Forget Not

Psalm 103:1 – 3

1 Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His Holy name.
2 Bless the Lord, O my soul and forget none of His benefits.
3 Who pardons all your iniquities; who heals all your diseases.

When we began this series, did you realize how many times God spoke about healing? Health and healing is not one of those topics with only two or three verses. God has been clear from the beginning and has reiterated His position that He is our healer.

So, it turns out that one of the benefits of life with Yahweh is that He heals all your diseases. Apparently, He pardons all our iniquities too. Do you find it easier to believe this one than the former? Certainly, we hear more about the forgiveness of sins than we do healing, so it puts that benefit more in the front of our minds, but we need all the benefits of the Lord.

David, the author of this psalm, was preaching to his own soul. He would not let his internal self deny the grace the Lord had bathed him in. He commanded his soul to remember the benefits God has bestowed on His children but also, he ordered his soul to bless the Lord. I think that shows his relationship with God. He, David, certainly appreciated the benefits like healing, but he always backed it up with adoration and praise for the Father. He clearly was not taking his healing for granted. He wasn’t ignoring it either, and that is a key for us.  Acknowledging the benefits and the benefactor seems to be the key here.

Fully appreciate the benefits. Don’t deny them or ignore them and in the balance be thankful and bless the Lord.

Heal the Wounds

Isaiah 61: 1             Passion Translation

The mighty Spirit of Lord Yahweh is wrapped around me because Yahweh has anointed me, . . . He sent me to heal the wounds of the brokenhearted.

I have been thinking on this verse for some time now and I am not sure that we fully embrace its meaning or significance for our own personal experience. So, today, let’s think about the brokenhearted. Who are they? What does this verse imply or express for them?

First, who are the brokenhearted? Well, at some level it is each of us, right? Raise your hand if you have never had a hurt heart. Everyone has suffered heartbreak. It’s part of life but so is healing and that is where I want to focus today. Before we look at healing, let’s think about how one suffers heartbreak.

We often think of a romantic breakup, maybe even a divorce. If that doesn’t hurt your heart, then you need heart surgery to replace that stone heart with a human one. Of course, it hurts. You would be a lesser being if it didn’t. What about the death of a loved one? That’s heartbreaking. What else? Each of has lived through times that threatened to splinter our hearts beyond repair. For me, one of the hardest was the second knee injury which effectively closed the door on my collegiate sports. We each can point to many times when our hearts took a very hard knock. In some cases, the injury was so acute that we failed to heal. Some were battered and bruised; others shattered. Some healed, others continue to suffer the brokenness. However, there is hope and there is help and you know help’s name.

The Passion Translation calls this chapter, “Messiah’s Mission.” One of the anointings which is upon Jesus is for healing. Yahweh anointed Jesus to heal the wounds of our broken hearts. Many of you can attest to how Jesus lifted you in your darkest moments. You can tell of how Jesus touched your broken heart and made you whole again. Unfortunately, there are even more people for whom this story is incomplete. They have yet to experience the fullness, the completeness of Jesus’ healing. Perhaps, though, each of us has at least a small injury which is still unhealed, one that would benefit from the master’s touch.

The reason some of you are enjoying healing and others are plagued by lingering damage is your ability to open that injured heart to Jesus’ ministrations. Some of us are too busy to spend time letting Jesus touch our hearts. Some of us are just too lazy. Both are ridiculous excuses, but they work. We don’t slow down long enough or spend enough quiet time with Jesus to ever let him touch our hearts. We only slow down long enough to talk; not long enough, to hear. Some won’t even read to the end of this devotion to hear what the Lord would say to them when he is desperate to touch them and relieve their suffering.

The other major impediment to healing is fear. One of the reasons people don’t slow down and listen to the voice of our Lord is because they are afraid of what he will say, afraid of what he will see within us, and deathly afraid of seeing it for ourselves. We can be afraid of the healing too. That gets played out in the world all the time. People are sick but afraid to go to the doctor for a diagnosis. It’s crazy but it’s real, and it’s powerful. Some people are so afraid that the healing, whether by medical science or by Jesus, is going to be painful that they choose to live with the pain of the injury. That also is ludicrous, but we are pain avoidance organisms. Even though we have the ability to think and reason, many times base emotions overrule rationality.

