I have been thinking over God’s compassion, well in fact, it has been gripping me. Having seen God heal many people recently I have been drawn to the pain/care/anger that has come over me when I have been praying for some people. I have read and reread the story of Lazarus from John 11. Three times it talks about Jesus being moved by compassion… literally his bowels moved.Twice it mentions that directly and once it mentions that he weeps. I am growing in learning that God hurts when people hurt. After all, that’s what He said to Moses when he met him through the burning bush. God said he had seen the pain and suffering of his people and he wanted to do something… set them free.
God’s compassionate love, feels the pain and wants to change it. And get this, sometimes he does it without there and then demanding a response of making Him Lord! In the healing at the pool in John 5, He heals the invalid of 38 years, and then slips away. Only later does the man find Jesus. Recently Kathryn and I prayed for a checkout woman in Asda for her bad eyesight. She was having a bad day, forgotten her glasses and frustrated. We felt for her and prayed. She could see a sign 20 metres away that she could not possibly have seen before! We prayed in the name of Jesus, but that’s it. No time and chance to give the gospel in any length… but we know her name and go back there regularly so the story is not over yet. But it seems God was concerned enough to want to touch her eyesight there and then.
I gave my life to Jesus partly (and no small part) because I was healed three years before. I called out to ‘God, if you are real’. And I was healed. I was shocked, had promised to go to church if I was healed, but did not follow through on that promise. Three years later, God came to get me through through a Christian friend in school.
Sometimes at least, it seems, God just wants to have compassion.
Tags: compassion, healing