Who Is This That Cures The Sick?

Greetings All,

     Today I offer you a true story of healing found in the book, "He Touched Me" by John Powell (a professor of psychology and theology who also had his own counseling practice). The healing of a patient he had diagnosed as "neurotic" (always complaining, always indecisive, very egocentric, and forever absorbed in the memories of her painful past). Yet, much to his surprise she was delivered from that ailment through an encounter with Jesus -- an encounter with Jesus that not only changed her, but him. Much of the small book (95 pages) focuses on learning how to be completely open, honest and transparent with God in prayer. It was a point he learned from the Reformer, Martin Luther, whose first law of successful praying was: "Don't lie to God!"   He also notes that honest "self-disclosure" is imperative to any true praying and is the essence of true love. This story follows the heading in his book entitled: "Who Is This That Cures The Sick?"   Enjoy.

     "At the end of the summer just before our university classes were to begin, I answered the phone to hear the voice of a [woman I had counseled numerous times without any success]. I knew she would want another appointment and would want another to agonize along with her while she resurrected the same old problems...  But how the Spirit loves to surprise us!  The voice I heard on the phone was somehow the same, yet somehow different. My "keen diagnostic ear" said that there was a new peace in her. I had to ask several times, "Who is this?" She quietly and peacefully said that she did NOT want an appointment, that she knew I was busy and did not want to take any more of my time. The only purpose for the call, she said, was to thank me for my time and patience and the help I had given her over the last three years.  I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

     There was all the resonance of sincerity, but such abrupt personality changes just do not happen in real life. So I said: "You're different, aren't you?" And she replied, "Oh yes!" "What happened? I asked.  "I met Jesus Christ." 'You what?" I queried.  "I met Jesus Christ. Before this I knew about Him, but now I know Him."  "If you tell me you had a vision...," I started to say. "No, no vision. But I did meet Jesus Christ."  Then I told her, "I don't know whether you want to see me, but I want to see you."

     When she came to my office my eye confirmed what my ear had led me to suspect This was a "healed" person. I do not mean to detract one iota from the contribution they make to the lives of wounded human beings, but clinical psychology and psychiatry must not be allowed to pose as saviors or redeemers. Therapy can never be a substitute for a life of faith. I knew, from my training in psychology, that no reputable therapist could ever promise this kind of "cure," this new "wholeness." There is no plastic surgery to remove the psychological scars that all of us bear to some extent. By supportive psychotherapy we can be comforted, and by reconstructive psychotherapy we can be somewhat readjusted and develop new coping mechanisms, but... we cannot be healed or cured. This woman, seated before me, expressing gratitude and claiming to have met Jesus Christ, was "healed." She knew it and I knew it.

     Without overtones of pride or egotism, she told me of her experience. She was invited to a prayer meeting. She told me how she decided to go, not really to pray, but to be able to say later that she had, "tried everything, even prayer meetings."  However she was not prepared for the opening announcement of the leader of the prayer meeting.  He began: "We have come here tonight to pray. And if you can find it in your heart to join us, please stay.  We both need and want you.  But I have a feeling that some of you may have come out of curiosity, like spiritual Peeping Toms to see what goes on at prayer meetings. If this is why you came, and if you cannot find it in your heart to join us in reaching out to God, then I would like to ask you respectfully to leave."  O my God, she thought, decision number one!  She did decide to stay, trying to pry her mind away from the "exit" sign, to turn it to the Lord. Then she heard one of the leaders of the group urge the others to "open" themselves to the Lord. "Open all the doors and windows of your soul to the Lord. Don't keep any rooms locked or closed off to Him. Let Jesus take over. The depth of the faith that releases the power of God is measured by your willingness to let God direct your life... Surrender your life and your heart to Him." 

     She felt helpless to direct her own life successfully, and so, at the exhortation of one of the other people in the prayer group, she sincerely and almost desperately invited Jesus to come into her soul, her life, her world.  She offered God her unconditional surrender and He took her at her word, accepted her gift, became her Lord.  "For so many years," she told me, "there had been a high, hard, impenetrable wall between God and myself. I used to throw my little gifts over the wall and hope that someone was on the other side receiving them. It was impersonal, unsatisfying. But I thought it was the best I could do or even hope for. Somehow, in that moment -- perhaps it was due to all the other people in the room praying for each other -- the wall came down. Somehow Jesus was standing there with arms held out to embrace me. I knew Jesus as real for the first time."  While my friend continued to describe her moment of grace, God was somehow, strangely, having another moment with and in me. I was remembering hungrily all the things that had somehow slipped out of my hands, out of my life.  I was remembering the night He "touched" me...