I wish I could touch you and heal your emotions. I wish, with a word, I could evaporate the scars from your broken heartedness, but each of us must make that individual decision to be healed. Those who do not allow themselves to heal end up inflicting their pain on others and then it becomes a vicious cycle. Let me be the one who tells you the truth about the pain of healing. Yes, it hurts. HOWEVER, it is so very brief and miniscule in comparison to the pain brought about by the lack of healing. Yes, I remember facing down the fear in my own life, but the pain of healing is so small and temporary that I have learned to face it much more bravely. It is an instant whereas people live their entire lives with a broken heart. They live a superficial, meaningless existence because they are too afraid to go deep. It is a horrible existence when they could have freedom. They could be healed and enjoy the joy of Jesus’ Spirit. Worst of all, their misery is contagious. They spread it to their family and friends. There is no relief for them because they don’t truly know the healer. They may be Christians, but they don’t “know” Jesus. Jesus has been anointed to heal our hearts. Yahweh sent him into the earth to remedy the brokenness. If we want to live as realized Christians, we must allow him into every part of our lives, even those dark corners where we have clustered every hurt and disappointment.

Who do you know who needs a touch from Jesus? Who do you know who has, at one time or another, had their heart broken? Will you send them this word of encouragement today? Beloved, Jesus came to heal us. He is real and his love is real. He can touch a heart and make it whole. He put himself on a cross so that we would not have to live slaves to our hurts. Won’t you reach out to him today? Won’t you let him bless and heal you? Share this with someone you love and let them know that Jesus wants to heal their hearts with his love.
As always, my phone line and email inbox are open if you need assistance. Bless the Lord! Bless you!

Heads Up

Psalm 3: 3                   KJV

But thou, O Lord, art a shield for me; my glory, and the lifter up of mine head.

Do you remember the old song written from this verse? It has really been running through my head lately. I think I saw it better the other day than ever before. Proclaiming God as the lifter of my head never really meant that much to me until I realized that people who are sad, under pressure or in trouble literally go around with their head down. That is when it struck me that our Father carries the weight of our trials and comforts us so that we are no longer bowed down.

There is the story, in Luke 13: 11, of a woman who was plagued by an evil spirit for eighteen years. This woman was hunched over so that she could not stand up straight. In other words, she was bowed over. We believe that story was about a disabling spirit which tormented her with a physical disease, but one can also imagine a person who is bowed over from the cares of the world. Perhaps their worries are plentiful or have been ongoing for a long period of time and the weight of those troubles have bowed their shoulders.

Our God is the remedy for these woes. He does not intend that we stay bowed over in torment, as seen in Jesus’ response to the woman that was bowed over, “When Yeshua (Jesus) saw her, He called out to her and said, ‘Woman, you are set free from your disability.’ Then He laid hands on her, and instantly she stood up straight and began praising God,” (Luke 13: 12 – 13 TLV). I like her response too, don’t you? She began to praise God because she knew Him as the source of her healing.

The same manifestation of God’s grace is available today. Our Father is still our shield and He still is the one who lifts our head when we are under the weather or under pressure. He heals our minds, restores our bodies and comforts our souls. He is the source of all goodness in the universe and, therefore, should be the first person to whom we turn.

As you begin your morning, renew your mind to this old truth. Remember today that God is with you. Put Him out in front of you so He can shield you from the enemy even as He guards your heart.

Faith in His Glory

Matthew 9: 20 – 22

And behold, a woman who had been suffering from a hemorrhage for twelve years, came up behind Him and touched the fringe of His cloak; for she was saying to herself, “If I only touch His garment, I shall get well.”  But Jesus turning and seeing her said, “Daughter, take courage; your faith has made you well.”  And at once the woman was made well.

