Archive for May, 2009

Health Care For The Christian: King Asa’s example

About a year ago, after hearing ad nauseum about national health care reform, I began considering many things concerning health care that are taking shape around us: Waiting lists for surgeries, less availability of physician services, a growing number of people who have no health care and the criteria that may be considered by insurance companies before a person is able to receive medical treatment for cancer and other life-threatening conditions. (This consideration of criteria–age, health, etc.–is standard in Great Britain and already happening in America. Recently a woman on the West Coast received a letter of denial from her insurance company for chemo-therapy for stage 4 Cancer and enclosed in the envelope was a consent form for her to sign if she wanted the option of physician-assisted suicide…which the insurance company said they would pay for.) God spoke to my heart plainly that His children need to remember that He is our great and infallible physican.

Matthew 6:33 “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”

JEHOVAH-RAPHA==The God Who Heals
The first mention of God’s name Jehovah-rapha is found in Exodus 15:2 “The LORD (Jehovah-Rapha) is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation: he is my God and I will prepare him an habitation; my father’s God, and I will exalt him.”

Is Jesus Jehovah-Rapha?……John 5:19 says that Jesus is one with the Father.

One day, as I sat still and considered many things about nationalized health care, God brought to my heart a truth from Scripture I learned over 30 years ago. This truth involves King Asa. I have spoken and written about this truth many times in years gone by and I believe God brought it to my heart again because this time in history needs to drive us back to Jehovah-Rapha…our perfect healer.

To quell any questions let me say I know modern medicine has a place in the health of a Christian…but not first place. God has used physicians many, many times in my health care. However, I have both practiced and know so many other Christians who have done exactly what King Asa did: sought the physicians only and not God for their healing. 2Chronicles 16:12 “And Asa in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great: yet in his disease he sought not to the LORD, but to the physicians.” And King Asa died two years later (verse 13).

I hope the degenerating state of health care in America–coupled with the growing problems with the Food and Drug Administration–will cause Christians to re-think our trust in anyone or anything above our God…our Great Physician. I don’t have all of the answers but I’m increasingly thankful that God has put in my heart a desire to learn truths about how I can help this marvelous body–which He created–to function at a healthier level so that less physician and prescription intervention is necessary. I’m very thankful that God has led me to seek Him in all that He is to better know Who is in control of me–to better understand my Abba Father who has much to say in His Word concerning our health and healing–some of which I have never heard preached from a pulpit or taught in Sunday School even though it is plainly taught in the Bible.

Please read the whole article…click on the title in the right column.

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Growing Children of God Need To Question

The older I get the more I realize the importance of our growing up experience. For example, a child growing up in a dysfunctional home will, in some degree, have issues to overcome later in life. A child who had the experience of negligent home-schooling will, in some degree, have educational issues to contend with or overcome. A child who was raised by the television with little parental training, will have issues with cognitive and coping skills…and potentially a host of other issues.

For decades I’ve counseled people who have grown up in dysfunctional homes…and I’ve heard and read about many others. I know the issues and problems I’ve had to overcome, and am still overcoming, because of what I experienced and learned in the dysfunctional home I was raised in. The questions of “how were they parented?” or “how were their parents parented as children?” often comes into play as a person walks a path of healing…re-learning. As I thought about this yesterday my mind whirled.

At sixty years old my husband and I often find ourselves talking about our Christian upbringing—wealth of Bible and Christian life teaching–from our first pastor after we gave Jesus control of our lives. Yesterday I found an oasis and I stopped to drink fresh water and consider our looking back at the teaching/training of the pastor who nurtured us when we were infant Christians. I realized the importance and parallels of our physical and spiritual childhood experiences and teachings. We’ve had other good, loving, Bible-teaching and godly-living pastors in our 40 years of Christian living. However, our foundation and belief-system, like that of a small child, was constructed when we were infant and growing children of God.

In the last couple of years God, using His blessed Word/His Balm of Gilead and His Holy Spirit to lead me and guide me into truth, has worked to change some ‘truth’, teaching, I received as an infant Christian. Not ‘connecting the dots’ I’ve often wondered why I have had such a struggle at times to let Biblical truth replace old teaching. It dawned on me yesterday that this is the same struggle people have with replacing teaching/truths they learned in a less than nurturing childhood.

Young children do not have the skills to process and discern truth, right from wrong or what is morally acceptable. Children need parenting to show them…teach them. If the parenting is right, moral, nurturing, loving, the experience of growing up is a healthy one. This is equally true for our Christian experience: How we were grown up in the Lord while our diets consisted of milk…when we were too immature to study and digest the meat of the Word of God…determines the health/strength/understanding/power of our Christian lives. Of course, this can be changed with much study, seeking, accepting and assimilating revealed Biblical truth.

I believe the first step out of the desert to strengthen my Christian life came when I let myself drink fresh cool water and accept the fact that some things/truths I was taught as a young Christian did not line up with the Bible…some ‘truths’ were not even in the Bible. On my path to growing past some old teaching I had to ask the same questions people need to consider when walking paths to spiritual and emotional healing: “how were they (my pastors and spiritual mentors) ‘parented’ in the Lord?” or “how were the people they learned from ‘parented’ as babes in Christ?” For example yesterday I studied the doctrines and teachings of the church one of our pastors was born into and raised in…and later left. My study helped me to realize where some of the untruths he taught as Bible truth came from…his spiritual childhood training which he never questioned. Our ‘parents’ and ‘grandparents’ can have a huge impact on what we learn, who we are and how we teach others…until we choose to change the wrong beliefs through seeking Bible study. “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” II Timothy 2:15

Change is uncomfortable. Change is good. Knowing the truth sets us free to live victoriously in the power of the Holy Spirit.

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