Who Heals All our Diseases

@rickblumenberg

Psalm 103 is a marvelous psalm filled with truth and encouragement. One of my favorite truths is where the psalmist wrote that God “heals all your diseases”. Sometimes we think this applies only to God’s direct healing touch, like Jesus did when here in the flesh. Some Christians think that doesn’t even happen anymore and others think it still happens a great deal. Regardless, I think it means much more than divine physical healing.

For instance, God heals many of our diseases as built-in miracles of creation because He made the human body with an amazing ability to heal itself. Being a “do-it-yourselfer”, I often have injuries—usually minor; a smashed thumb, a small cut or abrasion. But the wonderful thing is those injuries usually heal all by themselves. Our God-given bodies are nothing short of amazing in this area of self-healing!

Our brains are also fantastic healing machines. For instance, even though my cuts and bruises will usually heal by themselves, I have learned through experience and teaching—information my brain has stored and recovers as needed—that cleaning the wound, keeping it clean and adding an antiseptic will greatly enhance the healing process and usually prevent infection.

In addition, if we use our brains properly to have wholesome thoughts, to think positively, but realistically, and use the wisdom gained from parents and other teachers, together with experience we gain over time, we learn how to help our bodies stay well or heal themselves when attacked by a virus, disease, or germ. This too, is all a part of how God heals all our diseases.

And speaking of germs and such, one of the greatest organs of all living things is the miracle of skin! It shields us from germs, and other such critters that would harm, while being always available to transfer the healing warmth of a loved one or friend just by a gentle, caring touch—one of the greatest healers!

We also find healing in the wholesome food we put into our bodies. Some things taste good but are not really good for us. Some preservatives in our food enhance flavor and cause us to want more, but for some people these preservatives are toxic and perhaps not good for any of us. We are more perceptive these days about the dangers of polluting our world (air, streams, soil, etc.) but there is also great danger to our bodies when we pollute them with the wrong food.

If we learn to eat the right foods and reject the wrong ones we experience preventive healing so we avoid many diseases. Our bodies are stronger and healthier when fed properly and this helps our God-given immune system work more effectively night and day, to protect us from injury or disease and bring healing when needed.

I don’t believe God meant for Jesus to stay here forever as our super doctor. He mean for us to be independent of him to live healthy lives and learn helpful medical skills so we can be healed routinely rather than only by God’s divine touch. Like parents with their children Jesus came to make us strong, independent people who can live our own. However, although we want our children to be free and independent, we never want to lose the loving relationships we have as family. In the same way, although God wants us to live free and independent lives, God never wants us to lose the loving relationship we have in the family of God.

God also gives some persons a “gift” of healing for the benefit of self and others. Some are ordinary people with gifts of healing and some are medical professionals who have honed that gift with education, training and experience so they can treat us, nurse us and sometimes operate on us, doing all sorts of amazing things that bring wholesomeness and health. These wonderful people are very much a part of God’s healing love and their work is a special part of God’s divine plan. Every medical professional works with God whether or not they are believers because God is the ultimate Healer. No doubt that explains why many of our best hospitals were started by and owned by religious groups as a way to do God’s work.

So when you read Psalm 103, especially the words “who heals all your diseases” say a prayer of thanksgiving for all the ways God heals and for all the people doing God’s miraculous healing work. 

I’m Rick Blumenberg and that’s 
My View from Tanner Creek.

      

Slaughter of the Innocents—40th Anniversary

by Rick Blumenberg / @rickblumenberg

     
It is difficult to imagine a man like Herod. He was pro­bably one of the cruelest men who ever lived. Because of a pervasive fear someone would take his throne and he would be killed, he was vicious toward any threat, real or imagined. When he heard wise men had come to wor­ship a new Jewish king he called them to his palace to find and destroy the baby Jesus. (Matthew 2:13-23) His plot was foiled when God directed the wise men to go home by another route, but Herod devised another plan so vile we can hardly imagine it. He att­em­pted to destroy Jesus by taking the lives of every baby boy born in that part of the world who was under two years of age!
     

