Dr. YHWH

A lot of us in church have heard someone refer to God as a doctor. Often it's in reference to His power and willingness to do miracles of physical healing, and many times it's to do with emotional healing too. But I just had this revelation today as I was sitting in Jack In The Box with Shaowei and De Wen. The mental picture many of us (like me) get when we think of the kind of doctor God is is a G.P., a family doctor. He cares, He's nice to you, He listens to your problems, and then He gives you a bunch of different kinds of pills and sends you on your way, saying "here, take these, go home and follow the prescription and you'll get better." The subtle implication is "If you don't, I can't guarantee you'll get better and you only have yourself to blame for not following my directions." And so we try different methods. We try believing in faith, praying prayers of faith, watching our words and keeping our lips clean, staying faithful in our Bible reading or our quiet time. We try praising God, speaking in tongues, being faithful in our tithes and offerings, all in the hope that our faithfulness will bring about completeness and restoration.

But I realized, God isn't like that. He's more like a surgeon, the kind who meets you before the surgery to assure you that even though He can't explain everything he's going to do, it'll be alright and you don't have to worry. Then you go in, unconscious, and He painstakingly goes in to fix what He deems is in need of fixing, taking every effort and every minute and hour that's necessary to get the job done. Then He sews you back up, you wake up and He comes in with a smile on His face and says you're going to be okay and that you were very brave to go through this. He's the kind of doctor who will never force you to lie down on his operating table, but will only operate on you once you stop struggling completely and be willing to lay yourself down at His mercy. And He's the kind of doctor who, even if you go out after the surgery and do something to get injured again, won't be angry at you for being silly. Instead, He welcomes you with a gentle sense of urgency, operates on whatever needs operating on, and tells you that you were not only brave this time too, but you were also wise to come back to Him again instead of staying away out of shame or guilt.

And the best part of all this is, I don't have to know what's wrong or how to fix myself. Like Shaowei said, I (we) have got to learn not just to believe that God can and wants to heal, but to also learn to give Him the healing. I can try and fix myself, but it won't work. All I have to do is lay myself down and let Him do the rest according to His own timing and will; a will that is good and perfect not just for the sake of the rest of the world, but for mine too, because He cares for me. And in this relationship, because He laid (lays) Himself down for me, I am free to lay myself down for Him.