Hands off me, you fanatic!!
By Helen Jesze, 29th October 2021
“When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole?”
John 5:6 KJV
“Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.”
v.14 KJV
Harold Hill, an ex-NASA scientist and engineer told us how, as a young, eager Christian and having a few healings ‘under his belt’, he ran to lay hands on an elderly lady in a wheel- chair. But as he started to pray for her, she shouted, “Take your hands off me, you fanatic! I looked after my husband for over forty years and now it’s his turn to look after me! I don’t want to get well!” This was something new, which Harold had not heard of, and he learnt to ask before laying hands on somebody!
The above picture shows Jesus at the Pool of Bethesda where sick people waited for the “troubling of the waters”, and the first one to get in, was healed. Jesus singled one man out who had been ill for 38 years and did not ask him, “Do you want to get well?” but, surprisingly, if he wanted to be made “whole”. We might think that if he had not wanted to get well, the man would not be waiting to get in the pool, but whole? Jesus healed the man and later on, met him again in the Temple.
Verse 14 shows us that Jesus knew there was a spiritual root to this man’s illness, so he warned him not to sin, or something even worse might come, and he would lose his healing. God made us all as a triune being – body, soul and spirit – even as he is a Triune Being or Trinity. What we do with our body, the negative things or sins we allow into our mind or spirit can have an outworking in our body, and even bring physical illness. This was the case with the man in John 5. We are not told what the man’s sin had been, but obviously, he knew what Jesus was talking about, as he did not question it.
Many sicknesses are purely physical, others we may have brought upon ourselves by our unwise lifestyle. Others have mental or spiritual roots and influences. Another story from Harold illustrates this well. One day, he and some friends were praying for a lady whom the Lord had previously healed of cancer, but now it had returned. They decided to ask if there was a reason for this. The Lord told Harold to ask her if she hated her daughter-in-law. “Yes, I do!” she spat out. “If you will forgive her, God will heal you again,” Harold said. “Forgive her?!! I’d rather die!” she shrieked, and she did die, soon after.
When I was leading an Aglow group in Germany, one of my speakers was a lady who used to be a homeopathic doctor, before becoming a Christian. She had developed cancer and was afraid of what would happen after her death. A friend advised her to go to a Christian weekend retreat, which she did. As she spoke with the counsellor and heard of the Way of Salvation, she was asked to renounce any occult practices she had – knowingly or unknowingly – been involved in. In her practice, she had regularly ‘dowsed’ using a pendulum and done other occult things, not realising she was opening herself to the powers of darkness. She renounced all this activity and when she got home, she destroyed all her questionable books and closed her practice down.
Not long after, the doctor pronounced her free of cancer. She had received no treatment and the Lord showed her it was because the root of her illness had been her occult involvement. Jesus had made her “whole”, spirit, soul and body. [ Author’s note: While there are a very few Christian homeopathic doctors, and this ‘holistic’ method or alternative treatment may look very harmless, or just like a method of using herbs rather than chemicals to treat illness, yet this is not the case. Examine who first invented it and the Druid who later introduced it on a wider scale.] On this weekend of Hallowe’en and as it goes with our subject for today, it seemed good to mention this testimony.
As you read this today, I do not want you to come under condemnation thinking that you have sinned against the Lord, if you have become sick. But it might be a wise thing to examine our hearts, and ask the Holy Spirit to shine his searchlight into any dark corners. If he finds something and shows us, what we do about it is our decision, between us and Jesus. We may need to put some things right, to ask forgiveness, to break off certain friendships or associations which are hindering us, learn to say “No” when stress is sending us into a tail- spin because we are doing a dozen things Jesus never told us to do…
Jesus asks us that question too,
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