My husband, Ken, and I are reading through the Bible again this year, and we are coming across so many, many names – we were talking the other night how we know that God has a particular reason for mentioning each and every name. Like the name of Paseah. We came across it in the list of genealogies in 1 Chronicles. It’s just one little name squeezed in between hundreds, but God thinks it’s important enough to list. And Paseah, we learned, means, “The lame one.” Paseah was a biblical name given to someone with a disability.
There are all sorts of lame people listed in Scripture, and it’s neat that most of them are given honorable mention. In fact, in Isaiah 33 it says that with God, even the disabled carry off the plunder. Now that’s quite a promise for you today if you’re feeling the aches and pains. It’s a great promise for anyone feeling the crunch of multiple sclerosis or diabetes. It’s a glorious promise for anyone with arthritis today who is thinking, “Of what use am I to the Lord? What good can I do?”
Oh, you are ever much used for the Lord when you are yielded to God, because for those who lean on the Lord in their weaknesses, God promises that they will “take the prey.” In Christ, you are a captor, you’re a victor, we are defeating the enemy and we are mighty in battle. A physical disability, as far as God is concerned, doesn’t have to be a handicap. Actually, it can be an asset for the Christian because as Amy Carmichael once wrote, a physical affliction is an opportunity to prove in practice the fullness of God's enabling love.
God is supposed to show up through weak people… like you. People with severe arthritis or fibromyalgia hold a special place close to the heart of Jesus because it is not by your power, friend, or by your might or strength, but always and always by the Spirit of God. Weak people, like me, know that. We live there.
It’s the message we are giving this week among hundreds of disabled people in Mexico, and next week among even more disabled people in Honduras. We are delivering wheelchairs and Bibles and telling all the Paseahs we meet, all the lame ones, that they are captors and victors and mighty in battle against the forces of evil, for as they yield their limitations to Almighty God, he will show his breathtaking power through their weakness and everyone will sit up and take notice. God has done this! God has given this person His smile. Truly, the God of the Bible must be great and glorious to inspire that kind of loyalty in the middle of such affliction.
Are you a Paseah? Don’t think of yourself as just one more person who is physically weak squeezed between a long genealogy of healthy able-bodied people around you. Paseah means “lame one” and that’s a good name, it’s an honorable name, and best of all, it’s a privileged name. Because you take the plunder. You take the prey.
Used by permission of
JONI AND FRIENDS
P.O. Box 3333
Agoura Hills, CA 93176
© Joni and Friends