Tag Archives: healing

August 13, 2024 · 5:08 AM

Comforting Others

I’ve lived through some very painful times in my life. Chances are that you have too. At one point, I couldn’t see a future for me. I struggled to live through the next minute. It took all my energy just to get through each minute, one by one, throughout the day. I didn’t understand why I was going through it. I cried out to God and He seemed distant and quiet. I felt alone, forsaken and that no one else could understand. It took time, but I made it through with God’s help. Now, when I see someone else going through something similar, my heart breaks with compassion for them. I reach out and offer comfort and strength to them. I also offer hope that they can come through on the other side with a full life ahead. I’ve learned God can use the darkest times in our lives so we can offer empathy and comfort to others in the future.

Very few people in the Bible lived through as painful life as Joseph. He was betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, was falsely accused of rape, thrown in prison in a foreign land and forgotten about. We don’t get to read about his anguish though. We don’t get to hear him cry out to God. However, we do get to read his redemption. We get to see God fulfill a dream that for years felt beyond God’s ability to make happen. We get to see God restore his relationship with his brothers and father. After his father’s death, his siblings began to fear. As the story and book concludes, we read in Genesis 50:21, “‘So now, do not be afraid; I will provide for you and support you and your little ones.’ So he comforted them [giving them encouragement and hope] and spoke [with kindness] to their hearts” (AMP). God used the hardest time in his life to help him give comfort and encouragement to his brothers.

2 Corinthians 1:4 says, “He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us” (NLT). There is a biblical pattern of God allowing people to go through unspeakable pain without understanding why and then using them to comfort and encourage others down the road. Even at the end of Job’s suffering, God had him pray for his friends. If you’re going through the darkness now, I want to encourage you that there is hope and God will restore your life even though you can’t see it now. He will use this time for your good and the good of others. If you’ve just made it through, keep walking. Restoration and healing often take time, but God is faithful. If your period of pain is behind you, look for someone you can encourage and comfort. God uses what the enemy meant for evil in our lives to give strength and hope to others. You may be the only one who can truly empathize with them and the only one they will receive comfort from. Ask the Holy Spirit, our comforter, to partner with you in comforting others.

Photo by Korney Violin on Unsplash

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October 17, 2023 · 5:39 AM

Complete Faith

I grew up hearing the stories of George Mueller. He was a man of faith who lived in the early 1800’s and cared for over 10,000 orphans in his lifetime. One morning the head mistress of the 300 children in the orphanage told him that the kids were dressed for school, but they didn’t have anything for breakfast or any money to purchase it. George told the kids to sit at the tables and they put out their place settings. He then thanked the Lord for providing food. Just then the local baker knocked on the door. He said he couldn’t sleep and thought the kids could use some bread. He baked all night and brought it to them. As soon as he left, there was another knock at the door. A milkman said his cart broke down just outside and he needed to get rid of the milk before it went bad. George kept a prayer journal and in it had over 50,000 times when God answered his prayers.

In Joshua 3, the Israelites had left the desert and were ready to enter the Promised Land. After a three day fast, the people consecrated themselves before entering. While Joshua was praying, God said, “Give this command to the priests who carry the Ark of the Covenant: ‘When you reach the banks of the Jordan River, take a few steps into the river and stop there’” (NLT). In order for them to be able cross the Jordan, they had to step into the mud and the water. When the priests, carrying the Ark of the Covenant, stepped into the water, God then stopped the river so they could pass through on dry ground. When everyone had crossed, the priests stepped out of the middle of the river and it began to flow again.

James 2 tells us how our faith and actions are interlinked. He used Abraham putting Isaac on the altar trusting God to provide as an example. In verse 22 it says, “You see, his faith and his actions worked together. His actions made his faith complete.” In almost every example I can find, people acted in faith before God answered their prayer. Not only did they ask God to provide or to help, they sat the kids down to eat, they stepped into a raging river and they tied up their son and raised the knife. Faith and action are interlinked. What is the step of faith God wants for from you for the prayers you’re asking Him for to be answered? Don’t just pray and believe. Act! Let your actions make your faith complete.

