“I will restore health to you, and your wounds I will heal, declares the LORD” (Jer. 30:17). “Dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well” (3 John 2). “We who are living will also be transformed. For our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die” (1 Cor. 15:52-53).
Heavenly Father, some of us will spend today at a hospital—planned or unexpectedly so. Some of us are in bed with a low-grade temp and a high-grade “yuckiness.” Some of us are physically fine, but are emotionally and mentally stretched and stressed. Others have awesome cells and sinews, but are in a state of serious soul-sickness—needing the Gospel of grace, more than chemo for cancer.
Father, we are profoundly grateful that every aspect of our being matters to you—body, spirit, soul, emotions, and mind. We also rejoice and rest in the good news that good health claims us in the Gospel; it’s not something we have to talk you into or pray for with the right formula. And we are ever-so-grateful that our resurrection body won’t need replacement joints, or even tissues for a runny nose.
Until the Day of perfect health, we will seek to take care of these “tents” in which we live (2 Cor. 5:1-5), because that honors you. Diet and doctors, sleep and play are themselves an exercise in godliness. We’ll also pray for supernatural healing, and will ask our friends to join us—for this honors you as well.
Father, however you write our stories, we will seek to love and trust you. If you are pleased to give us either instant or progressive healing, awesome, because that’s what we really want. But if you choose to give us “sufficient grace” instead (like Paul in 2 Cor. 12:7-12), we might (will) whine at first, but will be grateful forever. So Very Amen.
