Receive the Greatest Gift
Two blind men were sitting by the roadside, and when they heard that Jesus was going by, they shouted, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!”…Jesus stopped and called them. “What do you want me to do for you?” he asked. Matthew 20:29-32
At first read of this area of scripture, I think, Jesus come on, what do you think a blind man wants? Often times I find that when Jesus asks a question it’s not because He doesn’t know the answer (He is God after all), it’s because we need to hear our own answer. Do you think quite possibly Jesus wanted them to really believe that He could heal them? That they really wanted to see? What blind person would not want to see? It becomes not a question if they wanted to see but did they believe they could see.
I can relate to this passage of scripture because I felt like I was in the same place with the Lord at one point in my relationship with James. After the initial time he left for nine months, he returned only to leave a short time after. This back and forth thing happened not just twice but three times in the seven years of our struggling marriage. The third time we separated was because I changed the locks on the doors and asked him not to come home. I hit my breaking point and just could not take the deception any longer. I remember crying out to the Lord, please God have mercy on us! The Lord asked me, “What do you want me to do for you?” Here it was, that pivotal point in my relationship with Christ. Was I going to ask for Him to take the pain away and heal my heart? Restore my marriage and family? Or was it something else, He wanted me to ask? Quite honestly I had lost most hope. I struggled to believe that James would ever change, that God could ever heal this marriage. It was then, after six years of turmoil in my family that it finally clicked. God had a bigger plan and purpose in all of this. It wasn’t about my happiness, and me or about a “fixed marriage”. For six years I worked at “fixing myself” so I could earn a good husband. I figured that if I were a good wife, I would get a good husband. Remember my one-plus-one-equals-two mindset? As I mentioned in an earlier post, that equation doesn’t work in matters of the heart. What really needed to happen was James and I both needed to totally surrender our lives and this marriage to the Lord. My surrender started with letting go of James and stop trying to fix him myself. I began to focus on my relationship with Christ. Learning to love God and letting Him be all that I needed. I also needed to trust that even though I couldn’t see God’s work in James’ life, He would be “faithful to complete what He started” Philippians 1:6. It was then that I found freedom. And it was then, that God could do the work in James. It would be less than a year later when I allowed James to come back home and I saw the change in him. In God’s perfect time, I saw a more peaceful, joyful and forgiven James. He became a man capable to love and forgive as he had been loved and forgiven. So as you cry out to God and He asks you what He can do for you, know that His question is possibly your opportunity to believe. “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.” Matthew 21:22