As horrible as that may seem, Herod's evil scheme was far surpassed in horror and bloodshed when the Supreme Court of the United States made it legal for anyone who chose to do so, to destroy their own unborn children through the practice of legalized abortion.

     
As we think about the 40^th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, now more than 55 million children have had their lives callously snuffed out in hospitals designed to be in­stitu­tions of healing. In hospital mater­nity wards and nur­series throughout the world, doctors struggle to save babies youn­ger and smaller than those being destroyed in legalized abortions!

   
Abortion by choice is a self-inflicted death-blow to the home. If we can so easily destroy our unborn children, our living ones come next. When “pro-choice” groups first advocated legalized abortion as a means of birth control one reason in its favor was that it would diminish the incidence of child abuse since unwanted children would no longer be born. We don't hear this much anymore because we all know that since the legalization of abortion the incidences of child pornography, child abuse and child molesta­tion have literally skyrocketed upward. When we devalue any person or people, we devalue us all.

  

Any mother who has ever carried a child to term, any father who eagerly awaits the birth of a child, or any parents who lost an eagerly awaited child by miscarriage, will tell you that at eight months the baby is very much a per­son—a living being with an already developing personality. Thus life (as an individual hu­man being) must begin at conception or somewhere between conception and eight months....or is it seven? Six? Two?

      

Conception is the only answer that makes sense.

     

When we claim the unborn child is not human, it is only a small step to saying the helpless child, senior adult, mentally handicapped, or some other less than “perfect” beings are also less than human and they, too, can be exploited. Even as I write this, persons come to my mind in all of these categories and I remind myself they are all perfect just as they are!

     

When we claim unborn children are somehow less than human and therefore reasonable targets for abortion, we return to the mentality that produced slavery, the persecution and near destruction of the Native American peoples, and the holocaust of Jewish and Gypsy peoples by the Nazis. When we want to do a really evil thing to an­other human being we always seem to rationalize it by pretending they are not human, or, are somehow sub-human.

     

Someday history will look back on the abortion massacre of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries with the same revulsion with which we remember these other self-inflicted plagues of humanity.

     

On this January while we recognize the 40 anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, I know some of you who read this may have been deluded by the abortionists and agreed to a procedure for yourself, a loved one, or perhaps for unknown persons in an abortion mill. That agreement now leaves an ache in your heart that seemingly cannot be healed. I assure you Jesus Christ can heal your aching heart. He loves you and will bring grace and peace if you will surrender the pain to him. The Bible tells us there is “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1) so I urge you to trust him for complete healing.

     

I’m Rick Blumenberg and that’s My View from Tanner Creek.
   

The Day of Miracles

by Rick Blumenberg / @rickblumenberg

If any one of us were to see a person whom we knew to be both blind and mute, healed so he was able to see and speak, we would be amazed, even though, if it happened today, it would be by the power of that same Jesus of whom scripture speaks. To read about such a happening almost 2,000 years ago just isn't as remarkable as if we were to see it with our own eyes. The people of that day were no different than us, except that it was possibly even more astounding to them—after all most of them had never see a miracle—while to us miracles are common, everyday occurrences.

For instance, it is common for us to see people speeding around in automobiles, racing across the water in powerful speedboats or even out of them, (not merely walking on the water, but skimming on top of it at break-neck speed), and we don't even think about the miracle of flight because we are so thoroughly accustomed to seeing airplanes flying that none of us doubt there are people in them, flying over our heads.

If you went to any modern hospital, with proper clearance to enter the operating rooms, you would see miracles of surgery taking place every day. Doctors routinely remove infected tonsils and appendixes, as well as repairing other organs and in so doing, restore people to health. If most of you reading this lived under similar conditions as the people of Jesus' day, some would be blind, others would be deaf, possibly some would be mute, others lame, and probably some would not even be alive, but most of you are relatively healthy! If you think Jesus had nothing to do with this—that these are merely the miracles of modern medicine—you couldn't possibly be more wrong. The problem is not that we no longer experience miracles, but that miracles have become so commonplace we forget to thank God for them.

