The cry of your heart has ascended, not into an empty void, but to the throne of the living God who hears the groaning of His children. When life presses hard and the sorrows seem to multiply, the wasting of the flesh, the crushing weight of debt, the gaping wound left by a father’s departure, it is then that we learn what it means to have God Himself as our soul and crown. Life is no longer sorrowful, even amid sorrow, when God is in it. It is worth while to live the most afflicted and tried life, so long as we know God and taste His love. You have made your request known, and now your business is to listen to the Word of the Lord and feed upon the leaves of the Tree of Life which are for the healing of the nations.
You plead for your mother’s physical frame, assaulted by this ailment of the liver. Hear the promise: the Sun of Righteousness has risen with healing in His wings. There is an abundance of healing power in Jesus Christ and all that belongs to Him. Not only is His fruit sweet and nourishing, but the leaves, the little things, as it were, about Christ, are full of healing virtue. A word of His, recognized as His and coming home to the heart as His, brings healing to head and heart, to the very organs and tissues of our mortal flesh. We too often imagine a great gulf fixed between the pardon of our sin and the recovery of our body, but did not our Master prove them one? When He healed the sick of the palsy, He said, "Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee." Pardon and healing were woven together in a single act of sovereign grace. So cast yourselves upon Him, not merely for a restored liver, but for the whole Christ, whose touch quickens our mortal bodies and whose blood cleanses our guilty souls. He who forgives the sin can certainly remove the sickness, if it be for His glory and your eternal good.
You speak of financial straits, of a pressing need for daily bread and deliverance from debt. The heart of man yields love without stint, and the stream is too large for the lake into which it flows so long as we love a created thing. Are you ready, then, to let this trial steer your affections away from the thorns of worldly care and toward the all-sufficient God? Take heed that you are not entangled with the cares of this life, but rather use this need to prove what sort of Father you serve. He withdrew into the wilderness and prayed; so must you, as the servant of God, wait upon Him for fresh power and daily supply. There is a way of making the actions of common life subservient to the purposes of Divine Grace. This is the Christian's business, to labor prayerfully, to cast every burden upon the Lord, and to trust Him for the morrow. The life spent in God's praise, even when the purse is lean, becomes itself a missionary life, a shining testimony that man does not live by bread alone. He has saved you from the consequences of your own folly, or you would long before this have been a beggar or a prisoner in the most dreaded dungeon. Will He not continue to deliver?
The deepest note in your request is the cry for guidance and strength now that your earthly father is in heaven. You feel the loneliness, the exposure, the longing for a protector. But here is the healing point. Jesus took Peter's mother-in-law by the hand and lifted her up; there was a contact established. Oh, that glorious Doctrine of the Incarnation of Christ! There is healing in it! Your father in heaven is the God of the fatherless; He has promised to be a husband to the widow and a father to the orphan. This is the great mercy, He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds. Let your weeping drive you deeper into the bosom of His love. You have been a long time tossing on the bed of languishing, and this season of thought is meant to be blessed to your soul. You are now feeling the grief of your life and lamenting the loneliness of your condition. Let it lead you to Him who only does such healing.
And what does this mighty Healer require? That you hear obediently. Having eaten the leaves of the Tree of Life, there must be a life that moves in step with the Spirit. Show your faith by a resolute turning from all that His Word condemns, and a cheerful taking up of whatever duty lies within your reach. There are many professors who, as long as they are just saved, are content. We are not content with being barely alive spiritually, we do not wish to spend our life shivering with cold, but we seek after health as well as existence. If the Lord has given you spiritual life, that life will need to work. A candle cannot help shining if it has been lighted. Look around; there is precious service born of the sickroom and the trial of poverty. That matronly sister who never delivered a sermon, nor even a lecture in all her days, has lived a quiet, happy, useful, loving life, and her family has learned from her to trust the Lord. Your mother’s patient endurance, your own faithfulness under want, will be a leaf of healing to some observer. The healing leaves change the life blood, affect the spirits, and make the nature other than it was.
Therefore, let your prayer be mixed with a hearing of His voice. The healing power is conspicuously present where Christ is teaching. Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. So, when you bow the knee for your mother’s body and your family’s finances, sit also at the Master’s feet as a learner. Say within your soul, "I want to hear about the Lord Jesus Christ and His atoning Sacrifice; I want to know about the life of a Christian, his comforts, his trials, his joys, his duties." Take heed how you hear, for it is the word of pardon that brings the word of healing. He says to the silent, pleading soul as it lies before Him in repentance, "Thy sins are forgiven thee." That is the matrix of all other mercies. First forgiveness, then allhealing surgery of life.
Go your way, then, trusting in the Man who is God. We are on our way to eternal health; we have the life within us which is to be perfect forever and ever. Until then, the abiding power of the healing leaves keeps the soul of the believer in perpetual health and will keep him so, world without end. Cast your burden on the Lord, the illness, the poverty, the fatherless state, for He careth for you. And may your quiet life henceforth so shine that a watching world, observing your firm reliance upon an unseen God, may come to seek this same Divine healing for themselves. Be of good cheer; He calleth for you.
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. 
