Example: God’s healing
By Elizabeth Prata
This week I’m posting 3 quick examples of an encouraging attribute or action of God. Yesterday was an example of God’s provision. Today we have an example of God’s healing. While the spiritual gift of healing given to men in the first century, and today’s example is one of those, the sign gift of healing from the early days of the church has ceased. However, God Himself does still heal, sometimes obviously miraculously.
Yahweh will sustain him upon his sickbed; In his illness, You restore him to health. (Psalm 41:3).
Sometimes when we become ill we might, in our delirium or pain, cry out, why, Lord? Sometimes, like Job, we may never know. But we DO know that all God does is good.
Barnes’ Notes says of the Psalm 41 verse,
Barnes’ Notes on the Bible: The Lord will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing – The word rendered strengthen here means to support; to uphold; to sustain. The idea here is, that God would enable him to bear his sickness, or would impart strength – inward strength – when his body failed, or when but for this aid he must sink under his disease and die.
Here is Charles Spurgeon on Psalm 41 verse 3-
Verse 3. The Lord will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing. The everlasting arms shall stay up his soul as friendly hands and downy pillows stay up the body of the sick. How tender and sympathising is this image; how near it brings our God to our infirmities and sicknesses! Whoever heard this of the old heathen Jove, or of the gods of India or China? This is language peculiar to the God of Israel; he it is who deigns to become nurse and attendant upon good men. If he smites with one hand he sustains with the other. Oh, it is blessed fainting when one falls upon the Lord’s own bosom, and is borne up thereby! Grace is the best of restoratives; divine love is the noblest stimulant for a languishing patient; it makes the soul strong as a giant, even when the aching bones are breaking through the skin. No physician like the Lord, no tonic like his promise, no wine like his love. Thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness. What, doth the Lord turn bed maker to his sick children? Herein is love indeed. Who would not consider the poor if such be the promised reward? A bed soon grows hard when the body is weary with tossing to and fro upon it, but grace gives patience, and God’s smile gives peace, and the bed is made soft because the man’s heart is content; the pillows are downy because the head is peaceful. Note that the Lord will make all his bed, from head to foot. What considerate and indefatigable kindness! Our dear and ever blessed Lord Jesus, though in all respects an inheritor of this promise, for our sakes condescended to forego the blessing, and died on a cross and not upon a bed; yet, even there, he was after awhile upheld and cheered by the Lord his God, so that he died in triumph.” –end Spurgeon
Sometimes God heals us by taking us home to heaven. Other times he gives wellness after the illness. Either way, God is perfect.
