This weekend Chris and I have decided to take the Sabbath hours and spend them at home with each other and Christ. This time of year our schedules become more and more hectic, we see less and less of each other, so this is time I am enjoying and looking forward to.
This evening I took out one of my favorite books, Ministry of Healing by Ellen White, and spend sometime reading. It is a book she wrote from cover to cover (not a compilation), and it has been a real blessing to me. Tonight, there were several things that were a blessing.
1. "He took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses," that He might minister to every need of humanity. Matthew 8:17...... He came to give them health and peace and perfection of character.
He came so that I don't have to snuggle up to and hold onto (C). He came and not only wants to take it away but he also experienced it all, felt it all, and then paid for it all!
2. "When the sunlight of God's love illuminates the darkened chamber of the soul, restless weariness and dissatisfaction will cease, and satisfying joys will give vigor to the mind and health and energy to the body."
It is only experiencing God's love, saturating my soul with his love, that the (C) will really be gone! His love will heal, his love will bring joy! His love!
3. "God does not bid us overcome in our own strength. He asks us to come close to His side. Whatever difficulties we labor under, which weigh down soul and body, he waits to make us free."
He is going to be the one to set me free. It will not be my work, my daily blog, or my good works or bad works, it will only be Him. His strength, his gift that sets me free.
4. "Nothing tends more to promote health of body and of soul than does a spirit of gratitude and praise. It is a positive duty to resist melancholy, discontented thoughts and feelings-as much a duty as it is to pray."
Seriously?... It is as important to resist focusing on the doom and gloom as it is to pray! I am more than ever committed to making sure I am filled with a spirit of gratitude and praise! After all to have a spirit of gratitude and praise, is to have Christ in your heart. If He is the source of all that is good, then it is He who is praised It is He that fills our hearts when we praise. It is He who will set me free.
The thought has just occurred to me that just as Christ heals the physical, just as he can make the lame to walk, yet sometimes does not, He can heal me instantly or perhaps not at all. He can set me free tonight, or I may struggle with pain until he comes. My mental struggles are no different than physical struggles. I will trust that he knows what is best. I remember my grandfather, when dying of cancer, praying, "Lord, whatever will bring the most glory to you... let that be. If it is healing me, Lord heal me, if it is my death, let me die." I will never forget that prayer. Everyone else, conference presidents and pastors had been praying for him and anointing him with oil. They prayed, as I have heard many times, "Not my will but thine". What I heard different from my grandfather was this. He was telling God that what he wanted, his greatest desire was not to be healed, but to glorify the Lord with his life. Whatever would do that best was his desire.
I know there have been many times in my life, (even this past week) when I have wished I didn't have (C) in my life. Yet tonight I am reminded that what I want more than anything is for this life, my life to be a life that demonstrates the mighty power of God, that brings glory to His name. Not because of what I have done in my life, but because of what He has done.
So tonight I am looking forward to time with God. Time spent in prayer, outside observing him in the beauty he created! Tonight I am praising Him for his many blessings, thanking Him for doing the work, feeling the pain, taking care of my (C) so that I can be free! Tonight I am thankful for the Sabbath rest. Thankful for not just the rest from work, but the rest for my soul. The rest that is ours when we come to him! Tonight I am surrendering it all to Him with one request, "Lord take my life and let it be all for Thee."
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