Healing from COPD, asthma

[Chrysostom]

Consider the marvel of the body itself: that one small seed, deposited in the womb, is fashioned into eyes and ears, hands and heart, nerves and veins, flesh and bone. This moist and soft matter becomes the dry and cold of bone, the warm and moist of blood. You see a resurrection and a death every day in the periods of our life. If God so forms and sustains this frame from its very origin, can He not command the lungs to draw breath freely? Can He not quiet the inflammation and cleanse every passage? The Nature of things follows His will; He is not controlled by them. Wherefore He is able to change their form and order, giving contraries by means of contraries. So do not fear.

The affliction you witness is not beyond His power. The Cross itself, which the world thinks despicable, is our highest glory, for on it the Master who is very God was not ashamed of suffering for us the slave, the enemy, the unfeeling one. If Christ bore such sufferings for your son, will He now abandon him in his own bodily trial? Let this very weakness become a ground for boasting, not against the branches, but in the Lord. Boast that the root, Christ Himself, bears your son up, and that His grace is sufficient where human strength fails.

Pray boldly, for He who said, "If thine enemy hunger, feed him," has resources beyond our reckoning. He who commands us to humble ourselves in order to be exalted knows how to raise up a body laid low by illness. What gain is it to receive the servants but hear not the things spoken? This then is the word: trust in the God who alone knows the heart, who numbers every nerve and artery, and who can, in an instant, command the whole frame to be restored. Let your expectation rest not on what is seen, but on the power which fashions life from the seed, which brings age from youth and yet can make all things new. He is the physician of souls and bodies and will act according to His perfect will.

 

[Silas]

You are clinging to a promise woven through all of Scripture: the Father hears a parent’s cry for their child. I think of the official who came to Jesus in Cana, desperate for his son who lay sick miles away. He had no physical evidence that Jesus would act, only the word spoken to him: “Go your way; your son lives.” And the man believed the word and went. The fever broke at the exact hour Jesus spoke. Distance meant nothing. The Spirit of God moved with the same authority then as now, and that same Son who healed the nobleman’s boy is still the living Lord.

That healing, like every miracle Jesus performed, was the work of the Father through the Son. Jesus never acted on His own initiative; He did only what He saw the Father doing. So when we pray for your son’s lungs to clear, for inflammation to recede, for his immune system to be fortified against every virus, we are asking the Father to extend that same life-giving work through the Son who is the radiance of God’s love. His love for His own Son, the only begotten, is the deepest reality in the universe, and in giving that Son for us, the Father showed He will not hold back any good thing from those who trust Him.

You asked for healing from COPD and asthma, and for strength in this heat. Physical healing is part of Jesus’ ministry. He healed all manner of sickness and disease, not as a side note but as a central declaration that He is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Sometimes that healing comes instantly, like the centurion’s servant who was restored at a single command. Sometimes it comes gradually, as our bodies, fearfully and wonderfully made, respond to the processes God Himself set in place. Every true healing, whether the slow mending of tissue or a sudden reversal of illness, is divine, because the Creator stands behind every natural law He ordained.

I do not fully understand why some are healed and others wait, or why seasons of struggle stretch on. But I know this: the Son who was declared with power by His resurrection has authority over every malignant cell, every constricted airway, every hidden infection. And the Father who gave His Son for your eternal redemption also invites you to bring this present need. When Jesus bore our griefs and carried our sorrows, He sanctified every heavy breath and sleepless night your son endures.

Pray then with boldness, not as one who doubts, but as one who knows the Father loves your son even more than you do, because He knows what it cost to give His own Son. And as you wait, watch for the ways He is at work: maybe in a good night’s rest, in a doctor’s wisdom, in a day when breathing comes a little easier. These are not small mercies; they are the Son’s ongoing ministry of healing, applied by the Spirit who cries out within us, “Abba, Father.”

Keep your eyes on the One who is both Son of David and Son of God. He is able to cleanse every infection, calm every inflammation, and sustain your son’s body through the hottest day. More than that, He has already overcome the grave, and His resurrection power is at work in all who believe. So rest your son in the hands of the great Physician, and trust that whatever the timing, the Father’s answer flows from a love that did not spare His own Son.