DIVINE SURGERY
For the word of God is alive and active. It cuts more keenly than any two-edged sword, piercing as far as the place where life and spirit, joints and marrow, divide. It sifts the purposes and thoughts of the heart. Heb. 4:12, N.E.B.
I forgot all about the sandwich I had been eating as I listened with increasing interest to my friend's description of the surgery he had been performing. Working in the area of his specialty, he had operated on a man with a cancerous growth in his face. For hours, working through a microscope, he endeavored to remove every cancerous cell, yet not damage the nerves that control the man's eyes, mouth, and ears. I nearly shared his own relief when he told me that the operation had been successful.
What admiration I have for the skill of a master surgeon! I admire his courage to move so close to the very springs of life to search out and remove that which would destroy life. And while no patient ever relishes that kind of surgery, he must admit that it is, after all, better than the alternative. Often the surgeon must persuade the patient to submit to this life-rescuing procedure.
Our God brings to us the skill, the courage, and the compassion of a master surgeon. He uses a scalpel that is sharp enough to divide that most intricately interwoven part of us: our motives. With selfishness intermeshed with the motives of love, and protected with layers of defensiveness, denial, and self-deception, it demands the skill of the best Surgeon to unravel.
As we expose ourselves to the penetrating, searching mind of God as revealed in His Word, the surgery begins. The stern rebuke, the harsh rejoinder we just unleashed on the children in the name of "firm discipline," becomes exposed as merely defense of parental prestige. The questionable television program viewed because "I need to relax" surfaces as thinly veiled voyeurism. The dust on the Bible's cover, gathering because "I am just so busy," is gently exposed as evidence of spiritual laziness.
How good it is to know that our Father is not standing over us at these sensitive, embarrassing moments of self-discovery, gleefully saying, "I caught you in another one!" He who instructed Paul to tell us not to keep score of wrongs (1 Cor. 13:6) is quick to set the past behind and to walk with us into the light of greater honesty, stronger wholeness, and finer unity with His wise will.
For the word of God is alive and active. It cuts more keenly than any two-edged sword, piercing as far as the place where life and spirit, joints and marrow, divide. It sifts the purposes and thoughts of the heart. Heb. 4:12, N.E.B.
I forgot all about the sandwich I had been eating as I listened with increasing interest to my friend's description of the surgery he had been performing. Working in the area of his specialty, he had operated on a man with a cancerous growth in his face. For hours, working through a microscope, he endeavored to remove every cancerous cell, yet not damage the nerves that control the man's eyes, mouth, and ears. I nearly shared his own relief when he told me that the operation had been successful.
What admiration I have for the skill of a master surgeon! I admire his courage to move so close to the very springs of life to search out and remove that which would destroy life. And while no patient ever relishes that kind of surgery, he must admit that it is, after all, better than the alternative. Often the surgeon must persuade the patient to submit to this life-rescuing procedure.
Our God brings to us the skill, the courage, and the compassion of a master surgeon. He uses a scalpel that is sharp enough to divide that most intricately interwoven part of us: our motives. With selfishness intermeshed with the motives of love, and protected with layers of defensiveness, denial, and self-deception, it demands the skill of the best Surgeon to unravel.
As we expose ourselves to the penetrating, searching mind of God as revealed in His Word, the surgery begins. The stern rebuke, the harsh rejoinder we just unleashed on the children in the name of "firm discipline," becomes exposed as merely defense of parental prestige. The questionable television program viewed because "I need to relax" surfaces as thinly veiled voyeurism. The dust on the Bible's cover, gathering because "I am just so busy," is gently exposed as evidence of spiritual laziness.
How good it is to know that our Father is not standing over us at these sensitive, embarrassing moments of self-discovery, gleefully saying, "I caught you in another one!" He who instructed Paul to tell us not to keep score of wrongs (1 Cor. 13:6) is quick to set the past behind and to walk with us into the light of greater honesty, stronger wholeness, and finer unity with His wise will.
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