Sat 27 June I know from experience and from the Lord!

Matthew 8:5-17

When Jesus arrived in Capernaum, a Roman army captain came and pleaded with him to come to his home and heal his servant boy who was in bed paralyzed and racked with pain. “Yes,” Jesus said, “I will come and heal him.” Then the officer said, “Sir, I am not worthy to have you in my home; and it isn’t necessary for you to come. If you will only stand here and say, ‘Be healed,’ my servant will get well! I know, because I am under the authority of my superior officers and I have authority over my soldiers, and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my slave boy, ‘Do this or that,’ and he does it. And I know you have authority to tell his sickness to go—and it will go!”
Jesus stood there amazed! Turning to the crowd he said, “I haven’t seen faith like this in all the land of Israel! And I tell you this, that many Gentiles like this Roman officer, shall come from all over the world and sit down in the Kingdom of Heaven with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And many an Israelite—those for whom the Kingdom was prepared—shall be cast into outer darkness, into the place of weeping and torment.”
Then Jesus said to the Roman officer, “Go on home. What you have believed has happened!” And the boy was healed that same hour!
When Jesus arrived at Peter’s house, Peter’s mother-in-law was in bed with a high fever. But when Jesus touched her hand, the fever left her; and she got up and prepared a meal for them!
That evening several demon-possessed people were brought to Jesus; and when he spoke a single word, all the demons fled; and all the sick were healed. This fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, “He took our sicknesses and bore our diseases.”

Food for thought!
Twice the Roman captain said the words, "I know". First he said that he knows from his experience; then he said that he knows that Jesus...
Two knows, one from experience, the other from Jesus. What has experience taught you, and what do you know about Jesus? The Bible (Deut. 11: 2) reminds us – "Remember today what you have learned about the LORD through your experiences with him" – it is very important to remember what the Lord has done for us in life. Every challenge, large or small, does equip us for a future opportunity.
Remember David as he confronted Goliath. He used his past experience to confront this giant. He said:
When I am taking care of my father’s sheep, and a lion or a bear comes and grabs a lamb from the flock, I go after it with a club and take the lamb from its mouth. If it turns on me, I catch it by the jaw and club it to death. I have done this to both lions and bears, and I’ll do it to this heathen Philistine too, for he has defied the armies of the living God! The Lord who saved me from the claws and teeth of the lion and the bear will save me from this Philistine!”
Is this not what the captain in the Gospel is doing? "I know, because I am under the authority of my superior officers and I have authority over my soldiers, and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my slave boy, ‘Do this or that,’ and he does it."
You, what do you know from your experience? What has it taught you about the Lord, and about life and living? Like David, like the captain, let us confront the present challenges inspired by what we went through in the past. In other words, whatever we went through in the past was an ingredient for the present moment; our past prepared us for our present. Don’t see your struggle as an interruption to life but as preparation for life.