How I Discovered the Medicine

It’s good to be with you again at the beginning of a new week, sharing with you Keys to Successful Living which God has placed in my hand through many years of personal experience and Christian ministry.

This week I’ll be sharing with you in a very special way out of my own experience—how I received healing from God when all normal medical help had proved ineffective. My theme for this week is: God’s Medicine Bottle.

But first, let me say thank you to those of you who’ve been writing to me. Before I finish this talk, we’ll be giving you a mailing address to which you may write. It means a great deal to me to hear how this radio ministry of mine has been helping you and blessing you. So please take time to write—even if it’s only a brief note.

Now back to our theme: God’s Medicine Bottle.

In my talk today I’m going to share with you—as I said—out of my own experience—how I discovered this wonderful medicine bottle of God.

This happened in the early years of World War II. As probably most of you know, I’m British by background and in World War II I served for five-and-a-half years in the British Army as a medical orderly—that’s what the British call it, or what the Americans call a hospital attendant, with the British Medical Services. And for three years, I served in the deserts of North Africa; first in Egypt and later in Libya, and later still in the Sudan. In the desert there were two things that we were exposed to more than anything else—sand and sun. I can remember I spent nearly one entire year in the desert without ever seeing a paved road. We traveled in sand; we slept in sand; very often we had the impression that we were eating sand. We were exposed to it day and night. Combined with the sun, it had a very harmful effect on the skin of certain people whose skin was not adequate for that kind of exposure, and I was one of them. In my case, as in the case of many other soldiers, it manifested itself primarily in the condition of my feet and my hands, where the skin broke down. I was really in many ways incapacitated. The officer in command of my particular unit struggled to keep me from being admitted to hospital because he knew if I was admitted to hospital, he would lose me in the unit and he wanted to keep me and so I spent several months kind of hobbling around trying to do my military duties, but in the end, he had to let me go into hospital. I went to, altogether I think, three or four different military hospitals and I was in hospital for a year on end. Actually I met soldiers there who’d been two years in the Middle East and spent eighteen months in hospital with similar conditions. I received many elaborate diagnoses of my problem; each name tended to be a little longer than the previous name and I don’t recall them now. But eventually, it was diagnosed very simply as chronic eczema and I received the best medical treatment available at that time in the circumstances but really it didn’t help me. And I saw many other soldiers with similar conditions who also were not helped. There’s something about the climate of Egypt that’s particularly inimical to the skin of people who are not intended for that part of the world. Really serious conditions, burns and so on, were usually shipped down to South Africa. But my condition wasn’t that serious and my services to the British Army were not that valuable that they were going to waste a passage on a ship to South Africa for me. So I just lay there in bed, day after day wondering what my future would be and I’ll tell you, when you spend a year on end in hospital, it seems a very, very long time.

I had newly come into a real personal relationship with the Lord and been born again and also received the filling of the Holy Spirit. But I was very, very ignorant. I didn’t have any background of Bible knowledge. I just had a Bible and really I had no where else to turn for help at that time but to God and to the Bible. And so I began to search the Bible in desperation to see if it had anything that it could tell me about my physical condition. I didn’t have any theories about healing. I just knew I needed it and I had the Bible in my hand and I had plenty of time to read the Bible; I had very little else to do. And so I searched the Bible for something that would show me if I could really trust God for the healing of my body. And, one day, I remember, I came across some verses in the Book of Proverbs. These are the verses which I learned to call “God’s medicine bottle,” and I’m going to quote them to you, from Proverbs, chapter 4, verses 20 through 22. I’m quoting from the King James Version which was the version that I was reading in those days and which is extremely vivid, as a matter of fact, and says it very clearly and forcefully. Proverbs 4, 20 through 22—make a note of that reference.

“My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh.” (KJV)

It was that last phrase that arrested me, “health to all their flesh.” I understood that “all their flesh” meant their total physical body and that’s how more modern versions actually translate it. And I thought, “Health, if I have health in my whole body, there’s no room there for sickness, and that’s what God is promising me. And then I happened to look in the margin and I saw that the marginal alternative translation for the word translated “health” was “medicine” and that seemed to be even more appropriate for my condition. And I saw that God was promising me something that would be medicine that would bring health to all my flesh and I thought to myself, that’s precisely what I need. So I went back and read those words over and over again and I saw that in essence, God’s offer was being made to me through His Words.

Verse 20 says, “Attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings.” Then verse 22 says, “For they [that’s God’s words and God’s sayings] are life to those that find them, and health to all their flesh.” So, whatever it is, it’s in the words and the sayings of God.

And then I saw the phrase, “...those that find them,” and I saw it was more than just reading the Bible. It was reading the Bible in such a way as to find out how to receive what God was offering.

Well, I’d received all the medical attention that was available in those conditions and it hadn’t helped me so I made a decision, a very naive decision in a way. I decided, I’m going to take God’s Word as my medicine. And so, that was a crucial decision in my life—I’m going to take God’s Word as medicine for my physical body. When I made that decision, the Lord Himself spoke to me, not audibly, but very clearly. This is what He said; He said, “When the doctor gives a person medicine, the directions for taking it are on the bottle.” Then He said, “This is My medicine bottle and the directions are on the bottle; you’d better study them.” God reminded me that doctor didn’t promise any benefit from the medicine that he recommended unless it was taken according to the directions, and being a medical orderly myself, of course, that was very vivid to me.

So I went back and I decided to study the directions on the bottle and I saw very quickly that there were four specific directions for taking God’s Word as medicine for the physical body. These are the directions:

Number one, attend to my Words.

Number two, incline thine ear unto my sayings.

Number three, let them not depart from thine eyes.

Number four, keep them in the midst of thine heart.

So, I realized that if I was going to receive the benefit that I needed from the medicine, those were the four directions I had to follow.

Now I cannot go in detail into all that followed but I just want to say that I began to do that. I just bowed my head before the Bible every day, three times daily after meals, because that is how people take normal medicine. I said, “God, you’ve said that these words of yours will be medicine to all my flesh and I’m taking them as my medicine now, in the Name of Jesus,” and, within a few months, God’s medicine, taken that way, achieved the result God promised. I was totally healthy in every area of my body.

I once recorded this experience of mine on a tape a good many years ago. And just a little while ago, in London, England, I met a young man from Pakistan, a Pakistani, who told me that he’d become a Christian and that he’d suffered for more than twenty years from eczema. And then, one day he heard my tape. He decided to do what I had done, and he told me, in his case, within two or three days, he was completely healed. So that’s an up to date testimony that the medicine still does what’s it’s claimed for.

Now for the rest of this week, I’m going to be sharing with you the lessons that I learned on the directions that are on God’s medicine bottle and how to apply them.

Our time is up for today. I’ll be back with you again tomorrow at this same time. Tomorrow, as I’ve said, I’ll be dealing with the first of four directions on God’s Medicine Bottle.