God is the healer - why not ask him?

My name means "farmer" in the Greek - George. I'm a long way from being a farmer, being the "city" person that I am.

I'm most comfortable in the city. I can find my way around, Chicago, Detroit, New York, Brussels, Paris, Geneva, Los Angeles and Dallas, but you get me out in the rural areas of southwest Michigan and I get lost quick, real quick.

So our names don't necessarily match with our personality or character. Back in Bible times, that wasn't so.

Names meant something.

Mephibosheth means "exterminator of shame"
Merodachbaladan means "Mardul has given a son"
Jesus means "savior".

Their names characterized who they were.

One name for God in the Old Covenant is "Jehovah-Rapha"meaning literally "the Lord Healer."

He is the God who heals us.

In his book, God Is Closer Than You Think, John Ortberg includes this story about the power of prayer.

"When my friend Kim was a young girl, her dad pulled the car off the road one day to help a woman change a flat tire. While he was lying under her car, another vehicle accidentally swerved to the shoulder, and in the collision the car was shoved onto his chest. His right thumb was torn off at the joint, five of his ribs were broken, and his left lung was pierced and began filling with blood.

His wife, who is barely five-feet-tall, placed her hands on the bumper of the car and prayed, "In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ," and lifted the car off his chest so he could be dragged out. (Some weeks later she found out that she broke a vertebra in the effort).

Kim's father was in a state of shock as he was taken to the hospital. Doctors prepared him for emergency surgery. "His thumb won't do him any good if he's dead," one of them said. His survival was iffy.

Suddenly, spontaneously, the man's skin changed from ashen to pink. He experienced a miraculous healing. He invited a surprised surgical team to join him in singing "Fairest Lord Jesus." They did not even bother to hook him up to oxygen. He did not find out until later that this was the precise moment his father-in-law, who was a pastor, had his congregation start to pray for him.

Sometimes these stories come from not-very-credible sources - such as publications sold in grocery checkout lines that also carry news about extraterrestrial creatures secretly playing third base for the Boston Red Sox. In this case, however, the subject was James Loder, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary. His life was not only saved, but changed. Until then, although he taught at a seminary, God had been mostly an abstract idea to him.

Now Jesus became a living Presence. Kim writes that her father's heart grew so tender that he became known at Princeton as "the weeping professor." He began to live from one moment to the next in a God-bathed, God-soaked, God-intoxicated world.

God heals us spiritually by restoring our relationship with Him.
God heals us emotionally by giving us peace in the midst of our storm.
God heals us physically by touching our bodies in a supernatural way that natural science cannot.

God is the healer!

Do you need healing today? I would suggest you talk to Jehovah Rapha who can touch you and bring about the healing that you need.