Just days before our daughter was born, our son woke up coughing and laboring to breathe. We tried to put him in a steamy shower, but it wasn’t helping, so we brought him to the hospital.
On the way to the hospital he started to calm down, but it was still heart breaking to listen to the sound of him breathing. The ER doctors gave him a steroid treatment, gave us some tips and tricks for what to do if it happened again, and hours later we brought him back home.
We put him to bed and I sat in our rocking chair watching him fall asleep.
As I sat there listening to his labored breathing my heart was breaking and I started to tear up. As his father, I wanted to do whatever I could so that he could breathe easy, but I knew that the only thing we could do was wait for the medicine to complete its work.
As he started to fall asleep, I thought about How much God loves our son and each one of us.
I thought about how just like my son struggled to breathe, we all spiritually struggle to breathe.
We have a spiritual sickness that goes untreated because we think that maybe our sicknesses give us more freedom than the treatment. But over the years it gets harder and harder to breathe.
We’re all laying in our spiritual and emotional cribs trying to breathe, without the right medicine.
We use many different medications for our illness, for some of us we use Netflix, social media, our families, our hobbies, and so on. We occupy our time with insignificance, to distract us from focusing on how hard it is to breathe.
Sometimes we think that if we just work harder or do more good then we will be able to breathe easy.
Just like the Religious people in the time of Jesus, who tried to do the right thing and to follow all the rules, we are seeking good things to heal our sickness, but they never will.
In Mark 2:16-17 it says,
16 And when the scribes and Pharisees saw Him eating with the tax collectors and sinners, they said to His disciples, “How is it that He eats and drinks with tax collectors and sinners?”
17 When Jesus heard it, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”
Little did the Pharisees know that their righteousness was farther from blissful breathing than the sins of those ‘tax collectors and sinners’. The scribes and Pharisees thought that working hard and following all the rules was sufficient medicine to save them.
The tax collectors and sinners knew their sinful-remedies for their sickness weren’t working, they knew they needed what the Physician had for them.
The Physicians medicine is the only sufficient medicine that can save us.
The Great Physician spilled his blood to wash away all our sicknesses, it may not heal our sicknesses right away, but we must be faithful and let the medicine complete its work.
20 Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, 21 make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.’ – Hebrews 13:20-21
In what ways do you self-medicate instead of trusting the medicine of the Great Physician?
Much Love!
REDEEM THE TIME 