December 9, 2024 -- Mark 1:14-15 -- Cooperating with God's treatment plan for your healing

People loved by the Father, in the Spirit's power: Sh'ma ~ hear and obey Jesus!

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”
Mark 1:14 ESV
 
Mark deliberately writes of Jesus’s public ministry framing it so that Jesus’s first words are a call for the people to repent. Led by the Holy Spirit, Mark ensures that the readers of the Gospel know that Jesus is calling people to leave their past, get up, intentionally to move away from all their wrongdoings and turn to Him. There is a great urgency in all of this for the Kingdom of God is at hand.
 
When Jesus walked the earth, He was the living declaration of the love of God. When Jesus was betrayed, and tried in a court stacked against Him, and crucified, the judgment of God against the world, against Satan and against sinners was openly revealed at the cross of Calvary. All who turn from their sinful ways to Jesus Christ find in Him healing from their past, their guilt, their wickedness. Those who do not turn to Him will be fully, for all eternity, punished for rejecting Jesus and punished for their own sinfulness. Repentance is both the turning away from sin, but it also involves turning to God and finding in Jesus Christ the soul, mind and body healing that all our senses yearn for.
 
Be aware, to turn from the pathways of addictions, malicious evils and apathy against the Living God will result in a keen awareness of all the reasons why prior to this you didn’t dare to approach God. There is the fact that others remember you in your old ways and now will sneeringly mock you for turning to Jesus. There are weaknesses in your mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual make-up which will interfere with your walk with God. They are deep enough to make you stop and wonder, “Can God really love a train-wreck like me?”
 
The answer echoes through-out the passages of Scripture: “Yes”! God does not allow sinners to keep destroying themselves in their sins. He moves people by His Spirit to see how hateful and vile sin really is, He empowers such people to turn from their evil ways, and to find forgiveness and healing in Jesus. It took a long time for you, fueled as you were by all your sins, to get where you were in your depraved and corrupt condition. God has the power to heal you. He has the love and the will to heal you. It is a process of healing that takes time. Let God’s power move you both to will and to work out this salvation into every part of your life.
 
Think of it, when a patient is ill and the doctor gives medication, there is great relief in knowing what the condition is. Then gratefulness in knowing there is help for it. Then there is start of the medication and treatment plan. Sometimes the treatment is so hard and affects the patient so that he wonders, isn’t this worse than the illness itself? No. The body and mind are marshalling all the resources needed to cooperate with the medications and surgery to bring the full healing. That is what happens spiritually. God has diagnosed your condition. You were dead in your sins. He has revived you. He is applying the healing. It is a wonder, a great miracle, He has brought you from death to life. Now He is bringing His saving power into every part of your life.
 
Repentance is that continual activity of listening to the Great Physician, and continually submitting to His regime of healing, so that you do not get sicker, comatose and die. But instead, walk in the healing victory He has in store for you.
 
The return of Jesus is near at hand. Repent. Turn from your sin, walk in the healing He is bringing you. Renew your commitment each day to accept His treatment plan as it is laid out in the Word.
 
Father in heaven, I confess I can feel so stuck. As if there is no noticeable change in my mind or my body in this warfare against the soul-sickness of sin and its lingering effects. Thank You for the work of Your Holy Spirit consistently applying to me the healing of Jesus Christ. On my best days, help me to thank You for all You have done and all that You are doing; on my worst days show me how to cry out to You for all the help I need so that repentance really will be the on-going pathway to the full healing You intend for me and for every single one of Your children. Amen.
 
https://youtu.be/uYHpJnfy2lQ?si=zkOTYNdIxntNxa5w Make Room
 

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