Based on the talk given by President Camille N. Johnson
This talk made me think. I pondered on it deeply. It made me think of the differences between healing, being healed, and being made whole.
Healing is a process that we are intimately involved in. Being healed, and being made whole are the end result of the healing process. However in order to be healed, and especially to be made whole we need the Savior Jesus Christ. The process does not work without Him. Just as it does not work without our willing participation.
Often, we carry wounds that those around us do not see. Wounds of the heart and spirit. These are the wounds that the Savior can heal. These are the wounds that he can make whole.
Being made whole is a different kind of healing from what we ordinarily think about. In Luke 17:11-19, the term “made whole” was translated from a Greek word that means to save, to rescue, to deliver, or to heal.
This sheds a different light on the type of healing that Jesus Christ offers us. In being made whole, He saves us from our sins, He rescues us from darkness, sorrow and despair, He delivers us from peril, and He heals our hearts, spirits, and bodies. Being made whole involves them all.
The part of Sister Johnson’s talk that caught me the most was when she stated, “Through our faith in Jesus Christ, we can seek to be spiritually whole while we wait and hope for physical and emotional healing.” Our spirits can be made whole while we wait for and endure the healing process for our bodies and our hearts.
Jesus Christ is the master healer. To Him, there is little difference between healing and loving. Both are given freely. For us, healing is a process. It is a journey in which the destination is less important than the journey itself. This is because it is through the journey that we are healed.
The healing journey is walked side by side with the Savior. His part is to provide through the atonement, the power to heal, the balm to soothe the brokenhearted, and the ability to make us whole.
Our part is to engage willingly. To repent, to follow, to turn to Him. In John 5:6, the Savior asks a man who suffered a debilitating infirmity for 38 years; “Wilt thou be made whole?”
It was his choice. He could choose to be made whole by the Savior or continue on as he had. This seems like a simple and easy choice when we read the story in the scriptures. However, sometimes it is easier to suffer than to face the unknown world of being made whole. What we know, no matter how uncomfortable, is always more comfortable than the unknown.
So, in choosing to be made whole, this man exercised faith. He believed the Savior could make him whole, and he acted on that faith, and because of that effort, he was made whole.
Sister Johnson states; “By virtue of His atoning sacrifice, and when we sincerely repent, the Savior heals us from sin, as He did with Enos. His infinite Atonement also reaches our griefs and sorrows.”
Healing is on the Lord’s timetable. However ,when we choose to put in the effort to repent, to engage, to seek Him, we can further the process of healing. When we choose otherwise, we slow that process.
Indeed, as Sister Johnson said, this is to heal not only our sins, or our bodies, but our hearts and our spirits.
In his talk ‘Jesus Christ – Master Healer’, then-Elder Russell M. Nelson speaks of the steps we take toward healing.
“Early in His mortal ministry, Jesus announced that He had been sent “to heal the brokenhearted.” Wherever He taught them, His pattern was consistent. As I quote His words spoken at four different times and locations, note the pattern.
- To people of the Holy Land, the Lord said that His people “should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.”
- To people of ancient America, the resurrected Lord extended this invitation: “Return unto me, … repent of your sins, and be converted, that I may heal you.”
- To leaders of His Church, He taught, “Continue to minister; for ye know not but what they will return and repent, and come unto me with full purpose of heart, and I shall heal them.”
- Later, during the “restitution of all things,” the Lord taught the Prophet Joseph Smith regarding the pioneers, “After their temptations, and much tribulation, behold, I, the Lord, will feel after them, and if they harden not their hearts, and stiffen not their necks against me, they shall be converted, and I will heal them.”
The sequence of His pattern is significant. Faith, repentance, baptism, a testimony, and enduring conversion lead to the healing power of the Lord.”
The pattern is clear. We seek Him; we open our eyes and hear Him with our ears.. We turn to Him; we understand with our hearts. We follow Him in faith, acting on the promptings and revelation He gives us. We repent of our sins and shortcomings. We soften our hearts and stiffen not our necks.
In doing these things, we not only are healed but we also gain a personal relationship with our Savior Jesus Christ. The closer we draw to Him, the more we are converted to Him and the more we strive to become like Him.
The more we do this. The more like the five wise virgins that Sister Johnson spoke of we become. She stated; “…that the five wise did know Him. They were whole in Him.”
This is how we can become spiritually whole, even while we deal with the physical challenges of mortality.To close, Sister Johnson says; “…yes, we can be spiritually whole, even while we wait for physical and emotional healing. Wholeness does not necessarily mean physical and emotional restoration in this life. Wholeness born of faith in and conversion to Jesus Christ and in letting the light of that conversion shine. …All will be physically and emotionally healed in the Resurrection. But will you choose now to be whole in Him?”
