November 25, 2024 -- Mark 5:17-20 -- Healed and Directed by the Captain of Salvation

17 And they began to beg Jesus to depart from their region. 18 As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him. 19 And he did not permit him but said to him, “Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” 20 And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled.
Mark 5:17-20 ESV
 
The man, once possessed by a legion of demons (note this fact: a Roman legion consisted of 6,000 men!), is healed; his healer Jesus is about to leave. The people who’d bound and chained the one possessed, rather than rejoicing in this man’s healing, are begging Jesus to leave. The healed man wants to go with Jesus—but he is told to stay and witness to Jesus’s mercy in his life.
 
This is an incredible story. How hard-hearted the people appear. Until you realize the healed man used to roam around the graveyard, yelling, scaring people. He'd cut himself, freely bleeding. Before he’d gone off to live on his own, people had tried to help. He was a danger to himself and to others, so they tied him up. He escaped. They put him in chains. He broke them. He escaped. People were afraid. He was afraid. Jesus comes and heals the man, the question is: would he stay healed? The answer is alluded to, the man goes into the region of the Decapolis, the 10 cities, and proclaims what Jesus did for him. People marvel. They are amazed at his testimony of healing. He goes to people who’d chained him. He goes to people who mocked him. He goes to people who rejected him. He goes to family that had given up on him. They can’t refute the fact he really is healed. They might want to. Who knows if there'd hadn't been times of quiet, deceptive days where the demonic forces were not fierce, only to suddenly erupt again. And again. Again.
 
What is the point. When you experience the healing of God, healing like the hold of addictions being broken, healing like that of life-controlling issues finally subdued, healing like having hardened sins broken and your life takes a completely different direction, count on this—you will encounter people who are afraid of you. They’ll remember what you were like and based on that doubt if a really lasting change has taken place. There’ve heard so many, oh so many past promised. Broken. So many false starts. Crashed and burned.
 
What makes this time different? It is the love of Jesus Christ and the Spirit-given humility to own up to failures and to confess them and walk once again in obedience to Jesus. Christians who are in Jesus Christ are Overcomers who struggle with addictions, sins, and other life-controlling issues, but have now intentionally submitted their lives to the care of God as He guides them. The healing is awesome. However, remaining submitted to God is difficult to do because God will often guide His children back to the very places where the people who once knew them now will see them as changed and made-whole.
 
In Hebrews 2:10 Jesus is called the Captain of Salvation. He sees the entire battlefield. He knows the strengths of the enemy and the vulnerabilities. He sends His Overcomers, the soldiers who have experienced His healing, into battle for His Name’s sake. In the thick of battle, no foot soldier (at least not a wise one) stands up and says, “Um, Captain, I have a better strategy”. (Humanly speaking we Christians try that all the time, but you know in military terms, that is a non-starter!) So, like the healed demoniac, we trust the Captain of our Salvation to command us and bring us to the place where we will be most effective in His campaign to work all things to His plan and purpose.

It is easy enough to forget this life is a great battlefield between the demonic forces. A battlefield where the pressures of a world that institutionalizes sin push hard against you. Even your heart is a battlefield, fighting the natural tendency to sin rather than serve; fighting against the constantly renewed decision to submit your life to will of God as He guides you.
 
 Trust the Captain of Salvation, Jesus, that He Who began the healing work in your life will bring it to completion. Part of the healing work might be, like the it was for the man from whom the demons were cast out, to go to the very people who wounded you and fortified by the Holy Spirit, show yourself cleansed and in your right mind. Some will still reject you. But many hearing and seeing your testimony will be awed by the greatness of God and with you believe.
 
 
O LORD GOD, of infinite mercy, we beseech Thee to look in compassion upon our country now involved in war. Pardon our offences, our pride and arrogance, our self-sufficiency and forgetfulness of Thee. Give wisdom to our counsellors, skill to our officers, courage and endurance to our sailor, soldiers, and airmen, and all who guard our shores. Look in mercy on those immediately exposed to peril, to conflict, sickness, and death. Be with the dying; give to them true repentance and unfeigned trust in Thee; and in the Day of Judgment, good Lord, deliver them. Finally, we beseech Thee to remove in Thy good providence all causes and occasions of war; to dispose our hearts and the hearts of our enemies to moderation; and of Thy great goodness, to restore peace among the nations; through Christ our Lord. Amen.
 
A PRAYER IN TIME OF WAR, Divine Service Book For The Armed Forces, 1950, page 30
 
https://youtu.be/mSzm7rEkmEU?si=ga3sKZxtrokaWToA Here I am, Lord
 

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