Withered Heart

And He said to the man with the withered hand, "Come here." .....He said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. Mark 3:1,5 Chris Tiegreen, commenting on this passage said, "We must own up to our withered hand." Withered hand. Withered heart. Withered soul and life. At root, we are all "withered." The meaning of the word is "dry and shriveled." I think this marks a great part of every life being lived without Him, no matter how things may appear on the outside. That will not change until we own up to that which is dry and shriveled in our lives, as well as to what it has produced. Dry and shriveled relationships, marriages, families. Dry and shriveled livelihoods and yes, ministries...and churches. Our great problem is that we resist, strongly, to admitting that anything in our lives is withered, and if we do, we usually place the responsibility for it on something or someone else. We rarely see it as being a problem stemming from the conditions of our heart and soul. Tiegreen said, "Our fallenness (sin) is all we have to offer Him. In His mercy, it's all He asks." Someone said that we cannot be saved until we realize and admit that we need to be. Our sinful pride and self-reliance in all things keeps us from admitting that need. The result is always going to be a shriveled life. Jesus told the man with the withered hand to "stretch it out" to Him.This is our need. This is what we must do when we come to Him. Jesus wanted the man to stretch all of his hand out, with no part of it held back. It is the same in His invitation to us. We must "stretch out" all of our being to Him, with no part of ourselves held back. Ourselves and every aspect of what has been, what is, and what will be, given over to Him. When we release all from our withered hands to Him, He in turn restores all that the withering has touched. I have worked with people in all kinds of ministries for more than 40 years now. Many will be aware of the withered areas of their lives. They can admit it, but they can't bring themselves to surrender it to Him. Can you? We cannot escape the reality of our withered hand, but we can see it healed. Fully healed and restored. All we need to do is bring it to Him, give it to Him, and leave it with Him. He invited us to come. Can we? Will we? Will you? Blessings, Pastor O