Work-in-Progress: Heart Check

There was a little discomfort felt in my left ear one afternoon. So I browsed the internet to check what symptom it could possibly be. Reading through, I found one sentence that redirected my attention from the thought of a possible “ear infection” to a problem more serious than that. The line says “make sure the treatment is for the problem and not the symptoms”.

Here goes another web of thoughts in my mind: healing the symptom does not heal the real problem. I would like to share three aspects I have seen with that one statement: physical, emotional, and spiritual.

1. Physical aspect

I do remember  how Joemar, one of my classmates in college and a brother in Christ, used “headache” as an illustration to explain one theory in our “management class”. He says one of the causes for getting a “headache” is at times when we have “tooth pain”. The tooth hurts so bad that it seems to connect to our head. We take some medicine to relieve the pain; the headache is gone, and perhaps the toothache too, but the real problem is not solved. In the end, we still need to see the dentist for check-up, so that she/he can give us the proper remedy: something that lasts longer and something that does not only give a temporary relief. 2. Emotional Aspect

 Emo-ness? Stress? Heart-aches? Loneliness? What else?How have you been dealing with “heart stuffs”? I am guilty of dwelling into “comfort food” sometimes. Like when little things bring me down, and I grab a cup of Dairy Queen Blizzardwhich somehow makes me happy for a while.Or when you are broken-hearted, and you think refusing to listen to love songs will help, and you felt successful with that, but when you hear someone talk about your “___”, you freak-out and ask a lot of questions which only shows how paranoid you are.Or when all your friends are at your condo, and all the laughter excites you; but when they all go home and you turn off the lights as you lay down in bed, you realized that the happiness you felt only healed the “symptom”: loneliness and sadness.It really did not solve the real problem: “a heart which is not right with God”. 3. Spiritual AspectWe are spiritually sick by nature, because we are sinners. Let’s think about those times we have done something that is clearly wrong; whether it’s big or small, does not really matter much, because in God’s standards, what he demands is PERFECTION. Since we are sinners, we have been separated from God. What kind of remedies do we go for?Someone said, she would go to church every Sunday because that will bring her closer to God. “Closer”, maybe. But will that solve her spiritual condition? Maybe not.

Another one said, “I would give to the poor 90% of my salary, that way I can earn my way to God”. Uhm, that would please God, but will it solve her spiritual condition? No.

The truth is that we are spiritually sick. And we cannot remedy that problem by doing good things to cover the wrong ones. We have to go to the Doctor to heal us. And that Doctor is Jesus Christ. He brought healing to mankind, when He shed His blood on the Cross to wash our sins away. He said “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick” –Matthew9:12

If you think Jesus will only love you because you are good, then you are so wrong. He loved us even when we are still sinners. And it is for that very reason why He came down to earth: to save the sick, even those who do not know they are lost.

Question: How are we today? physically, emotionally, and above all, spiritually? How have we been dealing with the situations we are on right now? Are we treating the “symptom” because we are too scared to face our “real conditions”? Or are we already allowing the Doctor to heal us because we know that, by ourselves, we are truly helpless?