Jesus is the Great Physician

There’s an old story about a family on vacation traveling through the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee.

One morning, they stopped at a country restaurant for breakfast. The restaurant was filled with tourists on a hot July day when an old man approached the table and asked the folks where they were from and, without asking, pulled up a chair and sat down at the table to join them. He pointed out the window at the mountains in front of them. He said, “You see that mountain? Not far from the base of that mountain there was a boy born to an unwed mother. That boy had a hard time growing up because he never knew his father. Everywhere that boy would go, people would ask him, ‘Boy, who’s your daddy?’ That question haunted the boy all his life. There was a new preacher at church and the boy went to hear his first sermon. After church, before the boy could leave early the young preacher asked the boy, ‘Son, who’s your daddy?’ Everybody standing near the boy stopped and grew silent. The preacher, discerning the moment, spoke up. ‘Wait a minute! I know who you are. I recognize you. You are a child of God.’ With that, he bent down and gave the boy a hug and said, ‘Boy, you’ve got a great inheritance – go and claim it.’ The boy smiled and began to repeat to himself those words, ‘I’m a child of God.’” The old gentlemen stood up from the table and said, “You know, if that new preacher hadn’t told me that I was a child of God, I probably would have never amounted to anything!” After the old man walked away, the waitress came up to the table and said, “Oh, don’t mind him. That’s Ol’ Ben Hopper. He’s the former governor of Tennessee!” 

The daughter of a wealthy family was born with a huge nose that dominated the looks of her face. She grew up with this terrible image of herself as an ugly person. Her family hired the best plastic surgeon to change the contour of her nose. After a few weeks, the girl returned to the surgeon’s office to have the bandages removed. When the doctor removed the bandages, her nose was perfect. All the ugly contours were gone. But, the girl’s self-image of being ugly was so deeply imbedded in her mind that when she saw herself in the mirror, she couldn’t see any change. She broke into tears and cried, “Oh, I knew it wouldn’t work.”

The story you tell yourself is the one you believe. That story is your self-image; the beliefs you have about who you are and what you can do. You can rewrite your story once you begin a relationship with Jesus Christ. I have a new self-image in Christ. The Bible says: I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me; No weapon formed against me shall prosper; Who can separate me from the love of Christ?; Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Jesus has come to give us a new self-image; a self-image based on His love for you, all that He has done for you, and all that He is going to do for you in the future. ~George DeTellis, Jr.