Silas
Beloved of All
Your prayer has been heard and your fear and suffering are understood. You are asking God for complete healing from inflammation, for protection over your eyesight, and for safety through the days ahead, and it is right to bring all of that directly to Him.
Fear is often the heaviest part of suffering. It is a tool the enemy uses against God's children because fear and faith cannot live together in the same heart. Where fear is allowed to take over, faith is pushed out, and where faith and confidence in God are strong, fear is driven away. That is why forgetting the Lord brings fear, and remembering the Lord is the cure for fear. The psalmist asked his own soul why it was cast down and disquieted within him, and then he answered himself by remembering God. David said though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil for thou art with me. When you remember who God is, His greatness and power and nearness, that remembrance steadies you.
Part of remembering Him is learning what it means to fear the Lord. This is not a phobia or a dread that makes you hide, but a reverent awe as you think about who He is. That awe is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge. It is the starting place and the sum of true understanding, to love what God loves and to hate what God hates and to desire to do what He would have you do. Scripture connects that reverent fear with departing from evil and even promises that it brings health to the body and strength to the bones. When you walk in that reverent fear, you can trust His promise that those who fear Him shall not want, that the Lord will be your confidence and keep your foot from being taken, that the Lord is your light and your salvation and the strength of your life, so whom shall you fear.
Fear also tries to push us into wrong reactions. It can motivate us to make hasty or unwise moves just to find shelter. We are to do what is wise and prudent in caring for our bodies, including seeking proper medical help for inflammation and for your eyes, but not out of panic. Like Peter when he walked on the water, as long as his eyes were on Jesus he stood, but when he looked at the wind and the waves, fear gripped him and he began to sink. When we get our eyes off Jesus and onto the problem itself, fear takes over. Faith looks to Jesus and trusts that whether He protects on the wall or in any other place, He is able to keep you.
You asked for healing, and God is a healing God. The Gospels show again and again His tender compassion as He healed the sick who were brought to Him, and Matthew reminds us that Isaiah prophesied He bore our infirmities and carried our sicknesses. He has not despised the affliction of the afflicted, but when the afflicted cries to Him, He hears. We do not always understand His ways in healing. Sometimes healing is instant, sometimes it is gradual as with the man who at first saw men as trees walking, sometimes it comes through a touch, sometimes through a word, sometimes through the natural processes of healing that God Himself established in the body, which are no less divine because they are natural. He is not confined to one pattern, but His love and power are constant.
So bring your body to Him again and again without shame. Ask Him for healing for the inflammation and for protection for your eyesight, and trust Him with the outcome and the timing. Ask Him also to guard your heart from fear. When fear rises, turn it into remembrance. Say to your soul, remember the Lord, greater is He who is with you than anything that is against you. In the time of trouble He can hide you and keep you safe.
I pray for you now that God will have mercy and bring healing according to His perfect will, whether quickly or gradually, and that He will use every means He chooses to restore you. I pray He will protect your eyesight and keep you from harm, and that He will give you His peace that drives out fear. May He fill you with faith and with a reverent awe of Himself, and may you know deeply that He is with you, that He hears you when you cry, and that you can rest in His care today and in the days to come.
Fear is often the heaviest part of suffering. It is a tool the enemy uses against God's children because fear and faith cannot live together in the same heart. Where fear is allowed to take over, faith is pushed out, and where faith and confidence in God are strong, fear is driven away. That is why forgetting the Lord brings fear, and remembering the Lord is the cure for fear. The psalmist asked his own soul why it was cast down and disquieted within him, and then he answered himself by remembering God. David said though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil for thou art with me. When you remember who God is, His greatness and power and nearness, that remembrance steadies you.
Part of remembering Him is learning what it means to fear the Lord. This is not a phobia or a dread that makes you hide, but a reverent awe as you think about who He is. That awe is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge. It is the starting place and the sum of true understanding, to love what God loves and to hate what God hates and to desire to do what He would have you do. Scripture connects that reverent fear with departing from evil and even promises that it brings health to the body and strength to the bones. When you walk in that reverent fear, you can trust His promise that those who fear Him shall not want, that the Lord will be your confidence and keep your foot from being taken, that the Lord is your light and your salvation and the strength of your life, so whom shall you fear.
Fear also tries to push us into wrong reactions. It can motivate us to make hasty or unwise moves just to find shelter. We are to do what is wise and prudent in caring for our bodies, including seeking proper medical help for inflammation and for your eyes, but not out of panic. Like Peter when he walked on the water, as long as his eyes were on Jesus he stood, but when he looked at the wind and the waves, fear gripped him and he began to sink. When we get our eyes off Jesus and onto the problem itself, fear takes over. Faith looks to Jesus and trusts that whether He protects on the wall or in any other place, He is able to keep you.
You asked for healing, and God is a healing God. The Gospels show again and again His tender compassion as He healed the sick who were brought to Him, and Matthew reminds us that Isaiah prophesied He bore our infirmities and carried our sicknesses. He has not despised the affliction of the afflicted, but when the afflicted cries to Him, He hears. We do not always understand His ways in healing. Sometimes healing is instant, sometimes it is gradual as with the man who at first saw men as trees walking, sometimes it comes through a touch, sometimes through a word, sometimes through the natural processes of healing that God Himself established in the body, which are no less divine because they are natural. He is not confined to one pattern, but His love and power are constant.
So bring your body to Him again and again without shame. Ask Him for healing for the inflammation and for protection for your eyesight, and trust Him with the outcome and the timing. Ask Him also to guard your heart from fear. When fear rises, turn it into remembrance. Say to your soul, remember the Lord, greater is He who is with you than anything that is against you. In the time of trouble He can hide you and keep you safe.
I pray for you now that God will have mercy and bring healing according to His perfect will, whether quickly or gradually, and that He will use every means He chooses to restore you. I pray He will protect your eyesight and keep you from harm, and that He will give you His peace that drives out fear. May He fill you with faith and with a reverent awe of Himself, and may you know deeply that He is with you, that He hears you when you cry, and that you can rest in His care today and in the days to come.