I believe this is an important recounting of one person’s encounter with Jesus. This event was also recorded by Mark (chapter 5) and by Luke (chapter 8). We see in this encounter that it wasn’t actually Jesus that healed this woman. Jesus said that it was her faith that made her whole. That is a very important lesson. But there is more here than we may at first see.

We learn from Psalm 107: 20 that God sent His word and that the word had the power to heal. We now know from our post-Messiah perspective that Jesus was the Word that God sent (John 1: 1) and that he is our great physician and wonderful healer. None the less, most of us are not walking in perfect health. Many of us have prayed for people who have not manifested their healing or been prayed for ourselves without evidencing the healing truth of Jesus in our bodies. So what is going on here? Why did the woman in this account receive her healing and so many of us fail in receiving ours?

I was praying for someone’s healing this week and something occurred to me as I opened my mouth to pray. It is best framed in this question. What was the faith that the woman in the story demonstrated? Jesus said that it was her faith that made her well so what was that faith? When we pray for others or receive prayer for ourselves we often become very focused on ourselves. We begin focused on the sickness or injury. Then we shift our focus to our faith because we want healing. Then we focus on receiving the blessing, and on and on. The point is that unwittingly we have deviated far from the example of the woman whose faith healed her. I believe the key in her healing is that she had faith in Jesus himself. She said to herself, “If I can but touch the hem of his garment, I shall be made well.” The key here is that her eyes were on Jesus. She was fixed on him and his glory. I believe we are spending so much time thinking and worrying about our faith and our receiving that we have actually taken our eyes off of the healer.

I picture this woman of faith on the ground below Jesus looking up at him. She had faith in him. She believed in him. I don’t think she thought that highly of herself. Moreover, I don’t think she had herself on her mind. I believe the crucial point here is that she was absolutely fixated on this man Jesus. She believed there was healing issuing from him such that if she could just touch even the fringe of his garment she would be made well by that anointing emanating from him.

Receiving your healing really ought not to be about anything you have to do. It isn’t as much about your faith and your ability to receive as it is about the glory of the Lord Jesus. When you invited him to make his abode inside of you, he took healing with him. He had no choice, it is part of him. We have separated ourselves so much from the majesty and glory of the Lord Jesus that his power is deactivated within us. It is exactly like when he went home to Galilee and could do no miracles there (Matthew 13: 57). He is the same Jesus, the same Christ with the same power. He was able to perform miracles everywhere he went except in his hometown where they did not revere him, where their eyes were not full of the awe and wonder of him. The text in Matthew 13 says that he was without “honor” in his hometown. I believe many of us are experiencing the same thing. We have become a bit complacent in our regard of him. He has, perhaps, become too familiar. He should be your best friend but at the same time we should never lose sight of his majesty and magnificence.

Secondly, our attention and concern with the quantity and quality of our faith has caused us to take our eyes off of Jesus and put them on ourselves. We constantly check our hearts and minds looking for evidence of world changing faith. Jesus said we only needed mustard seed faith which is the smallest of all seeds. All we need is just a bit. When we sow that little bit of faith in him and put our eyes on him and stop worrying whether we have enough faith or we have strong enough faith, then there is fullness of faith. It is then that we can see him in his glory and when you really see Jesus for who he is, you have no trouble believing that he can do all things. You won’t even see yourself as a roadblock to his greatness. You will know that he can do all things, even in you. We just have to get a bigger picture of Jesus. We don’t need to worry about who we are or who we are not, what we have or what we don’t have. It really is not about us, our qualifications or knowledge. It is all about him. He is the Lord of glory. He is the Word that our father sent with healing in his hands.

Everything we need for healing, for life, for success in every area of our lives is with us right now. God sent his best and he sent his all. There is nothing that has been withheld. What great news! Now, just let your mind and spirit be filled with Jesus. Look upon him and see the radiance of his visage. The more you fill up on the vastness and greatness of our Father God and our Lord Jesus, the less the damaging effects of this world can impact you. Fix your eyes on Jesus. Fill your mouth with his praises. There are great things for you in his heart. He is the breath you breathe, he is health to your whole body; he truly is all in all. He is the Lord God Almighty to whom no thing is impossible. Selah.