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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About the Healing Christ (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 27. Healed but Limping
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Healed but Limping
How far may Christ's power be expected to meet our bodily needs? We commonly say that there is no limit to His power to meet our spiritual needs. Is there a limit in our bodily needs?
There is, of course, no limit to Christ's power. It seems to be a matter of His willingness, what He thinks it is best or wisest to do for us in this regard.
There's such a wide range of bodily ailments. It runs from a nervous headache to organic heart trouble. It may be a crick in your back or a chronic lameness, or anywhere in between.
Troubles that come from disturbed nervous conditions are more quickly affected by a changed mental attitude. Functional troubles are reckoned more susceptible to treatment than organic. Indeed organic troubles are usually quite ruled out.
A nervous condition may bring on a serious palpitation of your heart. The right touch on the nerves would make the heart's beating all right again.
Some troubles are commonly classed as distinctly outside the range of healing, whether some system of mental suggestion, or Christ's own supernatural touch of power.
I recall running across a certain man in a Western city. He was well known in Christian circles as a leader in city mission work in New York City.
He had made the journey west to get in touch with a Christian teacher of healing. And he told me that he had been healed of a rather serious trouble.
But he had been lame for many years. And as we parted he limped away. I looked after him. He was praising Christ for the healing of his body.
But it had never occurred to him that this serious chronic lameness might have been healed too, nor apparently to the man who prayed with him. Was he right? Is there a limit in this regard?
There is nothing commoner than the use of eye-glasses to help defective or weak eyes. It is common among many who teach healing, the mental sort alone, and the Christ supernatural sort of healing.
One listens to eager, joyous voices praising God for the healing touch that has come, perhaps to some remarkably radical extent.
But the eye-glasses are there. It seems a bit puzzling. Is there a limit to the power we may expect?
There can be no question that the eyes are vitally connected with one's health and vigour. Eye-strain has been responsible for serious nervous troubles, and for many a nervous breakdown. It's an intensely practical question so far as health is concerned.
The eyes are affected much by nervous conditions. The use of glasses adapted to certain inaccuracies in the eyes, of course, tends to confirm and harden those inaccuracies.
It is being insisted upon in certain eye-specialist circles that a proper nervous relaxation will actually correct practically all eye inaccuracies. And this new teaching is having a wide acceptance and application abroad, as well as here.
Our next Talk lays much emphasis on a right mental attitude. A simple childlike trust in Christ affects one's habitual mental attitude.
And this in turn has an influence on all bodily conditions quite beyond what we can take in.
Sometimes aged persons will have what is spoken of as "second sight." I do not mean now the psychical sense of seeing into the future, and that sort of thing, which is spoken of in this same way.
But there is a physical "second sight" referred to. It is not uncommon to find one in the seventies or later who has laid aside eye-glasses entirely, and is able to see and to read easily without their aid.
Is it possible that this is simply such a relaxation of the nerves as normalizes the eyes again?
Is it possible that the habitual spirit of unquestioning faith in Christ, and so the habitual right attitude of mind, would so affect our bodies, and our nerves as to include our eyes?
Beyond this, may we pray expectantly for the healing touch on our eyes? The relation of the question to one's health is clear enough. It is a matter of health, vitally. What should we expect? How much?
One's teeth have a still closer relation to health. The remarks about Christians undoubtedly experiencing healing, and yet having faulty eyes, could be repeated about the teeth, as extensively, maybe more.
Modern dentistry certainly is having a large field of activity, and ever increasing. That it has gone through many experimental stages, and isn't out of them yet, is of course a common place.
And the experimenting is always at human expense of suffering and ill health. Many of the things said about the medical profession, as regards commercialism, the rapid wholesaling process, the blundering personal equation, and the like, could be repeated here.
Without question dentistry is a science and art combined, mechanical art and artistic art. And without doubt untold numbers have been distinctly helped.
Of course, food affects the teeth very much, the sort of food. This is particularly true of growing children, and of expectant mothers and nursing mothers.
The commercialism and the cookery that takes out of the food certain substances needed to build up bones and teeth, make for deficient and defective teeth. So does the unbalanced diet.
Such teeth easily break down and give out in the grind of daily use. Of course, obedience to nature's laws here means the proper cleansing and care of the teeth from childhood up.
Even with the best that the most skilled conscientious dentist can do, substitute teeth are so much less than the natural that no comparison can be made.
The two things are too far apart for comparison. Loss of natural teeth lessens health and vigour and length of life, regardless of the dentist's utmost skill.
Does dentistry simply give a maimed man a pair of crutches so he can hobble along somehow, instead of not at all?
Is it simply good for those who don't and won't come to Christ for what He has to give? Or is there more? How much may we properly, sanely expect, and not be disappointed?