Bullets for the Battle

I Need Healing for My Dis-Ease

³³ Teach me, O LORD, to follow your decrees; then I will keep them to the end. ³⁴ Give me understanding, and I will keep your law and obey it with all my heart. ³⁵ Direct me in the path of your commands, for there I find delight. ³⁶ Turn my heart toward your statutes and not toward selfish gain. ³⁷ Turn my eyes away from worthless things; preserve my life according to your word. ³⁸ Fulfill your promise to your servant, so that you may be feared. ³⁹ Take away the disgrace I dread, for your laws are good. ⁴⁰ How I long for your precepts! Preserve my life in your righteousness. Psalm 119:33-40

Being saved is first recognizing you have been sick unto death! You have been brutally wounded by sin … so severely, in fact, that recovery is out of the question. You can do nothing to “heal yourself”! There is only one narrow hope … and only if you “make it” to the Gospel Hospital.

Once you say, “Yes … I desperately need to go!” and when the servant helpers finally get you there, the Great Chief of Staff puts you in the Spiritual ICU. He announces to us all some time later, “Our patient is going to make it. It’s going to take a good deal of time to recover, but he’s on the mend. It might take years, but eventually he will be as good as created … even better!”

Here’s the plan!

1. Put him on IV. He must be slowly force fed the medication truth that will restore his bodily functions. His diet will be closely monitored for maximum nutrition to restore him as quickly as possible.
2. Of course no exposure to alcohol, drugs, tobacco or other toxic habits that diminish his health potential.
3. His ICU “mentor nurse” will also monitor his pain medicine when the discomfort reaches too high a level. We won’t let him feel more pain than he can stand!

In other words the new Disciple recovering from sin and sins must:

1. Incline my heart toward massive doses of Your truth.
2. Turn my eyes from gazing after vanities rather than Your grace.
3. Confirm to me Your promises where alone I find the love and truth that heals.

So read Psalm 119:36-38. These three verses were the first three I memorized from the magnificent 150 verse 119th Psalm. Only much later (years!) did I realize that their application to “my condition” would result in verses 39 and 40! (The Savior’s promises are connecting and unending!) Note the triune healing of making the Master’s promises BIGGER than your problems rather thinking (and acting) like your problems are BIGGER than God!

1. He will take away the shame that always drives me to “feel guilty” because His truth has cleansed me (119:39).
2. I will discover a longing and delight for His Presence as my supreme ambition and full satisfaction (119:40).
3. He will make me an overcomer as I am drenched with His forgiveness and the gift of His righteousness (119:40).

So I awake each morning with my first thoughts being focused on “more of Jesus.” I rush through my “getting up procedures” and then sit at my little desk where the Scriptures, my reading, my thoughts, my prayers, my praise and my writing open up my little world and His colossal universe. It is then I see them both with His eyes and move into His kingdom dimension! It is then I delight, enjoy, thrill and revel in the Savior’s incredible Presence. I find myself continually requesting the first words of our stanza from Psalm 119:33-34, “Teach me, O Lord, to follow Your ideas … when I discover their magnificence I know that I will treasure them and seek to grasp more and more of them until the end of my life. Understanding You compels me and captures me! I yearn to obey You because I possess Your ideas with all of my heart. I know what it is to experience the full delight of Your Overwhelming Presence!” (HDM)