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Several years ago I had the privilege of teaching a ladies Sunday School class each summer.  That particular group of ladies was an exceptional treat to teach.  Some were teachers, and some were faculty staff wives of a Baptist Bible College. The interaction was always enlightening and the fellowship sweet.

I know that God burdened my heart this week to pull this article from my file and I was not sure why.  As I began to type this on to my computer I knew that God wanted to remind me of a truth learned well.

There are often times many days between a person’s getting ill and that person’s entering Heaven’s gates.  Very soon Teddi Neevel and I will be presenting a study for enduring those days of personal illness or the illness of a loved one.  We will also offer helps for the caregivers of the ill, for ministering to the grieving, addressing a parent’s broken heart for their ill child, and more.

One particular week as I began to prepare a Sunday School lesson on one of the precious names of God, I prayed, read, wrote down verse after verse, and spent blocks of time considering what I had read and what I had experienced in my life.  I finally came to the conclusion that I had to omit the lesson from the series.  I felt that I just could not stand in front of a group of ladies and teach the name of God..........

Jehovah-rapha.

I had spent several days seeking the mind of the Lord.  Many times I asked God how I could teach this name...His name.  I reminded Him often that physicians consider me disabled and that I am constantly aware that He is my only strength and my only health.  I remember being in tears when I asked God,

"Lord, how can I teach these ladies that Your name Jehovah-rapha, means that You ALWAYS HEAL Your children?

As I read and re-read the verses I had written down, one verse of Scripture troubled me more than all of the others, Psalms 103:2,3 "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.  Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth

ALL thy diseases."  It didn’t take long for a part of me to begin questioning  the amount of truth in a statement made to me...of all people...by a former Baptist Pastor-- ours, "A Chrisian who is right with God is not sick." 

I thought, and sometimes I paced, for I knew without a doubt that God’s Word was true.  I also knew that God does heal His children for He had healed me of some specific medical problems and from the effects of a dysfunctional childhood.  But I also knew that I am not healthy.  When I was six years old, Bulbar Polio removed the word healthy from my first-person vocabulary and several illnesses and surgeries after that kept it omitted.  In recent years I have often given God some specific...very  specific requests concerning my future new body---the one that He has promised me in His Word when I get to Heaven.

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