“It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees” (Psalm 119:71).
As a child, when I got sick with a cold or the flu, my mom would give me cough syrup to help me to feel better, as I’m sure most of our parents did. Unfortunately, when I was growing up, there was no grape, cherry or piña colada flavored cough syrup. There was just the straight nasty stuff by St. Joseph's or Robitussin. Even worse than that was the medicine my father would give me called “The three 666s”. That name alone was demonic, and believe me when I tell you the taste was straight from hell. I didn't just want to slap the medicine bottle away, I wanted to slap my father for making me take it! However, the truth of the matter is that when I took that “demonic” medicine, I felt one hundred percent better.
In that same way, our Heavenly Father sends His medicine bottle into our lives to bring health and wholeness. Those bitter situations that we experience in our lives come to make us better not bitter (like I was with my daddy for making me take that medicine). If you would swallow the medicine the Lord administers to you and stop slapping the bottle away, you will begin to see healing take place within the Body of Christ, both individually and corporately.
One of the reasons that we don't know who we are or what our position is in the world is that we have become so fragmented and we are not whole because we have not allowed God to complete us. This fragmentation is spreading like cancer throughout the Body of Christ. How has this happened? you may ask. This has happened because every time God sends a prescription to make us better—a prescription that will make us whole and take us from level to level spiritually—we slap it away, and we dismiss the medicine.
When Jesus came, He knew who He was and He was aware of His mission in the world. But just as surely as He knew who He was and what He had been sent to do, He knew it was a bitter pill that He had to swallow in order to fulfill His commission on this planet.
There is a pill with each of our names on it as well. What is your bitter pill? What is that medicine that has come to make you better and that you keep slapping away? That medicine that comes to aid you into evolving into who you really are? Is it that person who gets on your last nerve? Is it that tight situation that you are in at this very moment? Is your failing marriage that bitter pill? Is it those church folk, the pastor, your job or lack thereof? What is the bitter pill that God has sent into your life that you refuse to swallow?
God is desperately trying to make you into what this world needs. I didn't say what the church needs but what the world needs. We must understand that everything we do is a covert assignment from the Lord, from where we work down to the people we interact with at the grocery store. So, who in the world are you in these given situations? Stop slapping the bottle away, or running from it, or whatever it is you do to avoid taking that pill. That pill may be bitter, but it is necessary.
Years after my traumatic experience with that Satanic medication “The Three 666s”, I came to the realization that my daddy had given it to me because he loved me and hated to see me sick because when I was sick I wasn't at my best. That medicine aided in making me whole. Thank you, Daddy, for loving me so much that even knowing how bitter that medicine was, you gave it to me because you knew exactly what I needed.
God sent the bitter pill your way for you to swallow and, if you do, it will bring health to you in many areas.
1. Heart (Psalm 51:10)
2. Mind (Philippians 2:5)
3. Thought (2 Corinthians 10:5)
4. Motive (Hebrews 4:12)
5. Direction (Proverbs 3:5-6)
Don't dismiss the very thing that will be the bridge between you and your destiny.