The Healing Business
After being out of it for four years, it felt good to get back in.
This past Wednesday, I went back to Bible Study Fellowship (BSF) - an international and interdenominational Bible Study for men, women, and children of all ages. Both of my parents are highly involved in BSF, and they took my sister and I with them ever since we were very young. I grew up going to BSF, and I sincerely testify that God used it to change my life. Because of BSF, I came to know God through the hard-core study of His Word. There are BSF classes all over the world...except Searcy, Arkansas...which is why I have missed it the past four years.
But now I am back, and the study this year is the book of Matthew.
In my Bible class at church, we are reading through the entire New Testament. This past week, we just so happened to be reading all of Matthew. Coincidence? I think not. Matthew is where it's at.
Maybe it is because I am a nurse, but the healings of Jesus as recorded in Matthew stood out to me more than anything else. Wherever Jesus went, He healed people. Whenever He preached, He healed people. Crowds followed Him, and He healed them. When people asked for it, He healed them. When they didn't ask for it, He healed them. Even when he was tired and wanted to be alone, He healed people. When people asked why he did what he did, He responded with this:
“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matthew 9:12-13)
Jesus was in the healing business, and He consistently used physical healing as a means for spiritual healing - to point people to God as the Healer and Redeemer.
I want to be in the healing business. Perhaps this is why I love being a nurse. Perhaps this is why I want to be a missionary. But from reading Matthew, I learned that being in the healing business with Jesus is not about knowing signs and symptoms and treating physical illness. It is about looking for hurting hearts wherever you go and being sensitive and responsive to their brokenness. Being in the healing business is about seeing something more - seeing beyond the busyness of life and into the depths of human hearts. There we will find the need for something much greater than pills, therapies, and nursing interventions. Like Jesus, we must recognize the greater spiritual need - the need for wholeness, identity, value, worth, and hope - which is only found in the love of God.
I am still learning what all this means, and I am trying to take it out of the context of nursing and into the context of spiritual eye-sight. Because you don't have to be a nurse to be a healer. Jesus is the healer, and He invites all of His followers to join Him in the healing business of hurting, hungry, seeking hearts. I invite you to join me in praying for instruction on how to be in the healing business with Christ. I have a feeling this BSF study of Matthew is going to be a great place to start.
This past Wednesday, I went back to Bible Study Fellowship (BSF) - an international and interdenominational Bible Study for men, women, and children of all ages. Both of my parents are highly involved in BSF, and they took my sister and I with them ever since we were very young. I grew up going to BSF, and I sincerely testify that God used it to change my life. Because of BSF, I came to know God through the hard-core study of His Word. There are BSF classes all over the world...except Searcy, Arkansas...which is why I have missed it the past four years.
But now I am back, and the study this year is the book of Matthew.
In my Bible class at church, we are reading through the entire New Testament. This past week, we just so happened to be reading all of Matthew. Coincidence? I think not. Matthew is where it's at.
Maybe it is because I am a nurse, but the healings of Jesus as recorded in Matthew stood out to me more than anything else. Wherever Jesus went, He healed people. Whenever He preached, He healed people. Crowds followed Him, and He healed them. When people asked for it, He healed them. When they didn't ask for it, He healed them. Even when he was tired and wanted to be alone, He healed people. When people asked why he did what he did, He responded with this:
“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matthew 9:12-13)
Jesus was in the healing business, and He consistently used physical healing as a means for spiritual healing - to point people to God as the Healer and Redeemer.
I want to be in the healing business. Perhaps this is why I love being a nurse. Perhaps this is why I want to be a missionary. But from reading Matthew, I learned that being in the healing business with Jesus is not about knowing signs and symptoms and treating physical illness. It is about looking for hurting hearts wherever you go and being sensitive and responsive to their brokenness. Being in the healing business is about seeing something more - seeing beyond the busyness of life and into the depths of human hearts. There we will find the need for something much greater than pills, therapies, and nursing interventions. Like Jesus, we must recognize the greater spiritual need - the need for wholeness, identity, value, worth, and hope - which is only found in the love of God.
I am still learning what all this means, and I am trying to take it out of the context of nursing and into the context of spiritual eye-sight. Because you don't have to be a nurse to be a healer. Jesus is the healer, and He invites all of His followers to join Him in the healing business of hurting, hungry, seeking hearts. I invite you to join me in praying for instruction on how to be in the healing business with Christ. I have a feeling this BSF study of Matthew is going to be a great place to start.
I didn't know you were a BSFer! Why didn't that ever come up? My mom and many women I look up to were part of it in my Atlanta childhood, but I never got to be part of it myself. We should've started a HU group :)
ReplyDeleteI love your reflections on healing as a nurse!
Ashli, I wish you could have been at the Women's Blogger Retreat at Ferncliff Camp (Presbyterian) just outside LR city limits this past week. These brainy women make a living at blogging. I could not do it, but you could.
ReplyDeleteAnd I really like the Gospel of Matthew too because it is fact-based like a CNN news report without bias... "I am going to give you an account of exactly what happened..." as opposed to the Gospel of John, which is much more abstract and probably my favorite.
Now Ashli... you cannot say "They took my sister and I with them...." That is grammatically incorrect. "I" is a subject. "me" is an object" "They took my sister and me..." The word "me" is the object of the verb. Love, love to you. And I love what you wrote, rote - Aunt Scharmel