Hebrews 12:12-13: Spiritual Chiropractics

Hebrews 12:12-13.. "Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed."

A few days ago I went into the chiropractor because my shoulder hurt. After looking at me for a few minutes, the chiropractor said I had Scapular Dyskinesis, which is a fancy term meaning that my entire shoulder blade has shifted out of place. Ouch! Well, it isn't quite as painful as it sounds, but there are a few weeks of a healing process involved. After she did her chiropractic work to get my shoulder blade back where it should be, she gave me some stretches to do at home. "I can move the shoulder blade back into place," she told me, "but the only way it's going to stay there is if you build the muscles that are around it--the responsibility is on you." Ever since then, I have been doing the stretches she has given me, and my shoulder has been feeling better.

The reason I bring this up to you today is because I think its a great analogy for our spiritual lives. God is always willing to "put our shoulder blades back where they should be." He is always willing to help us fix the problems in our lives that we might be aligned with his will. However, we still have a responsibility to "do our streteches," because if we don't, what God has fixed will fall right to where it was before.

Hebrews 12:12-13 talks about lifting our hands and strengthening our knees so that "what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed." In other words, the places in our life that are weak must be dealt with and not left alone, because if we leave them alone, they will be led into sin rather than being healed. Let me explain with an example. Perhaps one struggles with gluttony, but decides to do nothing about it. Eventually, because he is not actively fighting temptation, he will fall to his gluttonous ways and sin. However, if he chose to strengthen this area in his life that was weak (whether by prayer [see yesterday's devotional] or by reading God's Word), he would no longer fall into these areas of temptation but rather be healed. To go back to the analogy I started with, if the gluttonous man chose to "stretch" and strengthen the places where he was spiritually weak, his shoulder blade would stay in place, so that he might not go right back to where he started.

So, how are you with actively strengthening the weak spots in your life? Do you have any shoulder blades that have fallen out of where they should be? Have you asked God to heal them, and followed him up with stretching your spiritual muscles? Praise the Lord! Who not only promises to heal our past sins, but also strengthen us to fight them in the present and in the future (see 1 John 1:9 and Hebrews 4:16).

So, go to the chiropractor. Have God fix you up, and ask him what you can further do to "stretch" that you may remain strong.

[And also, prayers for my physical shoulder would also be appreciated!]