Photo by Jeremy Perkins on Unsplash

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August 23, 2023 · 5:46 AM

Believing In Healing

From the time my son was born he had an allergic reaction to milk, gluten and eggs. We didn’t find out the problems he was experiencing were from that until he was four. Several years later we were visiting family in Mexico when an uncle asked why they were having to change the menu every time for him. He then asked if he could pray for him. After the prayer my son asked, “Am I healed?” I said, “I believe so. There’s one way to find out. Drink a glass of milk.” Either we believed or we didn’t. He drank the milk and didn’t have a reaction. The next day we were looking at a menu to see what he could eat. He replied, “I thought I was healed. I want a cheeseburger.” Hecate it with no problems. We gave him a normal diet after that. A few months later the doctor ran tests again. The results showed that those allergies that were once off the charts were gone.

In John 4:46 Jesus went back to Cana where He had turned water into wine. A government official approached Him with a request to heal his son who was dying. Jesus pushed back to test him saying that people just wanted to see a miracle to believe. The man insisted that Jesus come heal his son. Verse 50 says, “Jesus looked him in the eyes and said, ‘Go back home now. I promise you, your son will live.’ The man believed in his heart the words of Jesus and set off for home” (TPT). A day later on his journey home, he was met by some servants who told him his son was better. He asked what time he got better and it was the same time Jesus spoke the words and he acted in faith heading for home. This was the second miracle Jesus performed in Cana.

In Mark 11:24 Jesus said, “This is the reason I urge you to boldly believe for whatever you ask for in prayer—be convinced that you have received it and it will be yours.” If you look closely at the miracles of Jesus you’ll see that two things happened. The first is that there was usually an act of faith on the part of the person receiving the miracle (they turned and left, they washed their eyes, they touched His garment, etc.). The second thing was that Jesus told them their activated faith had made them whole. I don’t know what you’re praying for, but I’ve seen Jesus heal with my own eyes and have the blood work to show it. I know He can do it for you. If you need more faith, ask Him to help your unbelief. Get someone else to believe and pray with you. Then find out what act of faith He would have you do to walk in your healing. He is more than able. Plus He is the same yesterday, today and forever. What He’s done in the past, He will do today and tomorrow. Believe and trust Him.

Photo by Worshae on Unsplash

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December 21, 2022 · 5:40 AM

Restoring Your Sight

I was talking with a man I met this week over lunch. At one point during the lunch I felt prompted by the Holy Spirit to quote a Bible verse to him and explain it. His eyes got really big and excited. He said, “I’ve been reading the Bible!” He went on to explain his eyesight had deteriorated to the point he couldn’t drive anymore. It was then that he asked God to restore his sight. He also promised God that if his sight was restored, he would read the Bible every day. I was excited for him because his eyesight had returned and he was making good on his promise. After sharing a few more verses with him, I said, “Maybe God restored your physical eyesight so that He could use His Word to restore your spiritual eyesight as well.”

Most of us know about the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, but that’s not the first sermon Jesus gave. In fact, the first one I read took place in his hometown of Nazareth. In Luke 4, Jesus had just finished being tempted by the devil when He went to the synagogue He’d probably gone to His whole life. He stood up and read Isaiah 61:1-2. It says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has chosen me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed and announce that the time has come when the Lord will save his people” (GNT). One of the things Jesus came to do was to recover sight to physically and spiritually blind eyes. Many of us, like my new friend, have physical sight, but are nearly blind with our spiritual eyes.

