God's Vouchsafed Love in Health and Life

 By Pastor Benjamin Glaser - Posted at Thoughts From Parson Farms:

Howdy,

For our last portion from this part of the Directory of Public Worship we are going to see that the DPW has two words to say depending on if the sick person gets better, or if they take a turn for the worse. I have said before that the questions we deal with in the Christian life take on different hues when we consider more deeply what the big words like salvation, providence, and redemption mean in the plan and purposes of God. We are never to operate in a head space where we are satisfied with a surface level understanding of the testimonies of Holy Scripture. We are like people who die of dehydration in a foot of pure standing water. There is nothing to be gained when we hunger and refuse to eat. When events happen in our lives we must always experience them with the assurance that the Lord who made the heavens and the earth is shepherding all of it to the glory of Himself, and we then benefit from that wisdom and grace.

It is not to downplay our role in these things nor to think then because of His sovereignty we are merely NPC’s in God’s first-person shooter. The depth of our relationship with Him was so great that the Second Person of the Holy Trinity came and laid down His life for us, and took it up again so that we might experience eternal life in Him. With all that being the case how much more as we experience the powerful love of God in healing our bodies, either by the ending of life on this plane that we might then know the fulness of life in the paradise to come or in the maintaining of our place here on the earth, should we then worship and praise Him in either circumstance. We often note that it is in personal suffering where the strength of our own faith witnesses itself to itself, as well as to the unbelievers which surround us. Building up the heart and soul in the richness of God’s mercy and love is largely the main calling of the pastor as he preaches and teaches the Scriptures on the Lord’s Day and in other venues. It is the primary responsibility of the elders as they visit and minister to the sick. To remind them of the goodness of Jehovah, to keep them grounded in His power and promise, for all matters great and small.

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