Posts Tagged: healing

“Get Up and Get On with Your Life”

On June 24, 2020 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

“Peter heals in the name of Jesus and commands the man he healed to get up and get on with his life. It is Jesus who heals us. Through his grace we, like Peter, are able to bring the comfort and healing power of Jesus to others. We are at one and the same time both the one healed and the one who brings about healing.” (“3-Minute Retreat,” from Loyola Publishing, June 24, 2020)

I was paralyzed from the waist down for a few months when I was in the fifth grade. A bad fall on the ice led (apparently) to a badly pinched nerve. Thanks to a chiropractor, time, and God, I was able to walk and run again. It was scary.

Today’s “3-Minute Retreat” devotional was based on the story (in Acts 9) about man who had been paralyzed for eight years.

“Peter went off on a mission to visit all the churches. In the course of his travels he arrived in Lydda and met with the believers there. He came across a man—his name was Aeneas—who had been in bed eight years paralyzed. Peter said, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you. Get up and make your bed!” And he did it—jumped right out of bed. Everybody who lived in Lydda and Sharon saw him walking around and woke up to the fact that God was alive and active among them.”  (Acts 9:32-35, The Message)

I liked the way today’s retreat master for Loyola put it: “Peter heals in the name of Jesus and commands the man he healed to get up and get on with his life.”

Some of us are paralyzed, but not in our body. No, it is much more serious than that. We are paralyzed by fear, by lust, by greed, by any number of paralyzing agents in our life.

And then, along comes Jesus and says, perhaps through another person like Peter, sometimes very directly, “Get up and get on with your life!” Perhaps Jesus says this to us, even to get us out of bed in the morning.

And so, in the name of Jesus, I say unto thee, “Get up and get on with your life!”

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“No Reproach in God’s Healing”

On June 30, 2019 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

            “But he as pierced for our transgressions;

                        he was crushed for our iniquities;

             upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,

                        and with his wounds we are healed.”

(Isaiah 53:5, English Standard Version

https://accordance.bible/link/read/ESVS#Is._53:5)

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.”

(Romans 8:1–2, English Standard Version

https://accordance.bible/link/read/ESVS#Rom._8:1)

If you read my blog posts regularly, you have no doubt picked up on the fact that my own musings are often provoked by my 12-step readings.  Today’s post is another one with the same origin.  This is from today’s reading from Twenty-Four Hours a Day.

“God has no reproach for anything that He has healed. I can be made whole and free, even though I have wrecked my life in the past. Remember the saying: ‘Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more.’

Prayer for the Day

I pray that I may not carry the burden of the past. I pray that I may cast it off and press on in faith.”  (From Twenty-Four Hours a Day © 1975 by Hazelden Foundation)

I was especially struck with the words, “God has no reproach for anything He has healed.”

Sometimes, I don’t feel very healed.  But is it really about my feelings?  I believe, at least in my better moments, that Christ was God with skin on.  I believe, at least in my better moments, that Christ died for all my sins.  I believe, at least in my better moments, that I need to—and can go to God each day, each moment of the day, for the forgiveness of my sins.  And in that moment, no matter how I feel about it, God does in fact forgive and heal me.

I need to quit picking the scabs off wounds that God is healing.  I need to let the wounds become scars, scars that are as beautiful as the God who gave his life to heal my wounds.

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“NO REPROACH FOR ANYTHING GOD HAS HEALED”

On July 6, 2017 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

“God has no reproach for anything that He has healed.”  (http://www.hazeldenbettyford.org/thought-for-the-day, accessed 06-30-2017.  The quote is from the book Twenty-Four Hours a Day.)

“Some people think of scars as the sign of a wound.  I think of them as a sign of healing.”  (The source is unknown, though it may be my own.  More likely, I have reworded someone else’s thought a bit.)

I woke up this morning feeling pretty self-reproachful concerning my past.  Then, I turned to the Hazelden twelve-step reading quoted above.

It set me to thinking about various verses in the Bible that talk about what God can and does do with our sins.  Here are a few of those verses:

Psalm 103:12:  “He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west” (New Living Translation).

1 John 1:9:  “But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness” (New Living Translation).

But one of my favorite verses is:

Micah 7:19:  “Once again you will have compassion on us. You will trample our sins under your feet and throw them into the depths of the ocean!” (New Living Translation).

Years ago, I hear David Seaman say in a sermon something to the effect that God throws our sins into the depths of the ocean, and then God puts a sign on the shore.  The sign says, NO FISHIN’ ALLOWED!

Whether your sins are ancient history or pretty much current news, the NO FISHIN’ sign still applies.  If Jesus died for the sins of the whole world, then our scars, even those from self-inflicted wounds, are signs of healing, rather than simply of the wounds.

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