78. Medical Missionaries and Their Work
Today’s reading: “The Ministry of Healing” pp. 139–141.
Today we begin medical missionary central. We find out who we are and how to “work.” Our job description.
This is probably the single most life-changing chapter in the whole book for anyone who isn't a pastor or physician. If that is you, this chapter is aimed straight at your heart. If you live out what Ellen tells you will find a power to do things so great, so huge, so Christ-like that you will fulfil prophecy. The only thing you won’t be able to do is to measure the extent of the results. Promise! (p. 160)
Key Words
- Work
- Everywhere
Notice how teaching and healing are mixed in all the quoted references.
Note that Mark says “the Lord working with them”. So even though it is called “our” work, it only works when the Lord works with us.
Note also that they went everywhere preaching and healing. The healing opened the way for opportunities to preach. There’s a principle here: the gospel opens hearts to hear the word.
It is the divine plan that we shall work as the disciples worked. Physical healing is bound up with the gospel commission. In the work of the gospel, teaching and healing are never to be separated.
Now that is an impressive, and imperative, statement. “Never separated!” Do you ever see it joined? What happened when it was joined?
As we see from the verses at the start of the chapter, with a “joined work” the disciples, and their co-workers took the gospel to the known world in one generation.
That work they accomplished…
God has given us the “same work.” The gospel is the only antidote, and healing, for misery and sin. Our first work is to take this message, preach it and demonstrate it.
This is the only “the divine plan”, the only way to “mission accomplished”.
Summary of day one:
The medical missionary’s work is: the gospel everywhere.
