Knowing God as Healer
To know God as Healer must be the most painful path to revelation. This means that we will be hurt and endure suffering. This means that we will feel unbearable pain and experience profound trauma. We live in a sin-broken world, so pain and suffering are inescapable. Others just have varying degrees of this suffering. The deeper our sorrows, the greater the revelation we receive of Jesus as Healer.
Jesus spent much of His three-year ministry healing the sick. The Bible says that when He saw the multitudes of sick people, He was moved with compassion. The Heart of God is full of compassion, so He doesn’t leave His children bleeding to death. He comes in as Healer, as the Great Physician, to bind up their wounds.
While in this pain, He will reveal the idols you have depended on to ease the pain in the past. For some, they turn to drugs; others to alcohol, sex, or various worldly distractions. He will show you during this time of suffering that He is indeed close to the brokenhearted and heals those who are crushed in spirit. In your season of deepest pain, you will cry out to God, “Why me?” And it is in this heart’s cry that Jesus whispers that to share in His coming glory, we must also fellowship in His sufferings.
To be a Christian is to suffer joyfully. It is to suffer with hope. The Apostle Peter tells us that we should consider it pure joy when we are faced with many trials. This statement can only be accepted by the supernatural grace of God. The natural mind will consider this insane.
There is deep intimacy with God in moments of suffering. It is in the valley that He meets us to forge our faith, not on the mountaintops. He will teach you how to cast your pain and burdens at His feet to relieve your suffering. You will learn to exchange a spirit of heaviness for a garment of praise. You will experience the healing power of worshiping in His Presence. He will show you how much He cares about you.
You will come to trust that when we suffer, it is not because God takes pleasure in it, but because it helps us to persevere. This perseverance leads to strength in character, which then fosters our confident hope in salvation. Pain also serves as a purifier for our hearts.
In your suffering, you will be amazed at how you can still experience unspeakable joy amid the furnace. You will be infused with peace beyond understanding in the middle of the storm. You will come to see that Jesus is the fourth man in the fire. You will experience the Savior who commands the storm to be still, and you will grow in confidence to do the same through your God-given authority—to speak stillness to raging life storms.
He will reveal Himself as Comforter in those moments when your heart is breaking down. You will feel His warm embrace surrounding you. He pours out His healing anointing into your soul, and your soul finds rest. Once you are healed, you will look back in awe and realize that without Jesus sustaining you in the valley of suffering, you wouldn’t have survived the trauma.
Jesus is Healer, and He can’t help but heal His children. He cries when we cry, and He is so near to us in our pain that He collects all our tears in a bottle. He values every tear shed, and none of it goes to waste in the Kingdom of God. The Bible tells us that if we sow in tears, we will reap in joy. In your healing journey, you will come to trust that weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning—because you have experienced this.
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted;
He rescues those whose spirits are crushed.”
—Psalm 34:18 (NLT)
