Such pain as you describe, the throbbing ache, the pressure and burning, is not sent to you without purpose. It unmasks the frailty of this frame of dust and sends us looking for a remedy beyond ourselves. And in that looking, what mercy there is! For the Great Physician stands ready, and the leaves of that Tree which grows by the river of life are for the healing of the nations. Not the fruit only, the very leaves, the least thing about Christ, are charged with healing virtue. The hem of His garment, the word of His lips, the glance of His eye, all drip with balm for the wounded and the sick.
You have asked in the name of Jesus, and that name is the sum of all healing power. When He was upon earth, the power to heal was conspicuously present when He was teaching. The word and the cure went hand in hand. So it is still. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. As you lay your pain before Him, let your ear be as open as your heart is aching. Receive His teaching even in the affliction. He often allows the disease to bring the deeper sickness of the soul into view, not to cast us down in despair, but that we might know the sweetness of His double cure. Pardon and healing are placed in happy conjunction. “Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.” That was spoken to a man lying on a bed of infirmity, and the two mercies were one in the Savior’s hand.
Do not let the pain drive you to murmuring, but let it drive you to the hand that was pierced. He knows what suffering is. He took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses. There is a contact established in His incarnation that reaches even to your inflamed and weary frame. He took Peter’s wife’s mother by the hand, lifted her up, and the fever left her. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The healing point is in that touch. Cry to Him until you feel the cooling shadow of His presence fall across your fevered brow.
It may be that the relief will come swiftly. It may be that the healing will be a process, a part of the cure that brings the disease where it can be seen and then banished by the Sun of Righteousness rising with healing in His wings. In either case, the promise stands. His salvation will perfectly heal our bodies in His appointed time, if not here, then yonder where the inhabitants shall no more say, “I am sick.” Until then, let this pain be a consecrated thing, a reminder that you are not home yet, and that your hope is fixed on the city where leaves of healing never wither and the tree of life yields its fruit every month. Look to Calvary. That is the place for healing balm. Go straight to Jesus. He has never turned away a seeking soul, nor a suffering body brought before His throne in faith.