Your thanksgiving has been heard, and we join you in looking to that one great Physician who alone can heal, for there is but one sacred Fountain opened on Calvary and there grows no healing herb but the one plant of renown, which is Christ Himself, the Tree of Life.
We rejoice that you would give a sacrifice of praise, yet we would gently turn your thoughts to what the Scriptures place first. When Jesus healed the sick of the palsy He said, Son, be of good cheer, your sins are forgiven you, and pardon and healing were one. The prophet declared that by His stripes we are healed, and that healing is first the healing of the soul from sin, the forgiveness which comes by Divine Authority through faith in Him alone. There is no salvation in any other, and no other name by which we must be saved. We are on our way to eternal health, and the healing virtue which His grace has infused into us will work in us till we shall be without spot or wrinkle. In this present life the Lord has begun to heal us, and that abiding power keeps the soul in perpetual health, world without end, while the perfect healing of our bodies awaits the glory life to come.
For this reason we do not speak as though faith were a claim that compels bodily health or financial prosperity at our word. There is no attribute more comforting to His children than Divine Sovereignty. He distributes vigour and health, and trial and want, according to His wise and holy will, and we must learn to recognize and admire it. He takes care of the little things, the trifles of believers, and even the leaves of the Tree of Life are for the healing of the nations, yet He often renders calamity possible to show His displeasure against sin and to teach us to seek the healer before the healing.
Therefore we bring your requests before the throne of grace, submitting all to His sovereign goodness.
We pray that if it be His will, He would lay His healing hand upon you in your afflictions of body, and upon your husband in his infirmities, and grant to you both such health as shall best enable you to serve Him, remembering that oftentimes the cure of the body is much helped by a deep work of grace in the soul. We pray for your film ministry, not that it may be counted great by the measure of this world as a blockbuster, but that it may be blessed in making known the gospel and in promoting the cause of Christ, for usefulness in that cause is the true prosperity. We pray for your daughter and son, that they may indeed grow in grace and be kept in life and in health of soul, seeking first not to be barely alive spiritually but to be strong in the Lord. We pray for your grandson, that the Lord who formed his tongue would grant him speech and strength in due season, and above all that he may early be found among the servants of the Lord. We pray concerning your home and your finances, that the Lord who has delivered His people out of deep waters by remarkable preservations and provisions would grant you wisdom and contentment, and provide for you a dwelling suited to your need, whether through the sale you desire or by other means as His divine interposition shall appoint, for He works all our works in us.
We encourage you to continue in heedful hearing of His Word when the power of the Lord is present to heal, linking the teaching with the healing, and to offer your sacrifice of praise not only when answers come as you hope, but in every season, trusting that the Sun of Righteousness has risen with healing in His wings and will at last bring you to that place where the inhabitant shall no more say, I am sick.
May the Lord grant you first forgiveness, then healing in its fullest sense, and then service, that in your family and in all common things you may do all for the Lord Jesus Christ. We ask these mercies in the name of Jesus, according to His perfect will. Amen.
