The Place of Healing

As a counselor I work with people who have been deeply wounded emotionally and spiritually. As I sit with them in their pain and relive some of their traumas I pray for the Lord's healing in their lives. Listening, being there with a hurting person is an important ministry. Assuring them of God's love and sufficiency is one thing. Having a person actually reach out and grasp with both hands God's provision is the result of the working of the Holy Spirit

A number of years ago I was working with several women who had been abused in childhood and who had not only scars but emotional wounds that were still open. How much I longed to see each of them gain a measure of wholeness. I prayed with them in each session that we had together and in my devotions I pleaded with God to give me the key to their healing.

My answer came at a concert. It was Christmas time and I went to hear Handel's Messiah at the Academy of Music. I went to the concert to relax, to bask in the beauty of the music and to be blessed by the texts from Scripture. I was hardly expecting an epiphany.

It came in the chorus, "SURELY, SURELY, he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." If you miss it the first time, they repeat it, "Surely, Surely, he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. And with his stripes we are healed."

Of course. When Jesus died on the cross he bore all the sins we have or will ever sin and all the sins against us. His redemption is complete!

All real healing takes place at the cross. Jesus has already done all that needed to be done to provide healing for wounded people! As we take our sorrows and griefs to him, he gives us wholeness in exchange.

God rarely zaps us and takes away all our pain at one time. He wants to make us into mature disciples, not spoiled children. We can handle only so much pain or painful memories at a time, but God meets us at every level of painful memories. He strips off that layer, like the skin of an onion. And he brings healing to that layer of pain and trauma as we bring it to the cross.

One day we will be perfectly healed and there will be no more painful layers to peel off. It's hard to imagine what it will be like to be made perfect, to be without pain or brokenness. But we will never forget the source of our healing, because we will be with our nail scarred Savior thorughout eternity.

The New Covenant

On Saturday we had an extraordinary wedding here at Tenth Church. A couple of Jewish Christians were married in a ceremony that was at the same time both Jewish and Christian. A choir of Messianic Jews sang a medly of Hebrew worship songs before the ceremony began. There was a canopy at the front of the church under which the ceremony took place. Then men wore yalmakes and both one of our pastors and a Christian rabbi performed the ceremony. The rabbi said the traditional blessings in Hebrew and then translated them into English. The couple drank from the traditional wine glass, carried down the asile during the procession by a young boy who might otherwise have been the ringbearer, and the groom broke a goblet, a traditional rememberance of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. The ceremony was beautifully Jewish.

The Ceremony was also beautifully Christian. As believers in both the Old and New Testaments, we believe that all the Jewish ceremonies point forward to Jesus Christ, the Messiah and the fulfillment of those ceremonies.

To make this clear, our pastor, Marion Clark, gave a short homily on the New Covenant. The Old Covenant was the covenant between God and Israel given on Mount Sinai. God promised to be their God and their protector. The people's part was to obey God's Law. He gave them the ten commandments to obey and to guide them in their religious and moral lives. It was a good covenant. The only problem with it was that sinful human beings were incapable to keeping it. So at one of the lowest moments of Israel's history, when Jerusalem was under seige from her enemies, in the midst of famine, suffering and privation, God promised that he would make a New Covenant with his sinful people. Jeremiah records this promise in chapter 31 of the book that bears his name. This a new covenant in that it is not based on the outward keeping of the law. God promised to write His law on the people's hearts and minds. He promised to be their God and that they would know Him, from the least to the greatest of them. What makes this New Covenant so wonderful is that it is based not on our trying to keep the law but on forgiveness of sins: "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember thier sins no more."

Centuries later at what we call "the last supper" Jesus passed a cup of wine to His disciples and said, "Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." (Matt. 26:27-28)

What a wonderful privilege God has given us to be partakers of the New Covenant! Jesus died for our sins so that God's justice could be satisfied. God forgives our sins as we ask for forgiveness on the basis of Jesus' death in our place. And we can actually know God. We can come into His very presence to worship and praise Him, to confess our sins and to find forgiveness and cleansing, and to share with Him everything that is in our hearts. Our obedience then, comes from a new heart and a new mind, focused on our wonderful Savior and on His Word, which He has placed in our hearts.