In 2009, about a year into my journey with Christ, I had an aching pain in my left shoulder blade that lasted for over three months.

I tried everything to fix it: prayer, deep tissue massage, ointments, stretching, etc. But nothing worked. One evening, a good friend invited me to come and visit an older Christian couple with him. They were previous church elders but were now ministering from home. We weren’t there for my back.

In fact, I hadn’t mentioned it to my friend at all. He knew the passion I had for God and said this would be a great couple for me to meet. So we arrived, greeted, poured a cuppa, and sat down to chat. I’ll be honest: I thought they were weird! They’d tilt over and laugh randomly, saying it was the Holy Spirit. Sure, they shared some amazing stories of their encounters with Jesus, missions, and some of the miracles they’d seen over their lives. But I couldn’t get past the tilting and laughing. I was quietly convinced that they were meddling with demons or something. Randomly, the husband said, “Let’s worship the Lord!” So they stood up, started singing, and told Jesus how thankful they were for Him. Naturally, we stood up with them. Then out of nowhere, the husband looked over, pointed his finger at me, and said, “You have a knife in your back.” He then walked over, reached behind me, and pulled this apparent knife out from my back – right from the spot where my pain was. Instantly, I fell flat on my back. I wasn’t slain in the spirit or hurt. I was fully conscious. But now the pain in my back was completely gone and never returned. Yet, I never told him about my back pain. So when I asked how he knew, he said he could see the knife in the spirit. He said it was due to harsh words and deliberate cursing by other believers – backstabbing – which would later come to light. A story for another day. I judged these guys and saw them as weird, even demonic. They weren’t part of any particular church at the time, and neither did they look like most Christians. Yet they were the only ones who fixed my problem, and did so with a deep love and reverence for Jesus.

Lesson A mentor once told me, “Sometimes God will offend the mind to get to the heart.” It seems that sometimes God will put things in places or people that naturally offend us to see how hungry we truly are for Him or not. Just because somebody doesn’t fit our Christian bubble or idea doesn’t mean they don’t know Jesus. In this case, those two knew Him in a way I hadn’t so far. God reveals different aspects of His nature to us at different times. To Moses, God revealed Himself as I AM.

To Gideon He revealed Himself as Peace.

To Hagar He revealed Himself as El Roi (God who sees).

To the Israelites, He revealed Himself as Jehovah Rapha (God who heals). In other words: none of us has the full revelation of His being, we only know in part. And that’s the wisdom of “love one another.” Why? Because in loving one another we get to share and receive the different aspects of His nature that has been revealed to each of us, and thus mature as one Body. We need each other. Be careful not to judge what we don’t understand. Better to be humble and have knives taken out of us by those we perceive as weird than to be offended, judgmental, and still in pain – or worse, to be the one throwing knives at people.

Questions for reflection

1. How well do I seek first to understand something or someone before forming a conclusion about them?

2. What differences or dislikes about others have caused me to divide from them?

3. How willing am I to have my understanding about God continually enlarged?

Bless you,

Lee