect the son of the widow of Nain . . . and let me drive to the mortuary in anguish when my own little boy passed away with leukemia last winter?” Friend, that is a fair, fair, fair question. Where is the raham, the womblike compassion of Jesus now? If He CAN do, then why doesn’t He DO?

Let me ask you something. If everybody who called on the name of Jesus got healed, 100%, every time, everywhere, what would happen? Would everybody call on Jesus? But would people only call on Him for healing? Would any continue following Him and learning about the rest of His kingdom? We’ve spent two weeks now talking about the visible — AND the invisible — part of this story. Healing . . . and forgiveness. Getting your body well . . . and getting your soul well. And even there in Capernaum, and in Jerusalem, and Bethany, Bethsaida, Galilee, and every town Jesus went to, people were more interested in bread than in the Beatitudes. They would rather get a free lunch than eat the bread of life. And for a while, yes, Jesus would go into town and just heal EVERYBODY. For all the reasons we’ve just mentioned — and especially because of His compassion. But the hard truth is that blanket, mass, one-size-fits-all healings are a bit like a Caesar’s Palace slot machine giveaway where we clean out the house. Everybody wins — and the next night the place is closed.

All through the Bible, we find this difficult reality. For 40 years, God just plain fed everybody. The manna came down, no questions asked. And very few people grew into mature faith. Here in the gospels, Jesus, moved with compassion, healed 10 lepers one day. You can read the whole story in Luke 17. Out of the ten, one man learned to look beyond the visible and get to the invisible. One man remembered to praise God. One man thought to come to Jesus and thank Jesus and realize that a friendship with Jesus was more important than getting a free healing. Just one out of ten. Twice Jesus fed huge crowds — 5000 people, then 4000 — with miraculous loaves and fishes. When He was crucified not much later, where were those same people? Gone, most of them. The free slot machine jackpots made them greedy instead of good.

Friend, let me say it so carefully. God would love to heal everybody. Praise God when He does heal. Praise Him when His wisdom and foreknowledge and omniscient “kingdom view” opens the door for Him to express His compassion with a miracle. But let’s be trusting enough to realize that it’s His ETERNAL compassion, His desire to fix it ALL — in the END — that leads Him to heal some . . . and ask others of us to wait. He let this paralytic praise God by being healed. He allowed His beloved apostle Paul to praise God by enduring a mysterious affliction clear to the finish line, which was an execution. Believe me, the kingdom of heaven can be glorified both ways, as champions of the faith, here and there, quietly accept His timing. What sometimes looks to us like a random lottery system, a heavenly keno game in God’s divine casino, actually is a perfect mosaic of His compassionate wisdom.

After a wrenching funeral last May which struck down someone very close to our Voice of Prophecy family, our ministry friend Lloyd Wyman sent the bereaved party this incredible quote from G. Sittser and his book, The Will of God as a Way of Life:

“When the journey is over and, by God’s grace, we reach our destination, we will see the utter greatness and grandeur of His eternal plan. We will discover in that glorious moment how everything fits together, perfectly and intricately. God’s plan will seem like a vast landscape, gleaming in the morning sun. It will take our breath away.”