Backwards

Sometimes I think we have medicine backwards. Sometimes I think we do the least first, and the best last. Our approach, as Christians, is often to seek a physical cure for the body, a psychological cure for the soul and a psychiatric cure for the mind. We try everything to heal, comfort and fix others. And that is good. But that comes second.

Too often we do everything we can, and when it doesn’t work, we pray. We can communicate this to our patients too, explaining the “miracles” of modern medicine as though it is our first go to solution. Instead, we should ALWAYS pray first, ask the Lord for divine healing. Our faith should lead our practice. If the Lord chooses not to heal miraculously, then we should look at human interventions.

This morning I spoke with a practitioner in our group at the VA. She shared about praying for someone who had a cancer. They began by praying for this young lady that she would have an easy experience with the chemo, that surgery would go well, etc. Then she said “we realized that maybe we should just pray for healing”, so they did. They prayed that the Lord would remove the cancer. AND HE DID! The large tumor literally disappeared and the surgery was cancelled.

Here’s a quick test, when you have a headache, do you pray that the Lord will heal you first, or do you pop some ibuprofen? Is your go to solution first the Lord or is it medicine? There is so much that we can do to heal people, so much wisdom we have from the Lord to help others, but this should never replace us going to the Lord Himself first.