Week 38 Sunday
Week 38 Sunday
How Does God Heal?
Psalm 103:1-5
Disease can make one tired and unfit. What is the teaching of the Way about physical healing?
First, disease is not the will of God. Jesus never told people to bear disease as the will of God; it was an enemy to be banished. He healed people as a part of the coming of the kingdom. Disease is not-the-way.
God is still healing today, in various ways through various methods. But in every case, it is God healing. “We clear the way; God does the healing.” God heals:
(1) Through surgeons. A woman thanked me for telling her that my guidance was that she should go to a surgeon. She was cured by an operation.
(2) Through physicians. God has laid up in nature various remedies that we are in the process of discovering. Use them. But a word of caution: Getting the drug habit and dosing yourself for every little ailment is bad. A druggist was probably exaggerating when he said, “Eighty-five percent of the stuff I sell is bunk,” but he uttered a truth nevertheless. In spite of all this, there is a residue of real benefit from medicine.
(3) Through mental suggestion. You can suggest sickness to yourself, and you will be sick. “As he thinketh in his heart, so is he” (KJV). However, you can also talk health to yourself, and it tends to heal. A man on a plane became ill: his heart was fluttering, he could not get his breath, and the altitude was too high for him. A doctor on the plane asked him where he lived and received the answer, “Mexico City.” The doctor informed him that he was only 2,000 feet high in the plane, whereas in Mexico City he was 7,500 feet high. The man got well immediately. There is such a thing as blind people with perfect optic nerves, paralyzed people as sound in wind and limb as the doctors themselves, lame people who have never received a wound, and deaf people who have no structural damage. Why? Because their mentality became twisted. Their wires crossed because either the conscious or the subconscious mind played tricks on them and suggested disease as a way out of a tangle—an escape.
O Christ of the healthy mind and healthy soul and healthy body, make me healthy and harmonious and whole. For with you I too will health. Let the healing streams of health flow through me. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: My mental processes surrendered to God are now surrendered to no false fear or false imagination. I am free.
Week 38 Monday
More Ways God Heals
Psalm 107:17-20; Proverbs 4:20-23
We continue to look at the ways God heals.
(4) Through climate. Although this is overstressed—for the real climate of health or ill health is within—nevertheless, some climates are conducive to health and some to disease. But don’t take the climate business too seriously, for often—not always—when doctors do not know what to do with you, they send you off “for a change” to get you off their hands. I have lived in health in an “unhealthy climate” for years and emerged stronger, more fit.
(5) Through deliverance from underlying fears, loneliness. Self-centeredness, purposelessness, resentments, and guilts that produce disease. “Ammon was so upset by his passion . . . that it made him ill” (2 Sam. 13:2 Moffatt). A newspaper item says, “It was reported today in Norway that the Nobel Prize winner, the novelist Knut Hamsun, became seriously ill when he learned of the German defeat. Hamsun had openly supported Quisling and the Germans.” “Banish all worries from your mind, and keep your body free from pain” (Eccl. 11:10 Moffatt). Note the connection of “worries” with “pain.”
“So long as I refused to own my guilt . . . life ebbed away. . . . My body dried up, as in summer heat” (Ps. 32:3-4 Moffatt).
“Some, weakened by their sinful ways, were sick and suffering through evil-doing; they had a loathing for all food, were on the verge of death” (Ps. 107:17-18 Moffatt).
“There is no health in my limbs, thanks to my sins. . . . My wounds are foul and festering, thanks to my sinful folly. . . . There is no soundness in my body. . . . My heart is throbbing, the pith of life has left me, light has gone from mine eyes” (Ps. 38:3, 5, 7, 10 Moffatt).
“My health is wasting under my woe, my life eaten away with sorrow. . . . My body falls to pieces” (Ps. 31:9-10 Moffatt).
“Trouble wears away my strength. I age under outrages” (Ps. 6:7 Moffatt).
“My health pines away under my trouble” (Ps. 88:9 Moffatt).
“A mind at ease is life and health, but passion makes man rot away” (Prov. 14:30 Moffatt).
“Revere the Eternal and draw back from sin: that will mean health for your body and fresh life to your frame” (Prov. 3:7-8 Moffatt).
“A glad heart helps and heals: a broken spirit saps vitality” (Prov. 17:22 Moffatt).
O Christ, you are seeking to deliver me from all that produces upset in the body. I yield to you all things that keep me from being at my best. I put them into your hands for cleansing and release. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: All that produces disease within me I surrendered to you. Therefore, in you I am well and sound.
Week 38 Tuesday
Healing through the Spirit’s Touch
Romans 8:11; James 5:13-15
We conclude our observations on the method of healing through deliverance from wrong mental and spiritual states.
“None in the land shall say then: ‘I am sick,’ for all who live there have their sins forgiven” (Isa. 33:24 Moffatt). A missionary had a pain in her shoulder, but the doctors could find nothing. She picked up Is the Kingdom of God Realism? and her eyes fell on the story of the woman with a pain in her shoulder who said she thought “she would be well if she could tell her husband to go to hell just once.” The missionary discovered that her own pain was caused by a resentment she had toward a man who was deceiving a girl living in her home. She surrendered the resentment to God, and the pain left.
