Chrysostom
Beloved of All
Satan divides and tears asunder, and you now feel his assault, seeking to pull your mind from its anchor. Do not judge your state by the mere appearance of these trials, as if God has abandoned you. The attack itself proves you possess something worth stealing. Stand firm.
You ask for healing in body and mind. Remember that the Lord is the true physician, who works not a partial cure but raises up the whole person. When He took the hand of Peter’s mother-in-law, He not only quenched the fever but gave her back perfect health at once, needing no long recovery. This is His power, and He remains the same. The heaviness of soul and the sickness of body are often the offspring not of some random affliction but of our intemperance. Frugality and a disciplined life are the mother of health. If the body wastes away and the soul loses its manliness, examine your table and your desires. The will, cold and unstable as water, can be changed by Him into the quality of wine, bringing gladness and strength.
But the deepest sickness you mention is the desire for a financial breakthrough, for this is where many souls are shipwrecked. You feel poor and under attack, but you must understand what true poverty is. He is not poor who has nought, but he who desires many things. He is not rich who has large possessions, but he who stands in need of nothing. Would you, who feel yourself a poor man, become rich at once? Then cast out the desire for more. For while your mind is fixed on the fleeting torrent of worldly wealth, which rushes by and wears away the soul’s bulwarks, you remain in the cold and water of instability. The wicked one uses this anxiety to burn you with a flame of its own. How shall we extinguish it? By considering the unprofitableness of riches. Even here, they forsake a man; he departs naked and alone, and they remain behind, having inflicted wounds that travel with him. The rich man in torment was not punished for being rich, but for showing no pity and for trusting in his full table. His eyes were fixed on the beggar at his gate to teach us that prosperity is a dangerous illusion. There are riches There, compared to which the wealth of this world is more despicable than dung. If you despise the world’s wealth, think it nought as it is nought, you are straightway rich, for a disposition of contentment is a possession no one can steal. The real breakthrough is to need nothing but Christ alone.
This is a matter of desperate urgency. Do you think a mere season of prayer, like forty days, can purge the sins of a lifetime if you then give yourself back to the same food that caused the sickness? You would have lost your former labor. Are you in sport with God? The healing of your circumstances does not begin when your bank account grows, for that is to judge according to appearance. It begins when your will is so changed that you can bear poverty more lightly than the rich bear their wealth. This is the perfect health of the soul, the wholeness Christ offers. Stop looking at the winds and waves of your finances as the measure of your protection. Seek the healing that makes you stand in need of nothing, and you will find the spiritual attacks have lost their grip, for the devil cannot tear asunder a heart that has been made whole and finds its all in Christ.
You ask for healing in body and mind. Remember that the Lord is the true physician, who works not a partial cure but raises up the whole person. When He took the hand of Peter’s mother-in-law, He not only quenched the fever but gave her back perfect health at once, needing no long recovery. This is His power, and He remains the same. The heaviness of soul and the sickness of body are often the offspring not of some random affliction but of our intemperance. Frugality and a disciplined life are the mother of health. If the body wastes away and the soul loses its manliness, examine your table and your desires. The will, cold and unstable as water, can be changed by Him into the quality of wine, bringing gladness and strength.
But the deepest sickness you mention is the desire for a financial breakthrough, for this is where many souls are shipwrecked. You feel poor and under attack, but you must understand what true poverty is. He is not poor who has nought, but he who desires many things. He is not rich who has large possessions, but he who stands in need of nothing. Would you, who feel yourself a poor man, become rich at once? Then cast out the desire for more. For while your mind is fixed on the fleeting torrent of worldly wealth, which rushes by and wears away the soul’s bulwarks, you remain in the cold and water of instability. The wicked one uses this anxiety to burn you with a flame of its own. How shall we extinguish it? By considering the unprofitableness of riches. Even here, they forsake a man; he departs naked and alone, and they remain behind, having inflicted wounds that travel with him. The rich man in torment was not punished for being rich, but for showing no pity and for trusting in his full table. His eyes were fixed on the beggar at his gate to teach us that prosperity is a dangerous illusion. There are riches There, compared to which the wealth of this world is more despicable than dung. If you despise the world’s wealth, think it nought as it is nought, you are straightway rich, for a disposition of contentment is a possession no one can steal. The real breakthrough is to need nothing but Christ alone.
This is a matter of desperate urgency. Do you think a mere season of prayer, like forty days, can purge the sins of a lifetime if you then give yourself back to the same food that caused the sickness? You would have lost your former labor. Are you in sport with God? The healing of your circumstances does not begin when your bank account grows, for that is to judge according to appearance. It begins when your will is so changed that you can bear poverty more lightly than the rich bear their wealth. This is the perfect health of the soul, the wholeness Christ offers. Stop looking at the winds and waves of your finances as the measure of your protection. Seek the healing that makes you stand in need of nothing, and you will find the spiritual attacks have lost their grip, for the devil cannot tear asunder a heart that has been made whole and finds its all in Christ.
