Devotional: Yahweh My Healer

[I have enjoyed the Morning and Evening devotionals of the late 1800’s Particular Baptist preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, but find them a bit archaic in presentation. So I have re-written them in more modern fashion for modern ears, in some cases even modifying them.

Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed. (Jeremiah 17:14)
I have seen his ways, and will heal him. (Isaiah 57:18)

It is the sole prerogative of God to remove spiritual disease. Natural disease may be instrumentally healed by men, but even then the honor is to be given to God who gives virtue to medicine, and bestows power to the human frame to cast off disease. As for spiritual sicknesses, these remain with the great Physician alone; he claims it as his prerogative, “I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal;” and one of the Lord’s choice titles is Yahweh-Rophi, the Lord my healer. “I will heal you of your wounds,” is a promise which could not come from the lip of man, but only from the mouth of the eternal God. On this account the psalmist cried to the Lord, “O Lord, heal me, for my bones are sore vexed,” and again, “Heal my soul, for I have sinned against you.”

For this, also, the godly praise the name of the Lord, saying, “He heals all our diseases.” He who made man can restore man; he who was at first the creator of our nature can new create it. What a transcendent comfort it is that in the person of Jesus “dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily!” My soul, whatever your disease may be, this great Physician can heal you. If he be God, there can be no limit to his power. Come then with the blind eyes of darkened understanding, come with the limping foot of wasted energy, come with the maimed hand of weak faith, the fever of an angry temper, or the chills and fever of shivering despondency. Come just as you are, for he who is God can certainly restore you of your plague. None shall restrain the healing virtue which proceeds from Jesus our Lord.

Legions of devils have been made to own the power of the beloved Physician, and never once has he been baffled. All his patients have been cured in the past and shall be in the future, and you shall be one among them, my friend, if you will but rest yourself in him this day.