Healing for the Whole World

Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread. Our reading, titled, Healing for the Whole World, was written by Wynn Collier. Tucked into a remote gorge in western Slovenia, a secret medical facility housed an extensive staff that tended to thousands of wounded soldiers during World War II, all the while staying hidden from the Nazis.

Though avoiding detection from numerous Nazi attempts to locate the facility is in itself a remarkable feat, even more remarkable is that the hospital, founded and run by the Slovenia resistance movement, cared for soldiers from both the Allied and Axis armies. The hospital welcomed everyone. Scripture calls us to help the whole world to be spiritually healed. This means we need to have compassion for all, regardless of their views. Everyone, no matter their ideology, deserves Christ's love and kindness. Paul insists in 2 Corinthians 5 that Jesus' all-embracing love compels us because we are convinced that one died for all.

All of us suffer the sickness of sin. All of us are in desperate need of the healing of Jesus' forgiveness, and He's moved toward all of us in order to heal us. Then, in a surprising move, God entrusted us with the message of reconciliation. God invites us to tend to wounded and broken people like us. We participate in healing work where the sick are made healthy through union with Him. And this reconciliation, this healing, is for all who will receive it.

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from 2 Corinthians 5 verses 11 through 19. Since then, we know what it is to fear the Lord. We try to persuade others. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your conscience. We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to take pride in us so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart. If we are out of our mind, as some say, it is for God.

If we are in our right mind, it is for you. For Christ's love compels us because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died for them and was raised again.

So from now on, we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come, the old has gone, the new is here. All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them, and He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. Let's pray. God, as those who have become aware of our need for your healing, it shouldn't surprise us that everyone else needs your healing too. As you do your healing work in us, help us to point others to you for healing and restoration. Thank you, Lord. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thanks for listening today. I'm Stephen, and today's encouragement was provided by Our Daily Bread Ministries.