Day 37 - Issue 24
Exodus 15:26 NLT
He [God] 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.”
Healing is greatly prized throughout society. We fear terminal illness and we struggle with the thought of the physical body’s decline. Each of us is mortal, yet to accept our mortality can prove a struggle. That struggle is more acute when we are invited to face up to our mortality sooner than expected.
I discovered I had blinkers on when it came to Katey’s MS and healing. Yet, two things slowly became clear to me. As I devoted more energy to prayer than was my norm because now I needed the mountain of MS to move, God revealed to me the variance there was between God’s voice and my life. I had been living as I chose to live in response to God, rather than living as he requested me to live. Quite simply I had failed to listen, discern and then live obediently in God’s way. My walk of faith was superficial even though it was sincere.
At the same time I was forced to remove my blinkers and learn that healing was about wholeness. While Katey declined physically she grew immeasurably in God. The battle became less about Katey’s ability to embrace God and move quietly towards God’s eternal embrace, as it did about my inability to loosen my dependence upon her. My search for physical healing was more about my own need for stability and satisfaction than Katey's.
Life is a gift from God and in rediscovering faith I acknowledged this reality and faced the challenge of entrusting all my life into God’s care. It faced me up with my own inner need to control my present and future, which is something God demanded I give over into his safe-keeping. This was the start of a long and often lonely battle.
QUESTION: Are you able to hear and then submit to God’s voice?
PRAYER: Lord Jesus, you said often what matters most is not just to hear your will, but to do it. Help me do what matters most.
