Be Healed

The wise thing to do is to look to God for help. He’s the only One who can help us in all situations and circumstances. Isn’t He the only One who can heal us? Isn’t He the only One who can provide for us when nobody else knows our need? He’s the only One who can give us direction for our life, for absolute certainty. 

—Charles F. Stanley, “Escaping a Desperate Situation”  

The word only seems stingy, doesn’t it? When we hear God is the only one who can ultimately help us, we might be tempted to think it’s impossible to receive help from other human beings. What about doctors and their medicine, teachers and their lessons, counselors, friends? If we imagine Him hoarding power, doling it out as He sees fit while we sit by helpless, we misunderstand who God is. To some extent, “only” is true—as every living, breathing thing is under His sovereign control. But the problem with this idea is that it suggests the Lord’s blessings are scarce, when everything we know about Him suggests otherwise—that He is a God of endless generosity and abundance (Ps. 16:11; Ps. 23:5-6; Eph. 3:20; Phil. 4:19; John 3:16). Instead, it may be more accurate to say, If God is the only one who heals, then any healing in our life is His doing. 

If God is the only one who heals, then any healing in our life is His doing.

There was a time when I expected God’s restoration to come directly from Him in some inexplicable way that could only be attributed to overt supernatural intervention. But if that’s true, I can’t say I’ve ever experienced it. Instead, any healing and wholeness I’ve encountered has come in the form of encouragement from dear friends, support from my counselor, or guidance from doctors.  

There is no limit to the ways God can exercise His power in our life, and any healing we receive through the people around us is not tainted or watered-down as we might be tempted to think. Instead, it is evidence of God working faithfully, as He always has—through fallible people, institutions, even technology, and nations. After all, who am I to decide what His remedies look like? God may be the only one who can heal, and the variety of ways He chooses is perfectly and beautifully orchestrated.