What if I told you that God could be seen in the most ordinary things every day?
What if I told you that every day, ordinary events could teach us extraordinary eternal truths? Would you believe me?
Welcome back to season 5 of the Set Your Mind Above Podcast! My name is BJ Sipe, and I am a Christian, a preacher, a husband, and a father. And I’m excited to share a few moments together with you learning some important lessons from the simplest things. Let’s grow together!
You want to know how I know I’m getting older? I do every day, normal kinds of things – and I still wind up getting hurt doing them. I used to laugh at older folks when I was a very young man because it seemed every time they got together, at some point the conversation would drift inevitably to their most recent aches and ailments. Well, I’m not laughing anymore – I totally get it. So, a couple of months ago I was lifting at the gym, and I wasn’t even lifting heavy. It was a routine, normal kind of a workout when I suddenly felt my hamstring/inner thigh area on my left leg completely seize up. I knew immediately that something was wrong – I couldn’t lift anymore, and I was walking with quite the gimp. I hoped that maybe I just had a cramp, and I would be better by later that day. Well, two months later – here I am writing about it, and it’s still a problem. Now, you wouldn’t know I have a problem just by looking at me – I have no cast, no brace, nothing like that. But internally, there’s clearly problems - I have messed something up deep tissue.
So, a few weeks ago, I finally ended up getting a referral to physical therapy to see what they could do with it. After answering some preliminary questions, the doctor starts poking around and goes, “Oh yeah, your adductor is really acting up.” I don’t know much about this kind of stuff, but he did his best to break it down for me to be able to understand. Essentially, everything was locked up – and it was his job to get the muscle to relax. So there was going to be a three-step process to healing: ultrasound, dry needling, and kinetic tape. The ultrasound therapy was to heat up that muscle and allow it to ease up. Same kind of idea behind doing a heating pad at home, but ultrasound penetrates deep into the tissue. Dry needling is also intended to relax the muscle, but it’s not quite as fun as ultrasound because where I’m having it done - it hurts. To sum up, you stick a needle or multiple needles into targeted areas of a muscle, which will cause it initially to spasm (which is the rough part). But the goal is that while it goes in like steak, it pulls out like butter after the muscle has relaxed. Finally, the kinetic tape is applied to help retrain the muscle to not seize up and tighten as it has been doing. When the therapist applied it for the first time, he jested and said, “the hair removal is free when you take this off.” He wasn’t kidding. If you heard a loud scream sometime earlier this week, that was me ripping the tape off along with the rest of the hair on my leg. It will be a while longer before my leg is fully healed, and even though it’s challenging, I’m thankful to be going through this process so that I can get back to full strength.
All around us, people are suffering from things that cannot be seen on the surface. On the outside you wouldn’t suspect anything at all as they go about their daily business as usual and seem quite alright to the naked eye. But what lies beneath tells a very different story. The kinds of things I’m speaking of are not muscular or physical in nature, but spiritual. We live in a world that is full of sin and consequences for that sin. Day in and day out we encounter broken people who are broken on account of their own sin or as collateral damage of someone else’s. On the surface, you see a waiter with a smile on his face bringing you your meal; but underneath it all, you would see a man with a broken heart whose wife just left him and his children without warning. On the surface, you see a confident social media influencer who seems to have the perfect life; but underneath it all, you see a terrified and lonely girl who is chasing validation and love after years of abuse as a child. On the surface, you see a coworker who inspires you because of his attention to detail and work ethic; but underneath it all, you would see a paranoid and guilt-ridden man trying to cover his tracks at every turn to hide the fact that he embezzled from the company. The truth is that everyone has internal spiritual issues that none of us are able to see on the surface, but they are nonetheless there. They are crippling in our lives if left unchecked, untreated, and unrepented of. Jesus knows this – and in fact, this is the reason he came to this earth – to heal our internal spiritual hemorrhaging.
To kick off his ministry in his very own hometown, we read the following account in Luke 4 starting in vv. 16, “He came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. As usual, he entered the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him, and unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written: The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. He then rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. And the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on him. He began by saying to them, “Today as you listen, this Scripture has been fulfilled.”
Do you find yourself in this Scripture read by Jesus? If we’re being honest with ourselves, every single one of us does somewhere on account of our sin and the sins of others we are hurt by as well. We are spiritually impoverished. We are captives to our sin. We are blind and unable to see our faults. We are brokenhearted. We are in need of grace, in need of guidance, in need of God. And here is the most important part – these internal spiritual needs are different than our physical ones. With my leg, perhaps given enough time and rest it could heal on its own. But when it comes to sin…time most certainly does not heal all wounds. Only Jesus can. Unless we go to the Great Physician, our condition will never change. Jesus offers us healing – but we have to be willing to come to him on his terms and allow him to do his work in us. You have to be willing to let him penetrate deep into your heart and your soul through his teaching. You have to allow his Word to prick your conscience – and though painful – through it allow it to soften your hard heart. You have to allow Jesus to mold you and shape you in the proper way, to retrain us in the way in which we are to go. My friends – don’t ignore your great spiritual needs. They won’t get better on their own. Even if no one else can see them, you know them – and the Lord knows them. Come to him – and allow him to bind up what our sin and this world has broken.
This has been the Set Your Mind Above Podcast, season 5 episode 14 – and I’m so thankful that we had this time to grow together! A new episode is dropped every Friday, so be sure to tune in next week. Also, if you’re able to, go ahead and like and subscribe to the podcast, give us a good rating or most importantly share it with someone else – it would help to reach others that I never could alone. And more than anything, always remember the following: know that I love you, that God loves you, and may we all each and every day set our minds above.
