Healing.

Last year we looked at the different attributes of God. There are a few we didn’t go through and today I am going to go through one of them. This one is derived from His Name, Jehovah Rapha. God our healer.

Last week we talked about going back to church for those who had left for different reasons. Going back to church is not about ignoring any wrongdoing that happened or sweeping things under the rug. God is not about sweeping things under the rug and we see this right from Genesis. In the garden after Adam and Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God confronts them about it, see Genesis 3:8-24. God does the same with Cain after he killed his brother Abel in Genesis 4:9. God has been confronting sin since the beginning. Just because people seem to be getting away with it does not mean God has not seen it. We let God be God and deal with things His way.

Now if the police need to be involved and you need to report something then do it. But let us not step in the shoes of God and hold people at ransom in our hearts. It creates toxicity in us. Yes, bitterness is toxic and it will ruin all your relationships.

It is one thing to be hurt by a stranger, it feels somewhat worse when it is someone you cared about or respected or trusted. Sometimes people find themselves experiencing pain in places where no doctor can reach, where no counsellor can counsel, and where no medication can help. There are things that only God can heal. Does God use doctors and psychiatrists and medication to heal us? 100%. How God heals us is entirely up to Him, but what I do know is that God heals.

Many years ago, I experienced something that left me broken. I was hurt. I was angry. I was depressed and could not get out of bed for days at a time. My doctors did not recognise it at the time because I became very good at pretending to be ok and it never crossed my mind that I genuinely needed help. Thought I was strong enough to bounce back on my own. I became very anxious and was on medication for that but it only got worse. Tried counselling but I could not tell them what the problem was. Not necessarily because I didn’t want to, but because I did not know. Nothing made sense until God shined His light on it. I became less and less like myself until God came and delivered me. Yes, I needed deliverance. It is not a bad word and it is nothing to be ashamed of.

See what happens is our pain sometimes is the doorway for demonic entry. You can’t medicate a demon and you sure can’t counsel it. You need Jesus to do internal surgery and get it out and heal that area of brokenness. If you have tried everything and nothing seems to be working, maybe its time to try Jesus. Church is where we can be surrounded by other believers so we can get prayed over, get free and stay free. Getting free is one thing. Staying free is another.

Luke 11:24-26 says, “When a demon is cast out of a person, it goes to wander in a waterless realm, searching for rest. But finding no place to rest, it says, ‘I will go back and reoccupy the body I left.’ When it returns, it finds the person like a house swept clean and made tidy, but empty. Then it goes and enlists seven demons more evil than itself, and they all enter and possess the person, leaving that one in a much worse state than before.”

Getting delivered does not remove personal accountability. We need to do what the Bible tells us to do. We need to crucify the flesh daily. We need other believers around us. Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 says, “Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble.”

So yes, we need each other. I know people who have suffered unimaginable things at the hands of their church leaders, but they chose to let their love for Jesus be greater than the pain they went through. When we bring our pain to Jesus, He has this wonderful ability to redeem it such that nothing is wasted. Yes, nothing is wasted in His hands, even the difficult things we go through. I heard Christine Cain say in an interview recently that (and I paraphrase) when we hold on to our pain, we are letting what they did to us be greater than what Jesus did for us. As Christians, we always want our lives to point to Jesus and what He did for us.

You may have legitimately been hurt deeply. God sees that and He wants to heal you. But healing doesn’t happen in isolation, it happens in community. In the story of the prodigal son, when the son left the father’s house the father did not go visiting him and running after him in the streets. He waited at the house for his some to come back home. When he saw the son returning, he ran up to him and welcomed him back with arms open wide! Come back home.

Perhaps you are the one who did the hurting. Repent and give it to Jesus As God forgives you, forgive yourself too and find a church to go to. Don’t be a repeat offender, true repentance means we turn our backs on that thing and move in the direction God is calling us. Let’s not get stuck in yesterday. We have Jehovah Rapha who can heal us and lead us to the right people to walk with us on our journey to wholeness. That may include doctors and therapists but it definitely will include a church family.

Love and blessings,

Melissa Tsingano