Psalm 119:105 says, “Your word is a lamp to guide me and a light for my path.” One of the ways God restores our spiritual eyesight is through His Word. Without it in our lives, we can’t see the next step in front of us or the path before us. His Word illuminates both giving us sight so we can know what decisions to make and where He is leading us. It’s great to have physical sight, but how much greater to have spiritual sight! If you’ve noticed your vision getting worse or feel like you can’t see your next step, ask God to restore your spiritual eyesight. Then get into His Word as often as you can, nit just to read it, but to understand it and to hide it in your heart. When you do, you’ll find your real sight restored.

Thanks to Timothy Eberly @timothyeberly for making this photo available on Unsplash 🎁

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July 18, 2022 · 5:50 AM

The Lies Of Pride

Have you ever been at an event where it’s pretty much over and it’s time to clean up, but no one is helping? You pick up the chairs and tables. People move out of your way, but no one helps. Then you get down to the last few and people all of a sudden want to help. You say, “Don’t worry about it. I got it,” but I side you’re a little mad. Your thought process inside is that at this point, you want credit for doing the whole thing so later when you tell the story, no one helped you. It’ll get you more sympathy from whoever you tell it to, plus their rage at the lack of someone helping. That’s pretty much human nature to act and think that way, but it’s also prideful because you’re seeking full credit.

Pride is strange that way. It masks itself so that it doesn’t look like itself. In 2 Kings 5, Naaman had leprosy and wasn’t sure what to do about it. His servant girl that he had taken from Israel told him about Elisha. When he went to visit him, Elisha didn’t even come out to greet him. Instead he sent his servant out to tell him what to do. This hurt his pride. What’s more is that Elisha instructed him to simply dip in the Jordan seven times and he would be healed. Now his pride was on full display because he refused to do such a simple task for his healing. His servants convinced him to do it. When he got over his pride, he dipped in the water and was healed.

1 Peter 5:6-7 says, “So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor. Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you” (NLT). Why are these two verses together? Because pride is often what keeps us holding onto our pain, worries and burdens. We like the sympathy we get and we’re too stubborn to ask for help with them. We’ll just handle it ourselves! However, God wants us to humble ourselves, admit we have cares, problems and worries so that He can help us. It takes getting over our pride in order to ask for help. It takes humbling ourselves to give them to Him. Don’t spend another day believing the lies of pride. Do what God asks and get your healing. He’s ready to take them from you and carry your burdens if only you’ll let Him.

Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash

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April 7, 2022 · 5:30 AM

Buy A Ticket

I used to live next door to one of the oldest members of our church. She was quite the character. One evening I was outside when she pulled into her driveway with a car full of groceries. After I helped her take them in, she told me a joke I’ll never forget. She said, “One day, the lottery was really large and a man wanted to win it. He prayed, ‘God, if you let me win the lottery, I’ll give 25% to the church.’ God replied back, ‘Buy a ticket!'” She then told me, “So many times we ask God for something, but don’t do anything about it.”

I think about that joke often in my prayer time. How many times have I asked God for something when I wasn’t willing to “buy a ticket”? God couldn’t help that man win the lottery if he wasn’t the owner of a ticket, and He can’t answer a lot of our prayers if we aren’t willing to put ourselves in position for Him to either. Remember, faith without works (action), is useless. He could have believed all he wanted that God would let him win the lottery, but without action on his part, it was useless.

In John 4:46-54, there is the story of a nobleman whose some was on his deathbed. He heard that Jesus was about 18 miles away, so he walked over a day to get to him. When he arrived, he begged Jesus to come to his home and heal his son. Jesus blew him off. He wouldn’t let up though. He pleaded, “Lord, please come now before my son dies” (NLT). Then in verse 50, it says, “Then Jesus told him, ‘Go back home. Your son will live!‘ And the man believed what Jesus said and started home.”

In order for his faith to activate his son’s healing, he had to start home. He had to act without seeing the result. It wasn’t until the next day, on his journey home, that his servants met him on the road, that he found out his son was healed. What if he had stayed and continued to beg Jesus? What if he had never started home? Often Jesus would say, “Go. Your faith has made you whole.” Their healing, their answer to prayer, was always activated by something they did. God has the power to answer your largest prayer, but it usually requires some kind of action on your part first.

