One of the things we have gotten used to in everyday life is that thing have a “shelf life”—that everything eventually wears down and dies. We expect this with our appliances, food, vehicles, houses, and everything else we own. In fact, we are fairly quick to say as much when we talk about our bodies and our health as well. I can’t tell you how many of my patients at the hospital tell me things to the effect of “well, what can you expect when you get old? Things wear down and stop working right.” They say this in response to pain and health problems they have found they and others tend to experience as they grow older. And while I understand this experience is common, this isn’t what God has promised us in Christ Jesus. In fact, it isn’t even what God designed for humans to experience when He created mankind to begin with. In other words, this idea of “wear and tear” may be common, but it isn’t normal. There is no such thing as normal wear and tear.
When we look at the Bible, we see this in a few different places, but most notably we see it in the lives of the Israelites after they left Egypt and before they entered the Promised Land. Deuteronomy 8:4 says, “Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years.” (some translations say “blister” instead of “swell”). Deuteronomy 29:5 says, “Yet the Lord says, “During the forty years that I led you through the wilderness, your clothes did not wear out, nor did the sandals on your feet.” Two different places we see the Bible explain that God caused their clothes to remain in good condition without growing threadbare and their feet taking no damage from all of the walking.
Think about it—what clothing do you know of that you can wear regularly for 40 years and have it still be in a good, usable condition? I’m not talking about your favorite shirt you had when you were a teen that you still wear but have to wear another shirt under it because it’s basically see-through, but an actual good-working-condition piece of clothing. Unless you’re in your early 20’s reading this, then you don’t have any clothing from back then because we find that our clothes wear out.
But the Israelites didn’t have this problem. They didn’t have to make new clothes the entire time they were on the journey, and they didn’t have to wait for damage to their feet and legs from overuse to heal before they could continue their trek. Not only that, but that was what the Israelites experienced under an inferior covenant than the one we live with. Think about the implications it has for our lives.
If there is no such thing as normal wear and tear, then what kinds of things do we experience in our lives that we shouldn’t be experiencing, and what should our life experience actually look like? I cannot tell you how many people who hear me talk about life and immortality and God’s plans for us to live and not die tell me things like “Just wait until you’re older” or “Come talk to me once you’ve gotten a few more years under your belt.” What I don’t think people realize when they say these things is that I’m well aware of our common life experiences. What I am not is stupid. I understand that most people die. I understand that commonly people age and have health problems as they get older. In spite of that, the Bible tells us that we need to shift our beliefs to better align with what God is saying and doing in the earth, so I expect that is what we should be focusing on, not arguing with me over how things commonly tend to happen.
It doesn’t matter what our common experiences are, we need to learn to walk in faith instead. We need to be people who say “my experiences will be dictated by my faith” instead of “my faith will be dictated by my experiences.” I cover this topic of “common experience” versus “normal experience” in my book “The Gospel of Life and Immortality,” which I wrote to help people walk in this revelation to a greater degree. It can be really difficult when all of life is shouting at us that things are hopeless, that nothing we do will work to stop death, and that decay is our inevitable doom. But in Jesus Christ, none of those things are true. We have the greatest hope of all mankind because Jesus has truly defeated death, hell, and the grave through His sacrifice once and for all, and now our job is a work of faith—to believe on the One that God has sent so that we can be saved, healed, delivered, and set free in every way.
