Test It and See
"Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!" — Psalm 34:8
Get Up and Try It
There is a small, consistent detail in these accounts that is easy to miss.
After praying, people are asked to test it.
The woman with arthritis was asked to walk up and down a flight of stairs. She came back and said it felt a lot better.
The man with the hip was asked to stand up and check. He stood, and started crying.
The woman who could not see was asked to read the letters on a hat. Then a book from four feet away.
The taxi driver was asked to read a poster on a wall fifteen or twenty feet behind them — the same poster he had squinted at and failed to read twenty minutes earlier.
Test it. Move the thing that hurt. Try what you could not do.
Why This Matters
Two reasons, and both are practical.
You may already be free and not know it. People carry conditions so long that they stop attempting the things the condition prevents. The pain is gone, but the avoidance is habitual, so the freedom goes unnoticed for weeks.
Testing produces evidence. Faith is not the same as vagueness. When Jesus healed people, they walked, they saw, they picked up their mats. Something observable happened, and the observation mattered.
Notice also what happened at the pool: Jesus said "Get up, take up your bed, and walk." The man had to move before anything happened. The test and the healing were the same act.
Keep Your Records
This is where the issue grid earns its keep.
Consider the woman who worked through this process and described feeling almost no difference at first. But as days and weeks passed, things began to change — her thinking shifted, and a soothing peace began to settle over her. Weeks later she said she felt completely different, so much lighter, like a brand new person.
Looking at her grid — first week, fourth week, and after — showed what memory alone could never have shown. In week one, very little had changed. By week four, most of what she had struggled with had melted away.
Without a written record, she would have had only an impression. With one, she had evidence.
Record intensity weekly. Same items, same scale, dated every time.
Point to Ponder
Some people are free and do not know it, because they stopped trying the thing years ago.
Verse to Remember
"Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!" — Psalm 34:8
Question to Consider
What have I stopped attempting entirely — and how would I even know if it had changed?
Today's Practice
Test everything, today.
Physical. Move what hurt. Bend, lift, walk the stairs, turn your neck, read the small print. Do the specific thing you have been avoiding.
Mental. Think about the thing that always produces fear or grief. Notice the intensity. Compare it to what it used to be.
Emotional. Say the name of the person you forgave. Notice what happens in your chest.
Appetite. If you have been fighting a craving, notice whether it is still pulling.
Record every result on your issue grid with today's date.
And be honest about what has not changed. Do not manufacture results. If something is unchanged, write the same number. That honesty is what makes the record worth anything — and unchanged items are information, telling you where to keep looking.
Prayer
Father, I am going to test what You have done rather than assume nothing happened.
Some things I stopped attempting years ago and I do not even know their current state. Show me.
Give me honesty in the recording — not manufactured results to prove something, and not dismissiveness that overlooks what You have actually done.
Where things have changed, let me see it and thank You. Where they have not, keep showing me what remains. In the name of Jesus. Amen.
They were told to get up and check. Every one of them.