Healer: A 7-Day Devotional With Casting CrownsSampel

When I preached to my church and read Psalm 23 during the first week of the pandemic, we didn’t know how long the dark times would last. We still don’t. But when I read through “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures and he leads me beside still waters,” these wonderful verses that remind us of who Jesus is for us, I had one thought.

I love people, and when people are going through a hard time, they’re looking for peace and comfort. They’re looking for solutions.

Not many people today come to Jesus for Jesus. They come to him for all the stuff that comes with him. It was the same when he was here on Earth. They came to Jesus for bread, but he said, “I am the bread. I can’t give you bread. I am the bread.” They wanted water, and he said, “I am the water.” Even his disciples who had spent several years with him said to him, “Just show us the way.” He said, “I can’t show you the way. I am the way.”

Our generation still looks to God for the stuff he can give, when what we really need is the person he is. This shutdown was the perfect storm. Let’s get everybody in their houses, let’s get them scared, let’s get them mad, let’s get them isolated and on their phones, let’s figure out some algorithms to tell them every reason they’re right about their views, and now they don’t even have to talk to people. They can just throw rocks through space with their thumbs with no consequences to themselves. And we just get madder and madder and madder. And then we also begin to look for peace in all the wrong places.

More than the healing, we need the Healer. We need Jesus, not just what he can give us. It’s a problem when you hear somebody say, “Yeah, I miss church. I really need to get back into it.” We don’t need an it. We need a who.

The Lord says he is our shepherd. He is our guide. We lack nothing in him. He has for us green pastures and still waters. He is our way. He is the only truth. He is our life. Pause and think on these massive truths and take upon yourself his easy yoke for today.