A man frozen to his job by government regulation became sullen and bumped his engine against trucks, endangering lives. He had a stroke and is now an invalid. The anger sent up his blood pressure and brought on the stroke. Dr. William Sadler, the eminent specialist in nervous diseases, says, “If people lived in a truly Christian way, half the diseases would drop off tomorrow morning, and we would rise up a new superior race of human beings.”* A carriage ran over a Pekingese dog that had leaped from a woman’s lap. The woman vomited. After that, whenever she heard the yelp of a dog, she lost her meal. The connection was discovered, the whole thing brought out, and she was released. God heals through forgiveness, insight, and deliverance from all internal states that produce disease.
(6) He heals through the direct operation of the Spirit of God upon our bodies. Those who know say that no nerve or tissue is beyond the reach of the effects of mental and spiritual states. Is it, then, difficult to believe that there is no portion of our bodies beyond the healing touch of the Spirit of God? To me this has passed beyond belief; it is a fact. Starr Daily says, “I do not believe in prayer—I know it.”** Well, I too can say, “I do not believe in healing by the direct touch of the Spirit of God—I know it.” For I was suddenly touched in a dark moment, and from that time I’ve known health and life.
O Christ of the healing hands, lay your hands on me and make me well in every portion of my being. I take life from you, and in you, I am well, I am strong, I am free. All my springs of health are in you. I am grateful. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “He . . . will also make your mortal bodies live by His indwelling Spirit in your lives” (Rom. 8:11 Moffatt).
*No published source was found for this quotation.
**See Starr Daily, Love Can Open Prison Doors.
Week 38 Wednesday
The Final Cure
1 Corinthians 15:36-44
We come to the final method of God’s healing:
(7) God heals through the final cure—the resurrection. Some diseases must await the final cure in the resurrection. We live in a mortal world, a world where physical death is a fact. It is a beneficent fact, for if we didn’t pass away and make room for the next generation, the earth would be so crowded that there wouldn’t be any but “Standing Room Only.” But we are on the way to a world of immortality where decay will not invade. Here it does invade, by the very nature of things. The body must break down sometime. Just as the soul must die to live, so the body must die to live.
Some of the saints of the earth have not been healed; they have lain on beds of unrelieved suffering. Then does God not will to heal? Yes, but God postpones it for some, to await the final cure in the resurrection. God will heal later on. In the meantime, God gives the sufferer power, not merely to bear suffering, but to use it until the final release. To use it? Yes. There are those who are called to ‘“the ministry of suffering,” to bear a daily cross and to live “in spite of.”
I was taken to see “the most eminent citizen of Columbus,” an invalid, blind and paralyzed, but radiant. When asked about the greatest lesson he had learned, he replied, “To see the love of God in everything and in everybody. Anyone who has achieved perfect happiness as I have is not to be pitied.” Pitied? He dictates books, radiates good cheer, and lives so victoriously that well people come to this invalid to learn how to live. An invalid spreads health.
A woman who had been on her bed for forty-two years “did more for the kingdom of God than all the ministers of the town,” said a businessperson. She did. When she died, she didn’t die; she just “walked into the sunset.”—No—“she walked into a sunrise.” Her victorious spirit now has a body to suit the victory of the spirit. “I wish I could get my resurrection body now,” said the saintly P. M. Buck, as he pegged away on his typewriter with two fingers, the rest crippled with rheumatism, trying to finish a certain mapped-out number of books before he died. Now he has his postponed body.*
O God, you are healing, healing, healing. I am under your processes of healing. I give them full sway within me, for I am being redeemed, soul, mind, and body. I feel the coursing of your life within me. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “I am myself resurrection and life. . . . No one who lives and believes in me will ever die” (John 11:25 Moffatt).
*Published source for the quotation is unknown. P. M. Buck was the author of Christianity in Doctrine and Experience (New York: Methodist Book Concern, 1917).
Week 38 Thursday
A Word to Youth
Proverbs 1:7; 3:11; Ecclesiastes 12:1
We come now to consider the time process that is carrying us on through youth, middle age, and old age, and into the arms of God.
First, youth. You have three great decisions of life to make: (1) the choice of a life work, (2) the choice of a life partner, (3) the choice of a life philosophy.
Perhaps the last should be first, the choice of a life philosophy. I have mentioned the two most important questions about a life, “What is your center?” and, “What is your circumference?” If you begin at the wrong center, your whole life will go wrong with it. I need not tell you that I think Christ should be your center and the world should be your circumference. Choose Christ. A high-school student said to me, “If we don’t get a faith to live by in high school, we will probably never get it.” Statistics show that after age twenty-one, the chances are three to one against becoming a Christian.* Make the Way your way.
Your second choice is your life work. God made you different and unique. God broke the pattern after making you. God has a special place for you to fill, a contribution for you to make. Don’t be worried about finding it at once. It will unfold to you as you go along, obedient to God’s will as you see it. See Saturday of week 41 for the steps to take in trying to discover your life work.
