God the Healer

“Lord, if you want to, you can heal me.” Jesus said, “I want to.”

“For I, the Lord, am your healer.”  Exodus 15:26

There are many possible explanations for why a person is healed: the natural defenses of the human body, and various types of treatments and medications.  Occasionally, doctors see a healing that science cannot explain. My mom was miraculously healed of a terminal heart condition in her ’50s. No medical explanation. Cardiologists were stumped. She lived thirty more years. God is the Great Physician; earthly physicians  are His instruments.  He has given them the knowledge to cure many illnesses, but I wonder how many doctors know how much they have been prayed for when they do their work.

God created the body, and He certainly knows how to repair it. Without God there would be no healing.  He identifies Himself  as our Healer and so He is. When healing happens, we get a glimpse of God’s power and His heart. It is His ultimate plan is to heal all creation. In heaven, all are healed in His presence because He is Life, and in Him there is no death.

A Glimpse of God at McDonald’s (?)

Not exactly the Holy of Holies or the Mercy Seat

I’ve never seen God face-to-face. I’ve never really seen God at all, but I have caught a few glimpses. Back in the mid-80s, I was driving through the parking lot of a McDonald’s, listening to Sandi Patty sing “We shall behold Him.” I love that song and had heard it many times, but his time, God used it to give me a quick glimpse of Himself.

I can’t say I had a “vision.” I’m not sure of what I saw or even if I saw anything. I know that He touched my spirit, and in my spirit I saw just one facet of a multifaceted God. I saw a God who is giving, giving, giving, all the time, non-stop, gifts flowing from His throne and His generous heart. He loves it!

Not sure why, but that glimpse was so overwhelming that my eyes filled with tears, I got choked up and had to pull into a parking space quickly. It wasn’t just an emotional experience but emotion was definitely involved. In fact, I couldn’t even talk about what happened for a week and couldn’t talk about it without crying for several months after that.

There’s a lot here that I can’t explain. I know what happened, and it left me with a hunger for more glimpses of God. Shortly after McDonald’s parking lot encounter, I began writing Bible-based devotionals about who God is. I thought they might turn into a book, but along came the age of the blog, and here I am, 35+ years later, sharing those glimpses on this blog! God has His timing and His ways.

He Will Come and Save You

I was going down for the last time when…

I know that Jesus is my Savior,
because of HIs great love and compassion,
because He is faithful,
because His mercies are made new every morning,
because He is good,
because He never fails.
Because of who He is,
I will seek Him,
I will wait for Him,
I will hope in Him,
I will trust Him,
He will come,
He will come and save me.

Lamentations 3:21-26: Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.”
The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him;
It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.

Isaiah 35:4: “Say to those with fearful hearts,
“Be strong, do not fear;
your God will come,
He will come and save you.”

Jesus wept?

Heartbroken, rejected by Jerusalem…again

“And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.”  Genesis 6:6.

God is love.  His heart is tender and sensitive, although this does not make Him weak or “spineless.”  He retains His Kingly majesty, power, and holiness.  These make His love all the more remarkable.  He certainly does not have to love us.  By all rights, He should not have to take abuse from anyone. How far had humanity gone before the flood?  How much rejection and willful evil did it take to break the heart of almighty God? Another translation says, “His heart was filled with pain.”  This was the same Heart that later did not spare His only Son for sinners.  What evil had these people done to cause Him to regret even having created them?  Apparently humanity was not grieved over its sin, but God was.

This verse paints a terrible picture of One who is wise, loving, powerful, One Who could snuff man out of existence with a single command.  But He chose to risk the possibility of rejection by creating free agents. A similar scene was repeated thousands of years later as Jesus wept over the city of Jerusalem, His city, the city that had rejected Him in the past, the city that was about to crucify Him.  But He chose to continue with the Father’s plan of redemption, to give His life “a ransom for many.” God’s heart is tender and merciful. David was a man “after God’s heart.” He knew that “His mercy is great.” I am humbled by His Heart.

Mud + the breath of God =

Not intelligently designed? Don’t make me LOL!

“Male and Female created He them.” Genesis 5:2

Man and woman were the crown and rulers of God’s creation.  Since no one knows exactly what God looks like, we do not really know what His human creations looked like. To be sure, they were glorious and powerful creatures, created in His image. Consider even the post‑fall human body, pretty impressive. The sophistication of the design should tell you something about the Designer.

The human body has been reproduced in the billions, and it still looks amazingly good. Think about the skeletal system, the circulatory system, the muscles, digestive tract, the nervous system, etc.  We can only study these and try to describe their operations, but we have never been able to duplicate a single one of them, not even with all our “advanced” technology.

