When the Lord stretches forth His hand to heal, the only proper response from those who have wept before His throne is to rise up with timbrel and dance, mingling the voice of melody with the voice of supplication that once broke through the night watches. You have done well to bring this report before the congregation, for a mercy so great must not be buried in silence. What was it I said but a little while ago? Prayer and praise are like the two cherubim on the ark; they must never be separated. You have known the labor of the one for these two long years; now let the sweetness of the other ascend as incense before the Lord.
For two years the petition went up, staggered perhaps at times, for a true prayer from one who is near unto the gates of death is a prevailing prayer, even when it scarce knows its own meaning or cannot follow the consecutiveness of an orderly petition. The soul reeled to and fro with fear, yet the cry reached the ear of the Faithful One. He heard you when you were at your wit's end, and He has now answered you punctually at the very tick of the clock of wisdom. Not before, not after, but in the moment ordained by His unerring counsel, when nine months of normal count testify that the Good Physician’s healing power has coursed through every vein.
Herein lies a double cause for a double duty. If He heard your voice in prayer, He shall hear your voice in praise. If He listened when the tear was in your eye, He shall listen now that your eye sparkles with holy delight. This amalgam of prayer and thanksgiving is more precious than the gold of Ophir; it is a royal way of coming before the throne. Let not your praise be solitary. Fetch in the neighbors. Let the company of the faithful lift up a common song, for united praise is like music in concert, and we ought to have such seasons where the entire service is made up of praise from beginning to end. The mist of earth's gratitude should rise as the sun of Heaven's love warms the ground.
Yet, even as you sing, continue to plead. The mercy received is a promise of more mercy to come. Your prayer was answered after God’s fashion, not in the way you expected, and He met you as though He were an enemy before He revealed Himself as your Friend. He put the oncologist on the right track; the healing leaves of the Tree of Life were dispensed through the physician’s skill, for the least things about Christ are healing. Now that you have received this gracious visitation, let it drive you to deeper communion. Let the faithfulness of Jesus, who loved His own to the end, constrain you to be always much in prayer, always adorning this doctrine by a life of holy gratitude.
Do not act as those nine lepers who went their way unthankful. Your daughter’s life is a borrowed light; let it burn brightly for Him who snatched her from the paw of the lion. And when the Evil One whispers that this was mere chance or that prayer is a vain exertion, remind him that a promise-laden prayer, born of God’s own Word, must succeed as surely as God is God. Go your way, then, with your mouth full of singing and your hands full of service. The same blood that cleansed the leper has sanctified this recovery. Because He loved His own, He loved to the end; and the end of this trial has become a bright beginning. Only you who have been healed can tell of the Physician’s power, speak it out, live it out, until your days of praise shall ne’er be past, while life and thought and being last, or immortality endures.
Prayer Focus: God, Thank You for loving me. Thank You for loving me, Jesus. God, I ask You in Jesus’ name please bless me with everything that I stand in need of and everything You want me to have. 
