4.8

Healing the sick and broken

One of God’s most important titles is that of Provider. God is the inexhaustible Provider for all that exists, the essential Provider whose supplies depend on no conditions outside Himself. God’s giving intends to meet every present need in all He made. The creation account describes six days when God gave substance, form and order to make the cosmos. But on the Sabbath, God gave something different. On that day, He established HIs creation in relation to Himself as holy God. The nature of God as Provider is not only His giving of all things that exist but His will that wants to give. God creates all things with a continual need for Him because He continually wants to give. God’s holy will is to be ever engaged and giving, to complete and fulfill what He has made. To live in the holy rest of God is to live in the gracious will of God who gives and wants to give without ceasing, to ever meet the need and make whole

Knowing God as our Provider draws us to know Him more personally. When we see God meeting our known needs, we are drawn to Him. We see His presence satisfying our personal needs when we feed on this day’s bread, when peace calms the pressing urgency of a disturbing problem, when we survive a tragic loss, when we fall asleep at the end of a day that clamors for so much more to be done. But when God uncovers our unknown needs, He is intending to give what He wills, to satisfy our deeper needs. God sees for us in our blindness and asks for us in our silence the deeper things we need to be whole. These deeper needs require God to provide both the asking and the answering, to free them from our blind neglect and bring them to Himself. Our deepest and greatest need is for God, Himself. God satisfies the vulnerability of our deepest need with His vulnerability, opening up to let us in. God’s vulnerability is His Son’s passion for us, whether or not we want Him

There are many human ailments and treatments for them. One definition of illness is the lack of conditions that are needed for health. Good health needs its measure of balance, strength, and integrity of the body’s systems and parts to function well. Sickness indicates a lack of something that health requires such as immunity to protect from disease, or coordination between heart and lungs, or motility for the intestines to do their job. Whatever the sickness, it signifies a lack of what health needs. God’s healing makes whole by providing what is needed. This can help explain why the Bible uses the same word for both physical healing and spiritual salvation. God heals what is broken in body or in relationship with Him by providing what is needed to make whole

God showed Himself to be Healer through His prophets who healed illnesses that had no cure in their time. Jesus healed much more than all past prophets combined. From the beginning of His public ministry, the sick and disabled sought Jesus to heal them, and He did. He touched them as they needed to be touched and healed them. Each healing was as unique as was each person’s need. A paralytic carried on a pallet by four men was put in front of Jesus. “Child,” He said, “your sins are forgiven.” Then He spoke to his paralysis, and the man walked away, healed (Mark 2:3-12). Another man from another crowd came to Jesus with a withered hand. Jesus told this man to stretch out his hand, and it was restored (Mark 3:1-5). At another time, He touched a leprous man and his leprosy was cleansed (Matthew 8:2-4). A deaf man was brought to Jesus. He took him away so they could be alone together. After putting His fingers into the man’s ears and touching his tongue with His saliva, Jesus looked up to His Father with a sigh, and the man was able to hear and speak (Mark 7:32-5)

Some were healed by Jesus speaking to them. Others, by His touch. Still others He called to believe first. All were healed by Him. Healings occurred by just touching His clothing. One woman had suffered for twelve long years with hemorrhaging. Not only could the doctors not help her but they made her condition worse. She was one among many who were pressing in on Jesus. She thought to herself, if she could just touch His garments, she would be saved (Mark 5:25-34). She touched His garments and -- sure enough -- her hemorrhaging stopped. Jesus immediately felt power leaving Him and asked, “Who touched My garments?” His disciples said to Him, “You see the crowd pressing in on You, and You say, who touched Me?” I can imagine a similar response if I asked a crowd crushing me on a NYC subway train at rush hour, “Hey! Who touched me?” But that woman’s touch was different. She received Jesus’ personal healing from that touch and both felt it. He and she alone knew the nature of that touch that saved her broken body and made it whole

Several of Jesus’ recorded healings were of people oppressed by “unclean spirits.” One of them lived in the tombs and surrounding mountains, shackled with chains by his people because he would gash himself with stones and scream all night and day (Mark 5:2-13). One day, Jesus came to that man to heal him. “Do not torment me,” the man begged Jesus, for in His presence the unclean spirits in him were tormenting. Even though Jesus was present to heal this man, all he could feel was the spirits tormenting him. In a most unique deliverance, the spirits asked to be sent into a nearby herd of pigs. Jesus consented and the pigs rushed to their suicide over a nearby cliff, “and they were drowned in the sea.” Why did Jesus let those spirits occupy the pigs before dooming them to their destiny? Were the spirits driving the pigs, or did the pigs run to their deaths rather than suffer those dirty spirits a moment longer? There is no explanation, but in this account we see that Jesus considered one man’s spiritual deliverance worth more than the lives of two thousand pigs

It was impossible for some to believe God sent Jesus. Some religious leaders accused Him of healing by the devil himself and not God (Matthew 12:24). No one had ever claimed to reveal God as close up as Jesus did. No one ever mingled so intimately with such broken people as Jesus did. How can He who comes in the name of a holy God welcome and be so fully embraced by those who appeared to reflect nothing of God’s holy goodness? It is for those dysfunctional outcasts that Jesus came. Jesus perfectly fit and filled what was lacking in them. God’s way of healing reconciles Healer and sick, Provider and poor, to make whole. The gracious nature of Jesus’ sufficiency drew their insufficiency like a magnet, to fill and complete them. It is the nature of God’s Spirit to actively search out our needs so He can embrace with His giving and make us whole