You’re sick. You pray. Great! But is praying enough?

This blog is called Given Her to Eat. It comes from Mark 5:23

Mark 5:41-43 And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha cumi; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise. And straightway the damsel arose, and walked; for she was of the age of twelve years. And they were astonished with a great astonishment. And he charged them straitly that no man should know it; and commanded that something should be given her to eat.

Jesus had just performed a wonderful miracle by raising a 12-year-old girl from the dead, showing that he was indeed the Son of God, our Healer. What an event! The people were astonished with a great astonishment, as they should be. Then this amazing supernatural story is brought right down to earth at the end of the chapter when we are told that Jesus commanded the parents to give the child some food. Why does the Bible record this? Jesus had just given life to a corpse. You can’t get more miraculous than that. He could have chosen to fill her body up with nutrition at the same time. But he chose a natural means of meeting her nutritional needs – food.

Just a thought. Could it be that God prefers natural means to support health over supernatural means when the natural means are available?

Certainly, it’s very clear in the Bible that God is very concerned about what we eat and the nutritional value of our food. In Leviticus 11, God gives a very specific list of food restrictions. He also told the children of Israel to give the land a sabbath of rest every seven years to replenish the soil. (Leviticus 25)

There are other occasions in the Bible when the Lord chooses a natural form of healing over a supernatural one. In Isaiah 38, God promises Hezekiah 15 years more life and sends the sun backwards as a sign. (You can’t have a bigger miracle than that.) Yet, in the end, how did God heal Hezekiah? Through a lump of figs. (You can’t get more down-to-earth than that.)

In John 9, Jesus could have just spoken a word to heal the blind man, but he chose to put mud on his eyes and send him to wash in the Pool of Siloam. (Maybe because of the minerals in the soil and the water.)

If it is true that God sometimes chooses natural means over supernatural means when the natural options are available, then we need to take a fresh look at the health options available to us in the West in 2022 that were not available to the people Jesus healed in the Bible.

Differences between the people who were healed in the Bible and ourselves.

Food
- The people Jesus healed were often poor. They had limited choices when it came to food. They were undernourished and had no means to rectify that situation. Their only hope was the supernatural healing power of Jesus. Most of us, however, can make choices about what to eat. We can go to the supermarket and choose fresh fruit or biscuits (cookies). We can also choose to take supplements - vitamins and minerals. We have natural means of supporting our health that people in the Bible didn’t have. Shouldn’t we be using them?
Information
- These days we can’t claim that we don’t have access to information about natural healing. There’s plenty of information out there if we look for it.
Where we put our faith
- The people in the Bible that Jesus healed only had one option – to put their faith in Jesus. We have other options as to where we put our faith and we might be tempted to put more faith in the medical industry than in God.
Influences
- The people in the New Testament were taught the Old Testament. They knew what the Bible said about healing. They listened to the Word of God and were not bombarded by modern mainstream media (which is largely funded by Big Pharma) telling them how to manage their health. They only had God’s way.