Devotional 40: God is our Physician!

As I write this devotional, I am suffering from an acute sinus infection that has left me very weak and with continual pain in my sinuses, ears, and body.  Pain is a good thing!  Pain causes you to slow down and find out why, and then take measures to correct the problem.  Pain is a gift from God!  When I am in pain because of sickness I am reminded of how dependent I am on God for my very life. Sickening pain causes me to look to my Creator God, who is completely in control of my life as revealed through His prophet in Deuteronomy 32:39, “See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.”

Can you think of a time when a sickness caused you to look to God for healing? There are many examples in Scripture where people prayed for their own healing or for the healing of others:

Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, and also healed his wife and female slaves so that they bore children(Genesis 20:17),

And Moses cried to the LORD, “O God, please heal her–please” (Numbers 12:13),

And the LORD heard Hezekiah and healed the people (2 Chronicles 30:20),

Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am languishing; heal me, O LORD, for my bones are troubled (Psalm 6:2),  and Psalm 30:2,  O LORD my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me.

There is a stark contrast in Scripture between two kings who each were sick.  Hezekiah sought God and was healed.  In 2 Kings 20:5 we read God’s word to the prophet, “Turn back, and say to Hezekiah the leader of my people, thus says the LORD, the God of David your father: I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Behold, I will heal you. On the third day you shall go up to the house of the LORD.”  However, it is said of King Asa in 2 Chronicles 16:12, “In the thirty-ninth year of his reign Asa was diseased in his feet, and his disease became severe. Yet even in his disease he did not seek the LORD, but sought help from physicians.”   What kind of person are you when you are sick?  Do you seek God? Or do you seek only the help of physicians?  The answer to that question reveals who you are really trusting for your healing.

Believers are exhorted to seek the prayers of others to God, when they are sick:

Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working (James 5:14-16).

Do you recognize that healing from physical disease is a gift from God? Furthermore, can you accept the truth that sickness itself is a gift from God? God has a purpose for our own good and His ultimate glory in every sickness, as the Apostle Paul testifies in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10:

So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me.  But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.  For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Ultimately, when we are with the Lord in Glory we will be healed of all of our diseases as God reveals through David’s song of praise in Psalm 103:1-5:

Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!  Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

Will you look to the Lord in confident trust as your Great Physician?  Your thoughts, words, and actions will reveal what is really in your heart.

With Prayer, Mark

© March, 2012         Scripture quoted: ESV – Emphasis added

Verses for our meditation:  God Is Our Physician

Psalm 41:1-4, Blessed is the one who considers the poor! In the day of trouble the LORD delivers him; the LORD protects him and keeps him alive; he is called blessed in the land; you do not give him up to the will of his enemies. The LORD sustains him on his sickbed; in his illness you restore him to full health. As for me, I said, “O LORD, be gracious to me; heal me, for I have sinned against you!”

Psalm 147:1-3, Praise the LORD! For it is good to sing praises to our God; for it is pleasant, and a song of praise is fitting. The LORD builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the outcasts of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.

Jeremiah 17:14, Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved, for you are my praise.

Ezekiel 47:12, And on the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither, nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing.”

Matthew 4:23,  And [Jesus] went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people.

Matthew 9:12, But when he heard it, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.

Mathew 14:14, When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick.

Luke 8:43-44,  And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and though she had spent all her living on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone. She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment, and immediately her discharge of blood ceased.

1Corinthians 12:8-9,  For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit.

Revelation 22:2, through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

Isaiah 38:9-22,  A writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, after he had been sick and had recovered from his sickness: I said, In the middle of my days I must depart; I am consigned to the gates of Sheol for the rest of my years. I said, I shall not see the LORD, the LORD in the land of the living; I shall look on man no more among the inhabitants of the world. My dwelling is plucked up and removed from me like a shepherd’s tent; like a weaver I have rolled up my life; he cuts me off from the loom; from day to night you bring me to an end; I calmed myself until morning; like a lion he breaks all my bones; from day to night you bring me to an end. Like a swallow or a crane I chirp; I moan like a dove. My eyes are weary with looking upward. O Lord, I am oppressed; be my pledge of safety! What shall I say? For he has spoken to me, and he himself has done it. I walk slowly all my years because of the bitterness of my soul. O Lord, by these things men live, and in all these is the life of my spirit. Oh restore me to health and make me live! Behold, it was for my welfare that I had great bitterness; but in love you have delivered my life from the pit of destruction, for you have cast all my sins behind your back. For Sheol does not thank you; death does not praise you; those who go down to the pit do not hope for your faithfulness. The living, the living, he thanks you, as I do this day; the father makes known to the children your faithfulness. The LORD will save me, and we will play my music on stringed instruments all the days of our lives, at the house of the LORD.