by Diane Ury
National Ambassador for Holiness

I will exalt you, Lord, for you lifted me out of the depths and did not let my enemies gloat over me. Lord my God, I called to you for help, and you healed me. You, Lord, brought me up from the realm of the dead; you spared me from going down to the pit. (Psalm 30: 1-3 NIV )

Jesus asks, “Do you want to be made well?” (John 5:6, NKJV)

Clearly, as God’s Word reveals, He is willing and able to bring complete healing to the crippled, fevered, paralyzed, blind, deaf, leprous, and even to the dead. I have been captive to each of those ailments in a metaphorical sense. I believe we all have.

The Psalmist extols, with great faith, the One Who battles every enemy we have with complete victory. Whether our narcissism, selfrighteousness, callousness toward the vulnerable innocent, our sexual addiction, lying, sloth—you name it—Jesus hears our cries of utter incapacity to escape captivity to sin. He alone truly hears, and He alone has a strong arm that can lift us up and out of its clutches.

Emund Spenser writes honestly of our sinful condition to which Jesus descended and inhabited in order to restore us:

“To heale the sores of sinfull soules unsound,
And cleanse the guilt of that infected cryme
Which was enrooted in all fleshly slyme.”

Jesus created you. He knows you. He loves you. He’s calling to you, “Repent of your sins! Turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near,” (Matthew 4:17, NLT). He is the King! He broke through heaven, took on our flesh and restored our hope of becoming the created human beings He always intended us to be. He bears our “infected cryme,” our “slyme” in Himself.

There, in His being, on the Cross, His holy love met our desperate predicament. He died our death and brought our life up from death and the grave which had mocked our dreams by eating away our hope. But we, my friends, have been “swallowed up by Life” (2 Corinthians 5:4)!

Life made us in His image, therefore we have an innate capacity to bear His character. Because of the Cross and Easter, we have been raised up and are no longer bound to the incapacities of our sinful nature.

“With him you were raised to new life because you trusted the mighty power of God, who raised Christ from the dead. You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins.” (Colossians 2:12-13, NLT).

“Since you have been raised to new life with Christ…Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like Him” (Col. 3:1, 10, NLT).

How can you be raised to new life and put on your new nature? Stop believing in your sins more than you believe in Jesus. Make it the highest priority of your life to recognize daily your desperate need for His healing salvation, your absolute dependence upon Him. Listen to and obey His every Word. Receive His Life and Love.

 

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