You’re reading JESUS: LESSONS IN LOVE, by Eric Elder, featuring thirty inspiring devotionals based on the greatest “lover” of all time, Jesus Christ. Also available in paperback and eBook formats in our bookstore for a donation of any size!

Scripture Reading: Matthew 8

Do you know someone who’s sick?  I’d like to encourage you to pray for them.

Our prayers do make a difference.  When Jesus walked the earth, He was moved with compassion for those around Him, healing those who needed healing.  If we want to express the love of Christ like He did, one of the things we can do is to try to alleviate the pain and suffering of those we come in contact with, too.

Take a look at what Jesus did for three people in Matthew chapter 8 who were sick:

First, there’s the man with leprosy who came to Jesus and said,

“Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.”  Jesus reached out His hand and touched the man.  “I am willing,” He said, “Be clean!”  Immediately he was cured of his leprosy (Matthew 8:2-3).

Second, there’s the army officer who came to Jesus asking for help.

“Lord,” he said, “my servant lies at home paralyzed and in terrible suffering.”  

Jesus said to him, “I will go and heal him” (Matthew 8:5-7).

When the officer protests Jesus’ offer to come to his house in person because he feels he doesn’t deserve to have Jesus come under his roof, Jesus sees the officers’ faith and declares:

“Go! It will be done just as you believed it would”  And his servant was healed at that very hour (Matthew 8:13).

Third, there’s Peter’s mother-in-law, lying in bed with a fever.  When Jesus came into Peter’s house, Jesus saw her, touched her hand, and the fever left her.  She got up and began to wait on Jesus (see Matthew 8:14-15).

These are just a few of the many acts of healing that Jesus did for those around Him.  While there are many more recorded in the Bible, these are enough for me today to recognize that one of the ways we can express love to others is through healing.

I don’t know what you’ve experienced when you’ve prayed for people to be healed.  I’ve prayed for people who have been surprisingly healed, and I’ve prayed for others who have unfortunately died.  But I come back to the fact that God is a healing God, and that Jesus regularly and consistently healed those He came in contact with.  So I’ve continued to regularly and consistently pray for those around me to be healed, and I’ve seen people healed time after time.

I also take encouragement from all of the prayers that have gone before me for diseases that were once thought to be fatal and incurable.  I think about diseases that here in the U.S. were once devastating, like polio, which in 1952 was out of control, crippling 21,000 people a year, mostly children, and killing 3,100.  Then came doctors Salk and Sabin who searched for a solution to this epidemic and found them by producing the injectable and oral polio vaccines.

Whenever I pray for people with cancer, or other fatal, crippling or incurable diseases, I also pray that God will reveal the cure to someone, to some researcher, or even to me or to my children.  God has answered such prayers in the past, and God will answer such prayers in the future.  Our prayers are never in vain, when we put our faith in the God who heals, and put our trust in Him with the timing and the outcome.

Pray for those around you to be healed.  Type out your prayers in an email to them.  Give them a call and pray for them over the phone.  Take a cue from Jesus:  when someone stops to tell you about their sickness, take a minute right then and there to pray for them.

There’s no doubt when I read the Scriptures that one of the ways that Jesus expressed His love to others was through healing.  Maybe that’s a way you can express your love to others, too.

Prayer: Father, help me to pray for those who are sick, and to keep praying for them, that they would be healed in Jesus’ name,  Amen.