It was not Jesus' plan to stay forever on this planet healing sickness and diseases and casting out demons. Neither was it his plan to simply go away and leave us hopelessly in our pain and suffering. It is his plan—always has been, always will be—that every living person should throw off the bondage of Satan, bind him securely with the power of self-sacrificing love, and work together with the Lord Jesus Christ to set the human race free to be the people of God.

God is fulfilling this plan by giving unique abilities to men and women. It is our responsibility to use and develop those spiritual gifts and special abilities to do God's work. Some have the gift/discipline of healing through medicine. Some heal through prayer. Some do both, and both are gifts of God, given in different ways for us to use and thus accomplish the marvelous work of God.

I'm Rick Blumenberg and that's "My View...from Tanner Creek".
    

Slaughter of the Innocents

It is difficult to imagine a man like Herod. He was pro­bably one of the cruelest men who ever lived. Because of a pervasive fear someone would take his throne and he would be killed, he was vicious toward any threat, real or imagined. When he heard wise men had come to wor­ship a new Jewish king he called them to his palace to find and destroy the baby Jesus. (Matthew 2:13-23) His plot was foiled when God directed the wise men to go home by another route, but Herod devised another plan so vile we can hardly imagine it. He att­em­pted to destroy Jesus by taking the lives of every baby boy born in that part of the world who was under two years of age!

As horrible as that may seem, Herod's evil scheme was far surpassed in horror and blood­shed when the Supreme Court of the United States made it legal for anyone who chose to do so, to destroy their own unborn chil­dren through the practice of legal­ized abortion.

Since then, literally millions of children have had their lives callously snuffed out in hospitals designed to be in­stitu­tions of healing. In hospital mater­nity wards and nur­series throughout the world, doctors struggle to save babies youn­ger and smaller than those being destroyed in legalized abortions!

Abortion by choice is a self-inflicted death-blow to the home. If we can so easily destroy our unborn children, our living ones come next. When “pro-choice” groups first advocated legalized abortion as a means of birth control one reason in its favor was that it would diminish the incidence of child abuse since unwanted children would no longer be born. We don't hear this much anymore because we all know that since the legalization of abortion the incidences of child pornography, child abuse and child molesta­tion have literally skyrocketed upward. When we devalue any person or people, we devalue us all.

Any mother who has ever carried a child to term, any father who eagerly awaits the birth of a child, or any parents who lost an eagerly awaited child by miscarriage, will tell you that at eight months the baby is very much a per­son—a living being with an already developing personality. Thus life (as an individual hu­man being) must begin at conception or somewhere between conception and eight months....or is it seven? Six? Two?

Conception is the only answer that makes sense.

When we claim the unborn child is not human, it is only a small step to saying the helpless child, senior adult, mentally handicapped, or some other less than “perfect” beings are also less than human and they, too, can be exploited. Even as I write this, persons come to my mind in all of these categories and I remind myself they are all perfect just as they are!

When we claim unborn children are somehow less than human and therefore reasonable targets for abortion, we return to the mentality that produced slavery, the persecution and near destruction of the Native American peoples, and the holocaust of Jewish and Gypsy peoples by the Nazis. When we want to do a really evil thing to an­other human being we always seem to rationalize it by pretending they are not human, or, are somehow sub-human.

Someday history will look back on the abortion massacre of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries with the same revulsion with which we remember these other self-inflicted plagues of humanity.

On this January while we recognize the sanctity of human life, I know some of you who read this may have been deluded by the abortionists and agreed to a procedure for yourself, a loved one, or perhaps for unknown persons in an abortion mill. That agreement now leaves an ache in your heart that seemingly cannot be healed. I assure you Jesus Christ can heal your aching heart. He loves you and will bring grace and peace if you will surrender the pain to him. The Bible tells us there is “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1) so I urge you to trust him for complete healing.

I'm Rick Blumenberg . . . and that's My View from Tanner Creek.