God has created an incredible network of systems, all operate in harmony; all are under the control of the brain; all are neatly packaged in an attractive 6X2X1′ being (size varies) that comes in male and female models.  Accidents happen, but accidents like that don’t happen.

SHEPHERD

Watching over little lambs

A SHEPHERD’S SONG OF PRAISE

By David, Jesse’s son

Just as I am a shepherd who watches over his sheep,
so also the LORD is my Shepherd
who cares for my every need.

For instance, when I am weary,
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
or when I feel stressed,
He leads me beside slow, soothing streams.
My time with Him renews me completely.
Like a sheep, I tend to wander off,
but He always steers me in the right way,
so that I may honor His Great Name.

Because the Lord is my Shepherd
I am never afraid.  Even if I were walking
through a dark valley in danger of imminent death,
I would fear no evil,
because You are with me.
It comforts me to know that,
like a shepherd armed with rod and staff,
You are fully able to protect me from any harm.

You prepare a feast for me, blessing me so openly
that my enemies look on with envy.
You pour the oil of gladness on my head,
welcoming me as a friend to your banquet.
The cup you offer me never runs dry.
In fact, it continuously overflows!

All this convinces me
that I will enjoy good things
every day of my life,
that I will always be secure in His love,
and that when this life is over
I will go to live in the house of the Lord
forever.

Amen.

–My translation, from my book, “A Harvest of Miracles.” Houston: Halcyon Press, 2009.

When God Talks to God…

Jesus in the Heavenly Temple, interceding for us. In English? I don’t think so!

What does it sound like when God talks to God? “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans” (Romans 8:26). I’ve heard several interpretations of this passage: I’ve been a groaner in prayer, no words, just my spirit and heart communicating with God. Maybe no words were possible. But Paul seems to suggest that the Spirit is praying for me with “wordless groans.” I don’t even know what that might sound like, but we’re meditating on God the Spirit and Jesus in the Heavenly Temple, who are interceding for hundreds of millions of Christians at every given moment.

Fiber optic cable can carry over 400 gigabytes per second. Mind boggling. How much more mind blowing is the idea that when God speaks to God on our behalf, not a word is lost in the communication. God doesn’t lose anything. “Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing” (Isaiah 40:26).

 

What is God like?

BUSTED!

According to Jesus, Satan came to “steal, kill, and destroy.” Look at the way the world is and the way it has been since time immemorial. Most have been following the “prince of this world,” and that evil fruit should give you an idea of what the devil’s like. But Jesus, in His own words, came to “seek and save,” “to give life, and that more abundantly.” It is God’s purpose through Christ to reclaim this world from the prince of darkness, to restore and renew. That should give you an idea of what He’s like.

I think about Jesus’ baptism. Once the Spirit came down, Satan noticed a “disturbance in the Force, the presence of his former Master,” so to speak, and so he showed up rather quickly to check Jesus out and test Him. In the wilderness, the real battle had begun, one that would culminate at Calvary. Whereas the powers of this world sought to kill Him and make a public spectacle of Him, He “disarmed the powers and authorities. He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross” (Colossians 2:15). That should give you an idea of what Jesus was like.

“Let there be flowers!”

Scripture:  “Then God said, ‘Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind, with seed  in them, on the earth; and it was so.'”  Genesis 1:11

The fulfillment of this command produced complexity and beauty. Very likely there was an explosion of colors.  Imagine what plant life will look like when God frees it from sin, and you will begin to understand how it appeared in its original form.  Have you ever seen time‑lapsed photography of a flower blooming?  It seems to explode with life and splendor in the twinkling of an eye.

We might try to visualize billions, perhaps trillions of different flowers, plants, and trees coming into being in an instant, but it literally boggles the mind.  That each plant was also fully equipped with seeds for reproduction is  all surely far beyond our grasp.  We cannot comprehend it, to be sure, but we can catch a glimpse of how great was the Gardener.

“Let there be light!”

God spoke, and it was so.  Gabriel told Mary, “With God, nothing will be impossible” (Luke 1:37), or literally from the Greek “No word of God is without power.” What did these words sound like when He spoke them?  I don’t think He said them in English, or even in a language as we think of languages, but I bet that when He spoke it, there was a BIG BANG!!!

Jesus healed the sick in this same fashion. He merely spoke, “Be healed” and all were healed. He cast out devils with His word (Matthew 8:16).

The Book of Job seems to suggest that the angels were watching God’s creative activity with interest and were praising Him with great joy (Job 38:6‑7).  Note the simplicity of this verse.  There is no build‑up, no committee meeting, no magic words, no incantations.  There was total darkness and blackness, and then God spoke simply and directly, “Let there be light.”  And there was light, and it was good.