Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Millions right now experience the anguish of severe tension. World events are distressing; crime and corruption at home worry us. Home troubles are often so painful that life is a burden. Sometimes we can hardly face a new day.
Those millions need a Divine Physician of the soul, but they already have one if only they knew it. His name? Jesus. He is not merely far off waiting for them to find Him; we read how "Jesus Himself drew near" to His sorrowful, stressed-out disciples (Luke 24:15). He didn't wait for them to draw near to Him! Often we are like Mary in the Garden weeping in utter discouragement, yet Jesus Himself was standing over her, but her eyes were so blinded with tears she could not recognize Him--she thought He was the gardener (John 20:11-16).
Isaiah emphasizes how near the Lord is to us when we don't realize it: "He is near who justifies me" (50:8, remember that when you are falsely accused!), and His "righteousness is near" (51:5). The Bible does not say that Jesus is a possible Savior if you do everything just right; you read that He is "the Savior of the world" (John 4:42); "the Savior of all men" (1 Tim. 4:10). He has already laid His loving hand on you to quiet and calm you. Let His healing virtue flow into your troubled soul as His healing virtue flowed into the woman who touched the hem of His garment in Luke 8:43-48.
So He says in Psalm 37:7: "Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him; do not fret ... ." Maybe you don't know how to "rest." Often that's the problem; you are so high strung that even when you go to bed and try to sleep your nerves feel like they are being sandpapered.
Step one in "resting" is to believe the Good News the Lord is saying to you! Step two is to make the choice to surrender your soul into His hands; identify with Him in Gethsemane and on the cross. Take down the barriers you have erected to shut out the Holy Spirit, and let Him refresh your mind with what happened when Jesus on the cross almost lost emotional control (read Psalm 22:14-20).
Stress and fear combined will kill us unless we "rest" in Him as He hangs on His cross! There is where the healing takes place, every time.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: March 29, 1999.
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