What action do you need to take as an act of faith to activate God’s answer? Mark Batterson often writes, “Pray like it depends on God. Work like it depends on you.“

Photo by Jad Limcaco on Unsplash

Throwback Thursday is a feature I’m using to help build some margin into my schedule to pursue other ventures. Each Thursday I’ll be bringing you a previously written devotional that still speaks encouragement to us from God’s Word.

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November 9, 2020 · 6:00 AM

Broken And Beautiful

There are a few ways to do a puzzle. Some people open the box and pull out a couple of pieces at a time. Some people grab a handful to see if there are any matches. Then there are people like me who dump the whole box in the middle of the table. I like to see all the pieces I’m working with and begin forming the puzzle from the outside in. No matter how you start a puzzle, I think you’ll agree that it’s frustrating to get all the way to the end only to find that you’re missing a piece or two. You check the box, the floor, your chair and all around the table where you’re working. You need all the pieces if you’re going to be able to complete it. There’s just something satisfying about completing a puzzle with all the pieces.

If you’re reading this, then your life has been broken somewhere along the way. It’s part of the human condition. Our lives get shattered, we scoop up the pieces and try to move forward by putting them back together again. Sometimes our brokenness makes it hard to trust people again or even God. If only He would have intervened, then our life wouldn’t have been shattered. If only He would have answered our desperate prayers, then we would be whole still. When you’re holding the broken pieces of your life, it’s easy to look back and think that you’d be whole right now “if only (you fill in the blank).” The truth is we’re all broken to some degree and we’re holding the pieces of our life trying to put things back together the way they were. But what if you were broken so God could put the pieces back together in a more complete and beautiful way?

I love mosaic art because it’s formed from broken pieces. I believe it’s the same type of artistry God uses when we give Him the pieces of our brokenness and allow Him to put our life back together. Psalm 18:20 says, “GOD made my life complete when I placed all the pieces before him” (MSG). For God to make our life complete and whole again, He can’t have any missing pieces. You must surrender all the pieces to Him. He knows there are parts of us that we hold back from Him because of fear, but He patiently and lovingly waits for us to trust Him enough. God rewrites the story and picture of our lives when we give Him all the pieces and He makes something beautiful out of the pieces. He does His part when we do ours and surrender the pieces. He takes our brokenness and makes something beautiful out of our mess.

Photo by Giulia May on Unsplash

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December 12, 2019 · 5:30 AM

Finding Healing

Several years ago, I went through some very dark times in my life that I wasn’t sure I’d make it through. They left some very deep scars that I thought would never heal. Instead of going through a true healing process, I decided that it was best to treat that portion of my life as if it were a dream. I covered the wounds and vowed to never speak of them again. I thought that if I pretended it never happened, then I wouldn’t feel the pain of it. That seemed to work for a while until Dave Roever spoke at our church one Sunday.

Dave is a Vietnam veteran who had a phosphorus grenade blow up in his hand near his head as he was throwing it. He survived the explosion, but as a result of the explosion, he has a very disfigured face and hand. He told his story of his recovery and how God has used that terrible event to help him reach so many vets for Christ. Then he wrapped up his sermon by saying, “Don’t hide your scars. For in them, others will find their healing.”

I knew at that point it was time to unwrap my wounds to let them heal. I had to dig down inside, bring up all that hurt again to deal with it properly so God could use my story to help others find their healing. That’s how this site began actually. It was a way for me to process the hurt, but also a way for others to find their healing too. II Corinthians 1:4 says, “He (God) comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us” (MSG).

I don’t know the pain you’ve been through or are going through, but I do know that God has never left your side. He wants to help you heal your wounds so that He can bring others along side you who are going through something similar. He wants to use your scars to bring healing to others if you’re willing to let Him. Their situation may not be identical to yours, but the pain is the same and so is the healing process. Don’t hide your scars. Let God use them to help someone else who desperately needs your story.