What, going up to see without a star?
What, going on a journey without a map?
What, going out to battle without a song?
What, going into life without love?
The third is the choice of a life partner. Follow these steps: (1) Take a second look. If the proposed partner can’t stand a second look, break the attachment. It is better to remain single than marry the wrong person. (2) Choose one in whose conversation you will be interested when the physical side of marriage becomes dim. (3) Take a course in successful marriage relations. Few divorces take place where there has been such a course. (4) Find your mate in church circles—preferably your own. A canary that is put with sparrows will chirp, but the sparrows won’t sing.
O God, help me to make these three decisions under your guidance. For I know that if there is no Hand on my helm, there will be rocks beneath my bow. You have my life and my life choices. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I start with you. Cleanse my past, consecrate my present, and clarify my future. I follow.
*Source for this statistic unknown.
Week 38 Friday
A Word to Middle and Old Age
1 John 2:12-17
We will pause for just a moment to look at middle age. In many ways, it is the most dangerous age. In middle age, we begin to play safe, lose adventure, and perish of dry rot. Many people’s epitaphs could be, “Died at thirty, buried at sixty.”* In middle age, many let down their standards and break morally, sometimes with strange justification, “But you are a schoolteacher and a Sunday school teacher; what can you teach your young people about living straight?” I asked of a woman who was having an affair with a married man. “But,” she replied, “I can still teach them to be clean in youth, for I didn’t start this until forty.” At forty, everybody should undergo reconversion on general principles. That is the period of sag.
But we must look particularly at old age. There should be training courses in how to grow old gracefully and happily. We have training courses in how to grow up but not in how to grow old. They say, “You are as old as your arteries.” Better, “You are as old as your mind.” And your mind need never grow old. Unlike the flesh, the spirit does not decay with years. Many of the happiest men and women in the world are those in their sixties, seventies, and eighties—happiest and most useful. An old Quaker, eighty-two, with a beautiful face said, “I’m going to live till I die, and then I’m going to live forever.” “I’m going to live till I die”—can we keep on living abundantly and creatively until we die, no matter at what age? Yes.
Dr. Martin Gumpert says that “idleness is the greatest enemy of the aged and presents them with their ticket to death.”** Sophocles wrote his famous Philoctetes at eighty-seven. Michelangelo was writing poetry and designing buildings up to the time of his death at ninety. Gladstone, prime minister at eighty-three, fought the greatest battle of his life for the passage of a home-rule bill. Goethe completed Faust, his greatest work, at eighty-one. Titian finished The Last Supper at eighty. You are younger than you think!
O God, help me to grow old gracefully, beautifully, and creatively. Give me the strength and will to bring forth fruit even to old age. May I know in you the deathless life, and be unafraid of getting old. May I greet it with a song. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Even to your old age I will be the same” (Isa. 46:4 Moffatt).
*Sometimes attributed to George Bernard Shaw or to Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University.
**Martin Gumpert, You Are Younger Than You Think (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pierce, 1944).
Week 38 Saturday
How Never to Be Old
Isaiah 46:3-4; 48:17-18
Some people do their finest work in old age. The elder Cato began to study Greek at age eighty. The duchess of Bedford was sixty-two when she took up flying, and made solo flights at seventy-one. She flew to Cape Town and back. Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross at sixty-one and was president of the organization for twenty-two years. She founded the National First Aid Association at eighty-four and was its active leader until she died at ninety-one.
Some time ago, I was speaking at a broadcast church service. A listener told me that the broadcast was broken into by a few lines of “The Old Gray Mare She Ain’t What She Used to Be.” My hearers may have thought so! But it would have been fatal for me to have done anything but laugh at it, and laugh it out of court! If that song breaks into your consciousness at any time, laugh at it—long and loud. For it needn’t be true. Provided:
(1) You never retire. If you give up your business, take up new interests or revive old interests and go to work again at the things you are interested in. Dr. E. H. Lines, of the New York Life Insurance Company, said, “Men who retire don’t live long. They’re not prepared for leisure. It’s too great a shock for them.”*
(2) You learn something new every day. The people who live longest are those who have a zest for living. That zest keeps them going. Mrs. Edna Grace Koch, mother of ten children, took her BA degree thirty years after her marriage, after all her children were grown and through college. She was the only one who graduated with honors, including her husband who was a professor.
(3) You don’t depend on financial security for a successful old age. Dr. Martin Gumpert says, “Financial premiums on retirement, which become automatically effective on a certain date, confer none of the blessings of real security . . . are detrimental to the health of the individual.”* Contribute to the welfare of the life around you. A widow said to me, “I thought I was done for, so I just let go. Now I must make something of my life after hearing you.” Never let go. Rather, “Let’s go”—into the finest and most fruitful period of living, ripe and beautiful old age. Sixty-two is wonderful! I wouldn’t be twenty-two for anything! This is too much fun.
O God, I thank you for the years that come and go. I thank you that they grow more beautiful and blessed as they come and go. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: O God, you are my rejuvenation. I am young in you.
*No published sources were found for these quotations.