     In the days that followed, I began to pray with a new intensity. From the early morning shower till the darkened moments while waiting for sleep, I kept inviting Jesus into my house of many rooms. I kept reassuring Him that I was ready to admit my own bankruptcy, my own helplessness to direct my life, to find peace and joy. I constantly invited the Holy Spirit to take down my walls, to destroy the barricades that were so many years in the building. I asked the Spirit to free me from the ingrained habit of competition, from the insatiable hunger for success, from the need for recognition and adulation.  What began to happen in me almost immediately can be compared only to springtime. It seemed as though I had been through a long, hard-frozen wintertime. My heart and soul had suffered all the barrenness, the nakedness of nature in winter. Now in the springtime of the Spirit, it seemed as though the veins of my soul were thawing, as though blood was beginning to course through my soul again, and new beauty began to appear in me and around me." 

     There is something about a person who has truly encountered Jesus, and been changed by the Holy Spirit, that makes us yearn to experience what they have.  In fact, this "thought" is dedicated to such an individual -- a good friend and true man of God from my church who passed away unexpectedly on Saturday -- Steve Reall.  His relationship with God (whom he always referred to as "Abba") was passionate, very real, honest, and transparent. Thank you Steve for your friendship, and prayers, and for being to me an example of a true committed soldier of Christ and lover of Jesus looks like.  Your example will not be forgotten. 

Living in the Grace of Jesus, Pastor Jeff

God Has United You to Himself

Greetings All!

     Today's "thought"  comes to you from one of the first authors I ever read after being converted - Andrew Murray.   In 1980 I was in Marion, Indiana, training to go to the Dominican Republic to work with teens through 'New Horizons Youth Ministries.'  I had just come to Christ months earlier and had no books to help me grow in the faith once I arrived there.  And since my "salary" was a dollar a day (and that's not an  exaggeration!), I had very little cash.  Therefore, I did the only thing I could - I prayed for $50.00 that I might be able to purchase some books to take with me to help me grow.  Three days later a check came in the mail for $55.00(!), which I then took and spent on books -- and all but one was by Andrew Murray.  ("Absolute Surrender," "Like Christ," "Abide in Christ," "With Andrew Murray in the School of Prayer," "Waiting on God," and "Humility."  I still have each one!  The other was, "Love Life of the Lord" by A. B. Simpson.)

     










     Today's excerpt comes from an updated version of "Abide in Christ" published by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, and entitled, "Abiding in Christ."  This selection is the entry for Day 6: "God Has United You to Himself." I trust it will instruct and enrich your soul. Enjoy!

     "'You are in Christ Jesus.' The believers at Corinth were still weak and carnal, only babes in Christ. And yet Paul wanted them, at the outset of his teaching, to know distinctly that they were in Christ Jesus. The whole Christian life depends on the clear consciousness of our position in Christ.  Most essential to abiding in Christ is the daily renewal of our faith's assurance, "I am in Christ Jesus." All fruitful preaching to believers must begin with: "You are in Christ Jesus." 

     But the apostle has an additional thought of almost greater importance: It is because of God that you are in Christ Jesus" (I Cor. 1:30).  Paul would have us not only remember our union with Christ, but also - and more particularly - that it is not of our own doing, but the work of God Himself.  As the Holy Spirit teaches us to realize this we will see what a source of assurance and strength this is to us. If it is of God alone that I am in Christ, then God Himself, the infinite One, becomes my security for all I need or desire in seeking to abide in Christ. 

     Let me try to explain what this means...  So often, when the believer tries to say, "I am in Christ Jesus," he looks more to the work he has done than to that wondrous secret work of God which united him to Christ. This is to be expected at the beginning of the Christian course.  "I know that I have believed," is a valid testimony.  But it is important that the mind be led to see that at the back of our turning, believing, and receiving Christ, God's almighty power was doing its work of inspiring our will, taking possession of us [raising us from our death in trespasses and sins -- Ephesians 2:1, 2:5, and Colossians 2:13] and carrying out its own purpose of love in planting us into Christ Jesus.

     As the believer understands the the divine side of the work of salvation, he will learn to praise and worship with new enthusiasm and to rejoice more than ever in his salvation. At each step he reviews, the song will come: "This is the Lord's doing."  It is Divine Omnipotence working out what Eternal Love devised. "It is because of God that I am in Christ Jesus." The words will lead him even further and higher, and to the very depths of eternity: "And those he predestined he also called" (Romans 8:30).  One's calling in time is the manifestation of God's purpose in eternity.  For before the world came into existence, God had his sovereign love fixed on you in the election of grace and had chosen you in Christ.

     That you know you are in Christ is the key to understanding the full meaning of this word: "Because of God I am in Christ Jesus."  With the prophet your language will be, "The Lord has appeared to us in the past, saying: 'I have loved you with an everlasting love, I have drawn you with loving-kindness'" (Jeremiah 31:3). You will see your own salvation as a part of that "mystery of His will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ (Ephesians 1:9), and you will join with the whole church as they say, "In him we were chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will" (Ephesians 1:11).  Nothing will exalt free grace more, and make man bow very low before it, than this knowledge of the mystery of God's will: "It is because of God that we are in Christ Jesus."

     Given the fickle nature of humanity, plagued as it is by sin, it is so comforting and soul-strengthening to know, "It is because of God that I am in Christ Jesus."   It humbles, melts the heart, and brings joy unspeakable to the believer's soul to think that his or her salvation is the outworking in time of God's good pleasure and purpose for them from before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4-5).

