The Ultimate Surgeon

Mark 2:17 says "On hearing this, Jesus said to them, 'It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but the sinners.'"

I am sure many people have heard this verse, but have you ever really thought about it. I was thinking about this verse and instantly thought of Grey's Anatomy (just me, okay good), anyways on a more relevant note I started thinking about how Jesus did come as a surgeon. Not just for the body, but for the mind and spirit.

So this lead me to start thinking about how a surgeon operates. The surgeon never forces anyone to have surgery, he or she simply tells the person why they are feeling sick and that if they don't have the surgery they will get worse. The surgery is long and the recovery process will be hard and painful, but the thing inside of you is killing you. Surgeons are experienced and have a lot more medical knowledge than most of us combined, but surgery is still a scary thing.

This is how I feel like God operates. The bible is kind of like Web MD (maybe slightly more accurate) in giving you the symptoms of what is healthy and what makes you sick. Once we begin feeling sick we check our handy-dandy Bible and "type in our symptoms". Symptoms for today could be a bit of jealous, maybe a little pride and just a dab of lust. You search the results and find out what you have is terminal and can only be fixed with surgery. The surgery has a 100% recover rate if the patient fallows all post-op instructions. We then have the chance to talk to the surgeon about it. God tells us that we can't keep any of the bad stuff inside. He needs to remove it all. Would you say yes to the surgery?

If we were honest I think some of us would still be really hesitant. I am not saying it is easy to sign over our lives to God, because it is not easy. He requires us to completely trust his surgical hands. I worry that when I get out of surgery I won't feel like myself, I worry he will take more than he said he would, I worry that the pain and recovery process will be to hard. Some of us have seen people go through the surgery and still end up terminal later in life, others have had the surgery before and felt mislead about the recovery process.

I need to remember that God is a better surgeon than any doctor on Grey's Anatomy. He always has a successful surgery. He never leaves our side to visit other patients. He doesn't even want us to pay him, all we have to do is live our lives according to the post-op instructions. It  might sound easy to give God everything and sign up for the surgery, until he starts sharing some of the risks. We could lose some friends, might need to find some new places to hang out, or even be asked to move across the world to help others realize the need for surgery in their lives. But the risks never out way the rewards. The reward is life! God tells us that if we give him all our yucky stuff and let him heal us and make us new that we can have a full life with him.

A full life is never easy, but it is always worth it.