Photo by Christopher Ruel on Unsplash

Throwback Thursday is a feature I’m using to help build some margin into my schedule to pursue other writing ventures. Each Thursday I’ll be bringing you a previously written devotional that still speaks encouragement to us from God’s Word.

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October 3, 2019 · 5:44 AM

Jehovah Rapha

It was in the desert that God first made the promise to be our healer. The Israelites had left Egypt, crossed the Red Sea and had traveled three days. No matter where they looked, they couldn’t find water. The people started complaining to Moses about it. Then suddenly, there it was. A body of water was before them in the town of Marah. They went to drink it, but it was bitter. After praying, God directed Moses to a piece of wood and told him to put it in the water. When he threw it in, the water became sweet. At that moment, God spoke in Exodus 15:26 and said, “If you will listen carefully to the voice of The Lord your God and do what is right in His sight, obeying His commands and keeping all His decrees, then I will not make you suffer any of the diseases I sent on the Egyptians; for I am The Lord who heals you (Jehovah Rapha).”

How fitting that they were in the desert when He made that promise. When we are in need of healing, we often feel like we’re in a desert. We feel alone. There seems to be no life. No hope. No place to get what we need to sustain life. The outlook is often dim. That’s usually where we need to be for us to fully trust God. It’s when we’ve reached the end of our strength, that we learn to trust His ability. Remember, it’s through our weakness that He is made strong. We must go to Him in prayer seeking the healing we need.

I’m not here to tell you that every time I’ve prayed for healing for someone that they’ve received it. In fact, I’ve lost loved ones whom I prayed and believed for God to heal. Does that change who God is or His ability to heal? Absolutely not. I can choose to let something like that poison the water of my soul and make me bitter like the waters of Marah or I can choose to let God put the wood of the cross in my soul and bring healing to me to remove the bitterness. Through the cross, Jesus is able to bring both physical and spiritual healing. It was by His stripes, given at the cross, that we are healed physically, and by His death that we are healed spiritually. His offer to you is to allow Him to apply that wood to your life how He sees fit. He will be your Jehovah Rapha.

Photo by Jussara Romão on Unsplash

Throwback Thursday is a feature I’m using to help build some margin into my schedule to pursue other writing ventures. Each Thursday I’ll be bringing you a previously written devotional that still speaks encouragement to us from God’s Word.

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December 3, 2018 · 5:47 AM

Expect Great Things

A few years ago, a video went viral of a man who was terrified to touch a teddy bear. They had blindfolded him and made him think he was on a show like Fear Factor. When he got the courage to put his hand in the plexiglass box, his fingers brushed up against the teddy bear. He squealed and yanked his hand out. For about two minutes he kept trying to reach in, but his fear was overwhelming. When he finally takes the blindfold off, he realizes it’s just a teddy bear, laughed, then grabbed it and spiked it on the ground. Everyone around him was laughing because he was too afraid to pick up a teddy bear.

It was easy for us to laugh at that because we weren’t the one blindfolded. Everyone else could see and knew he wasn’t in any danger. That’s kind of how Faith works. We’re blindfolded and can’t see. God is asking us to trust Him, but too often we are terrified. Our minds psych us out and we start freaking out. When we take a tiny step of faith and we experience something we aren’t anticipating, we squeal and pull back. All the while, God is saying, “Would you just trust me?”

In Matthew 9, two blind men were following Jesus calling out to Him for healing. Jesus asked if they believed He could heal blind eyes, and they said yes. Verse 29 says, “Then Jesus put His hands over their eyes and said, ‘You will have what your faith expects!’” (TPT) I believe He is still saying that to us today. Don’t let your mind expect the worse and create fear of what God is going to do. Expect God, who is good, to give you what you need. You don’t have to be terrified of what He has for you. Expect great things from Him because He gives good gifts.

Photo by Oscar Keys on Unsplash

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