In Need

When Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and went into the region of Judea to the other side of the Jordan. Large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.
Matthew 19:1-2

Everywhere Jesus went He healed. The Gospel writers record this truth in nearly every chapter of their writings. Jesus had large crowds following Him, listening to Him, and wanting to be physically healed. Healing was central to His mission to inaugurate the Kingdom of God on earth. I talk more about this here.

If you haven’t seen The Chosen, you need to. It is a multi-season show about Jesus and the disciples that is done extremely well. (You can watch it for free in the app.) In a recent episode of The Chosen (Episode 3, Season 2), Jesus is depicted as spending all day healing the sick as His disciples take shifts helping Him. Jesus’s mom, Mary, stops by and talks about His birth. She talks about how Jesus was crying and cold.

Jesus needed Mary.

We like to say things like, “God doesn’t need us,” but in the life of Jesus we see multiple occasions where He put Himself in a place of need. His birth was just the first. It is true that Jesus didn’t have to do the incarnation that way. He could have chosen a way that didn’t involve putting Himself in a place of need. But He didn’t. And since Jesus is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15), we get a sense that God the Father is okay with putting Himself in a position of dependence on others.

So it may be true that God doesn’t have to need us, but that must be held in tension with the reality that God wants to need us. Love chooses to be vulnerable even when it doesn’t have to be.

At the end of The Chosen episode mentioned earlier, Jesus comes into camp exhausted, sore, and dirty from a long day of healing others. He doesn’t say anything to the disciples except, “Good night.” The disciples had just been bickering and arguing and they are stunned and convicted by what they see in Jesus. Mary goes over to wash Jesus’s feet and help him get cleaned up before going to bed. Jesus gives her a kiss and says to her, “What would I do without you.”

And this is the point. Jesus would be fine without her but He chooses not to be. Jesus could have fed the 5000 by Himself but He turned to His disciples and said, “You give them something to eat” (Matthew 14:16). Jesus could have kept healing the sick and spreading the gospel on His own, but He chose to send out the 12 and give them His authority.

Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.
These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “… As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.”
Matthew 10:1, 5-8

The same is true for us. God doesn’t need us. But God chose to need us. God wants us. He chose to heal the sick, care for the poor, and spread the gospel through us. We are the now the hands and feet of Jesus in the world. It matters if we obey. It matters if we do what He did. It matters if we follow Him.

Where might God be choosing to depend on you?

The Chosen

The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!”
Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (that is, the Christ). And he brought him to Jesus.
John 1:35-36, 40-42

There have been many attempts to capture what Jesus and His disciples were like on film. Most of them either don’t get the story right or don’t get Jesus right. Either they manipulate the story to make Jesus seem more relatable or they keep the story and Jesus comes across as stiff and robotic.

But last night I watched in wonder at one of the best retellings of the gospel stories that I’ve ever seen. The Chosen, created by Dallas Jenkins, is a multi-season TV show about the life of those who knew Jesus best. In the midst of getting to know them, we discover Jesus.

I can’t quite describe what it is like to watch this show. I’ve only seen the first five episodes, but I find that two things are happening inside of me as I watch this masterful production. First, I feel like I am getting to know old friends that I’ve only read about. The life of Peter, Andrew, James, John, Matthew, Thomas and Mary Magdalene come alive. Their life stories weave together and begin to coalesce around Jesus. I found myself knowing these characters, after decades of studying the Bible, and yet discovering them afresh. Aspects of their life and personality come alive in a way that brings new insight into scripture. This same thing happened when I spent a semester studying and living in Jerusalem. After that experience I could never read the Bible the same way again. The same is happening as I watch The Chosen.

The second thing that happens as I watch The Chosen is an almost visceral response to Jesus. As I watch Jesus speak and interact with his disciples, his mother, and the nearby children, I find myself getting emotional. The thought that keeps coming to mind is, “This is the Jesus I know and love! This is the Jesus who invited me to follow Him. This is the Jesus I gave my life to! This is the Jesus I interact with in prayer! This is Him!”

On multiple occasions during certain episodes, I had to stop watching and just worship. Tears welled up in my eyes and I lifted my hands to the heavens in prayer and praise. I am reminded all over again about who this Jesus really is and why He is worth leaving everything behind in order to follow Him. As I’ve watched, a burning desire for others to know this Jesus has stirred inside me.

I can’t think of a better way to prepare for Easter than to watch The Chosen. Please watch it! You won’t regret it!

Mary Magdalene

Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him, and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out…
Luke 8:1-2

While they were going out, a man who was demon-possessed and could not talk was brought to Jesus. And when the demon was driven out, the man who had been mute spoke. The crowd was amazed and said, “Nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel.”
But the Pharisees said, “It is by the prince of demons that he drives out demons.”
Matthew 9:32-34

When they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone out, sitting at Jesus’ feet, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. Those who had seen it told the people how the demon-possessed man had been cured.
Luke 8:35-36

Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a female slave who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. She followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so annoyed that he turned around and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” At that moment the spirit left her.
Acts 16:16-18

In the last four years the Lord has given me the opportunity to be involved in deliverance ministry. I did not seek this out. God placed me in situation after situation where the person in front of me was being oppressed by demonic spirits, and I was faced with the choice to either walk away, leaving the person in their tormented state, or to do something about it. I would pray for people and watch as they contorted, screamed, dry-heaved, shook or coughed violently. I would command the demon to leave in Jesus’s name and it would. The person would walk away more free than they’ve ever felt before.

Over time, I began to learn the nuances of deliverance ministry–how demons get in people, how they fight to stay there, and the inner healing needed in most deliverance situations. What started as a clumsy trust in the power of the name of Jesus has been refined by the Holy Spirit into a regular part of my pastoral ministry. Before the coronavirus and the social distancing orders, I was praying for one to two people a week. In most of these cases, multiple demons would lift off of people during our prayer sessions. Most times they leave quietly and without fanfare, and other times they leave in a way that is more dramatic and violent.

When I describe all of this, people either look at me in disbelief or are often curious why I would want to do this. But this is like asking a nurse why they would want to clean up a bedpan. The point of all of this is not really about the demons. It’s about seeing God’s children set free. It’s about seeing the oppressed have their chains drop off of them for the first time in decades all because of the powerful name of Jesus. It’s about being a conduit of the love of the Father as people experience in tangible form how much God loves them.

One of the best depictions of this reality can be seen in the first episode of the show The Chosen. The first episode is free and you can watch it here. In episode 1, we watch a beautiful retelling of the stories of the people who would have known Jesus best. And while we get to know Peter, Andrew, Matthew and Nicodemus, the emphasis of episode 1 is around the life of Mary Magdalene. If you want to know why I am so passionate about deliverance ministry, watch this episode all the way to the end.