A Devotion from Charles Spurgeon

“I am the Lord, who heals you.” 
-Exodus 15:26

The Lord our God will heal our spirits as he healed Marah. First, he made the people know how bitter Marah was. There was no healing for that water till they had tasted it and discovered that it was too brackish to be endured, but after they knew its bitterness, then the Lord made it sweet to them. So is it with your sin. It must become more and more bitter to you, [making] you feel that you cannot live on anything that is in yourself. God’s way is first to wound and then to heal. He begins by making Marah to be Marah [“bitter”], and afterwards he makes it sweet.

Next, there was prayer offered. I do not know whether any of the people possessed faith in God, but if so, they had a prayerless faith, and God does not work in answer to prayerless faith. Some think it useless to pray because they feel sure of having the blessing. Putting aside prayer is dangerous business. If there is not the daily cry to God for blessing and for keeping and for sanctification, the mercy will not come. Healing does not come to a prayerless faith. God will only hear you when you pray. Faith must pour itself out in prayer before the blessing will be poured into the soul. Moses cried, and he obtained the blessing; the people did not cry, and they would have been in a bad way had it not been for Moses. We must come to crying and praying before we will receive sanctification, which is the making whole of our spirits.

Marah became sweet through the introduction of something outside of itself—a tree. I know a tree that, if put into the soul, will sweeten all its thoughts and desires, that tree on which Jesus died and shed his blood for our sin.

If the merit of the Cross is imputed to you and the spirit of the Cross is introduced into your nature, then you will find a marvelous change of your entire nature. You were full of vice, so the Crucified One will make you full of virtue. You were bitter toward God, so you will be sweet to him, and even Christ will be refreshed as he drinks of your love, as he drinks of your trust, as he drinks of your joy in him. Where all was acrid and poisonous, everything will become pure and refreshing. We must first experience bitterness, then cry out in prayer, then yield an obedient faith that puts the tree into the stream, and then the divine power will be put forth on us by him who says, “I am the Lord, who heals you.”