     One of my favorite hymns - “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” - expresses so well our indebtedness to God for this grace. An indebtedness that isn't simply for his grace in joining us to Christ initially, as Murray speaks of above, but for holding us in it's grip when our hearts have wanted to wander, stray, and go their own way -- even after receiving such free and unmerited grace.

     "Oh, to grace how great a debtor, Daily I'm constrained to be

      Let that goodness like a fetter (like a shackle around my ankle), Bind my wandering heart to Thee.

      Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love;

      Here's my heart, oh, take and seal it, Seal it for Thy courts above."

     If it were up to me, and me alone, I know all too well where I would be.  Right where I was when in time He called me - dead in my trespasses and sins.  Murray is right: "As the Holy Spirit teaches us to realize this we will see what a source of assurance and strength this is to us. If it is of God alone that I am in Christ, then God Himself, the infinite One, becomes my security for all I need or desire in seeking to abide in Christ...  As the believer understands the the divine side of the work of salvation, he will learn to praise and worship with new enthusiasm and to rejoice more than ever in his salvation. At each step he reviews, the song will come: "This is the Lord's doing." It is Divine Omnipotence working out what Eternal Love devised."

In the Service of His Grace, Pastor Jeff

Streams in the Desert

Greetings Everyone!

     Today's thought comes once again from the same book as last week -- "Streams in the Desert" by L. B. Cowman.  Yet today's entry (under the date of "August 1") is not from her.  It appears to be taken (copied) from the testimony of a man she simply records as "J. H. M."   I share it because it took me back to an earlier time in my life when I was on my journey from unbelief to faith, and then from faith to obedience.

     Some people know the truth of Scripture but don't believe it.  Others know it and confess to believing it.  But the real test of knowing and believing is whether or not it results in obeying it, or obeying the One who speaks to us in it.  And it's this area of being called to obey that causes the greatest resistance in the soul, for only then must faith become visible in our actions and life. The inner battle in relation to consecrating our lives to God stems from the cost which consecration or obedience calls for.  What will have to change, what will old friends think, what hard thing we will we be called to do, what might we miss out on, or what will we have to sacrifice or give up?

     I speak from experience when I say that faith is never really tested or tried (to see if it's real) until we are called to act upon what we claim to believe.  Until faith moves from being a mere proposition believed to a lifestyle of obedience, it may be questioned if we truly believe what we say we believe. If my conversations with people are any indication, then many people in the Church seem unaware that the goal of faith is to give birth to obedience and a life of consecration (Rom. 1:5 / I Cor. 6:19).

     Below is one man's struggle in moving from faith to the obedience and consecration that are intended to flow from it. Enjoy.

Offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life. (Romans 6:13)

     "One night I went to hear a sermon on consecration. Nothing special came to me from the message, but as the preacher finished and knelt to pray, he said, “O Lord, You know we can trust the Man who died for us.” That was my message.

     As I rose from my knees and walked down the street to catch the train, I deeply pondered all that consecration to God would mean to my life. I was afraid as I considered the personal cost. Yet suddenly, above the noise of the street traffic, came this message: “You can trust the Man who died for you.”

     I boarded the train, and as I traveled toward home, I thought of the changes, sacrifices, and disappointments that consecration might mean in my life—and I was still afraid. Upon arriving home, I went straight to my room, fell on my knees, and saw my life pass before my eyes. I was a Christian, an officer in the church, and a Sunday School superintendent, but I had never yielded my life to God with a definite act of my will.

     Yet as I thought of my own “precious” plans that might be thwarted, my beloved hopes to be surrendered, and my chosen profession that I might have to abandon—I was afraid. I completely failed to see the better things God had for me, so my soul was running from Him.

     Then, for the last time, with a swift force of convicting power to my inmost heart, came that searching message: “My child, you can trust the Man who died for you. If you cannot trust Him, then whom can you trust?” That, finally, settled it for me.  For in a flash of light I realized that the Man who loved me enough to die for me could be absolutely trusted with the total concerns of the life He had saved.

     Dear friend, you can trust the Man who died for you.  You can trust Him to thwart each plan that should be stopped and to complete each one that results in His greatest glory and your highest good. You can trust Him to lead you down the path that is the very best in this world for you.  J. H. M.

Just as I am, Thy love unknown,

Has broken every barrier down, 

Now to be Thine, yea, Thine ALONE, 

O Lamb of God, I come!"

     Is God moving you from a faith of mere assent to the obedience that comes from faith (Rom. 1:5)?  Has faith produced in you that consecration the N.T. speaks of in Rom. 12:1-2? I have often said that what we believe affects the way we think and the way we think affects the way we act, showing by our actions what we really believe. If people were to read your actions, would they be able to see without a doubt what you believe? Has your faith in Jesus led to a consecration of your life to Him? By the grace of God can you pray that it would?

In the Service of Jesus,  Pastor Jeff