The Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with publicans and sinners?”

And Jesus answered them, “Those who are well have no need of the physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” [Luke 5:30-31]

Any journey to health begins with coming to grips with your condition. The physician can heal, but only if we don’t pick at the wounds and re-injure the damaged tissues. We try to help the process along, and we renew the damage.

As Jesus is healing you, you have to let him heal you. Don’t try to fix things yourself. That’s what got you in the hole you’re in now. Doing things your way will never change what makes you do things your way.

I surrender to your healing hands. Jesus, do whatever it is you do to me and transform my sickness into health.

The Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with publicans and sinners?”

And Jesus answered them, “Those who are well have no need of the physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” [Luke 5:30-31]

Jesus is a physician who made a house call to the entire world. Everyone knows he visited, but unfortunately religion has redefined why he was at the door. By shifting our focus off the physician and entirely onto the illness, modern Christianity has become consumed with the sinful condition.

This is why we promulgate rules and steps for Christian living, why we feel it is necessary to say who is right and who is wrong. We are so consumed with the idea of sin and fighting our way into God’s grace.

Jesus, help me to redefine you to the world. Help me to strip away the religious baggage that surrounds your name so people can see who it is that is knocking at their doors and asking to be let in.

The Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with publicans and sinners?”

And Jesus answered them, “Those who are well have no need of the physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” [Luke 5:30-31]

Righteousness is an elusive commodity. While you’re looking for it, you cannot describe it. Once you realize you’ve got it, you’ve probably lost it.

Now replace the word righteous with healthy and sinners with sick. “I have not come to call the healthy but the sick to repentance.” Repentance means “turning” and only those who know they are sick will turn to the physician.

Think about the robust man who believes he is invincible and does not need doctors – until he discovers he has some debilitating condition, then he is at the doctors office all the time. He pursues health with everything in him. The same could be said in spiritual matters. Only those who know they are sick will seek the physician’s help.

God, we humans think of our health as something we have for ourselves. I don’t want to think of it that way. I want to see my spiritual health as the ability to help others. I am healthy so I can help others be restored to health. And the healthier I get, the more I can help.

The Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with publicans and sinners?”

And Jesus answered them, “Those who are well have no need of the physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” [Luke 5:30-31]

Read some of Jesus’ most shocking healing moments. (Matthew 15:21-28, Mark 5:25-34, and Luke 14:1-14 are a good start.) Do you see how each healing had a subtext? Jesus was literally talking with his hands.

Jesus comes to heal what is spiritually wounded and diseased. He did physical healing to show this because the physical and spiritual are one. But the healing is not automatic. Just as Jesus had to continue to heal throughout his ministry, we must continue to be healed.

God, I know that this thing is not about me. You are working in so much more than just my life, but I want to pause and thank you for the healing you bring into my life. Thank you for the healing you are doing – even the pain required to open and repair wounds I would just let scar over.

The Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with publicans and sinners?”

And Jesus answered them, “Those who are well have no need of the physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” [Luke 5:30-31]

When Jesus found you, you were as diseased as a leper, as disabled as a deaf/mute. There was something fundamentally wrong, and your own being was attacking itself. It is hard to accept, but we all know that there is something ill about our existence in this world.

Jesus came to you to bring healing to you, because you were sick. For the moment, forget this idea of being inherently evil or depraved. You were incapable of saving yourself because sickness had overtaken you. Part of you was dead, but no longer. Jesus is the physician with the healing hands.

I acknowledge that there is something unhealthy and sick about my world. Help me to know how to be your balm to the wounds of others. As you heal me, make me a healer of others.

In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him. [Ephesians 1:7-10]

Hope is something in short supply in our world. Not the kind of hope for something to make us feel better but genuine hope. Hope is the expectation of positive change. It has nothing to do with mortgages and health care. It is entirey about living with a confidence in something beyond you, and seeing your place in that something.

God, I could use some hope and some confidence. This thing you’re doing in me that we call faith – it is a little scary because it is so unknown and uncontrollable. Maybe that’s why I don’t invite others into it. Who wants this uncontrollable faith? But love is uncontrollable; peace is indescribable; grace is transcendent.

In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him. [Ephesians 1:7-10]

Heaven and earth, united in Jesus. That is God’s greatest miracle. The parting of the Red Sea was child’s place. Healing brain tumors is the small time. Raising the dead is just for show. Compared to reuniting heaven and earth, these things require nothing of God.

The earth is tired from its struggles with sin. The heavens are yearning to be reunited with the human race, which was created to be the fusion of earth and heaven. Everything hangs in tension; and the tension is present in every fiber of our world.

And Jesus will bring this tension into resolution. That is the coolest thing ever.

I know you want to bring heaven and earth together in me, but the process is painful. You ask me to give up these earthly things that I have always known for some heavenly mystery and I’m not sure I can.