While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy. When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” And immediately the leprosy left him. One day Jesus was teaching, and Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there. They had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick. Some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus. When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.”

–Luke 5:12-13, 17-20 (TNIV)

What a wonderful story here. Let the scene arise in your mind. Imagine you are the one who comes to Jesus, desperate for healing. Imagine he looks at you as you cry out to him for help. Hear him say to you, “I am willing!” If you do not think he can (or will) do this for you, then read the story of the paralytic and learn from it. Jesus may not heal you in the way you want, but he will heal you if you have faith to allow him. You don’t have to wait until you “go to heaven” to enjoy his healing touch. You can have it now. Why? Because he is alive and he loves you and wants the best for you. But he will not force himself on you. He will wait until you invite him to heal you in faith. Are you availing yourself of Christ’s wondrous healing power?

Norman Harrison in His in a Life of Prayer tells how Charles Inglis, while making the voyage to America a number of years ago, learned from the devout and godly captain of an experience which he had had but recently with George Müller of Bristol. It seems that they had encountered a very dense fog. Because of it the captain had remained on the bridge continuously for twenty-four hours, when Mr. Müller came to him and said, “Captain, I have come to tell you that I must be in Quebec on Saturday afternoon.” When informed that it was impossible, he replied: “Very well. If the ship cannot take me, God will find some other way. I have never broken an engagement for fifty-seven years. Let us go down into the chartroom and pray.”

The captain continues the story thus: “I looked at that man of God and thought to myself, What lunatic asylum could that man have come from. I never heard such a thing as this. ‘Mr. Müller,’ I said, ‘do you know how dense this fog is?’ ‘No,’ he replied, ‘my eye is not on the density of the fog, but on the living God, who controls every circumstance of my life.’ He knelt down and prayed one of those simple prayers, and when he had finished I was going to pray; but he put his hand on my shoulder and told me not to pray. ‘Firstly,’ he said, ‘because you do not believe God will, and secondly, I believe God has, and there is no need whatever for you to pray about it.’ I looked at him, and George Müller said, ‘Captain, I have known my Lord for fifty-seven years, and there has never been a single day that I have failed to get an audience with the King. Get up and open the door, and you will find that the fog has gone.’ I got up and the fog was indeed gone. George Müller was in Quebec Saturday afternoon for his engagement.”

–Glenn Clark, I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes

Would you like me to list also the paths of repentance? They are numerous and quite varied, and all lead to heaven. A first path of repentance is condemnation of your own sins: “Be first to admit your sins and you will be justified” [declared not guilty in God’s eyes]. That will be enough reason for the Lord to forgive you, for if you condemn your own sins you are slower to commit them again.

Another and no less valuable one is to put our of our minds the harm done us by our enemies, in order to master our anger, and to forgive our fellow servants’ sins against us. Then our own sins against the Lord will be forgiven us.

Do you want to know a third path? It consists of prayer that is fervent, careful and comes from the heart.

If you want to hear of a fourth, I will mention almsgiving, whose power is great and far-reaching. If, moreover, one lives a modest, humble life, that no less than the other things I have mentioned takes away sin. Proof of this is the tax collector who had no good deeds to mention, but offered humility instead and was relieved of a heavy burden of sins.

Thus I have shown you five paths of repentance: condemnation of your own sins, forgiveness of our neighbor’s sins against us, prayer, almsgiving and humility.

Do not be idle, then, but walk daily in all these paths; they are easy, and you cannot plead your poverty [for not being able to walk in them].

—Homily on the Devil the Tempter 2, 6.49

If you are reading these as a bean counter, you are missing the point. Look instead to the heart and inner orientation required.

Before his conversion Paul was fulfilling the law through fear of punishment, not through love of righteousness.

–Augustine, On Two Letters of Pelagius 1.15

Knowledge therefore comes through faith, and without faith there is no knowledge. How so? It is only through faith that we know the power of [Jesus’] resurrection. For what reasoning could demonstrate the resurrection to us? None, but it is through faith. And if the resurrection of Christ in the flesh is known through faith, how can the nativity of the Word be comprehended by reason? For the resurrection is far more plausible to reason than the virgin birth.

–John Chrysostom, Homily on Philippians 12.3.10-11