I Believe You're My Healer

While at the youth ministry conference in Boston, I was privileged to finally see and hear Matt Maher in person. I’ve never been a huge fan of the recordings he makes - I really prefer acoustic sounds over the electrics rifs and “produced sound” you often get on CDs. Nonetheless, I’ve always been incredibly touched by his very soulful and (in my opinion) catechetical lyrics, and his vocal quality lifts my heart to prayer so much and reduced me to tears more than once this past week.
The other side of how wonderful it was to have him at the conference was because I’ve been involved in some level of music ministry for several years now, and when I’m not doing the music I often find myself distracted by the critique that happens in my head (it happens as I’m playing music, too). I’m so busy critiquing musicians in my mind that it’s difficult to enter into prayer. When I found out Matt was going to be at the conference, and that he was helping to lead music for our liturgies, I almost laughed! ‘Thanks, God. You knew I wouldn’t pray unless someone like Matt Maher was leading the music, so you sent him‘.
Anyway, Matt spoke to a group of teens at a Eucharistic time of Praise and Worship they call LIFT out in Boston. I just wanted to relay a part of what he said because it affected me so much. He was talking about a controversy not-too-long ago in the contemporary Christian music world. Hillsong, one of the biggest churches in the world and a major outlet of praise and worship music, released a song called “Healer” in Australia during World Youth Day in Sydney, where Matt heard it for the first time and was deeply touched. He learned that the story behind it was the songwriter had contracted cancer and penned the song as a result. It moved people really deeply to think that a person with such a devastating sickness could pray a song like:
“You hold my every moment, you calm my raging seas,
you walk with me through fire and heal all my disease
I trust in You, I trust in You
And I believe you’re my Healer, I believe you are all I need
And I believe you’re my portion, I believe you’re more than enough for me
Jesus, You’re all I need
For nothing is Impossible for You, You Hold my world in your hands”
About the same time that the song was released in the United States, the man who wrote this song called a press conference and announced something shocking: He didn’t have cancer! No, I don’t mean was healed miraculously, I mean he never had cancer in the first place. People were scandalized, shocked, and disheartened about this, and a lot of churches pulled the song.
But here’s what wrecks me: what the man REALLY wrote the song about was a crippling addiction to pornography he struggled with. He was so ill with himself over it that he actually demonstrated the physical symptoms of cancer - losing his hair, the whole nine yards. And what Matt shared, which strikes me as a bold proclamation of the Gospel, was this: the song takes on even MORE meaning because of what it’s really about. That the deepest disease we have is our sin, and it is here that we need healing more than physical ailment. Some people struggle with physical illnesses and the Lord doesn’t heal them - but He always heals the worst disease, our sin. So, go back and read those lyrics again… don’t they take on a whole new meaning?
This parallels my Confession this past week, which was arguably one of the (if not THE) most amazing Confession I’ve ever experienced. It was the first time in a long while I’ve been so moved to contrition that I wept openly as I told the priest my sins… and when I finished, he said something that penetrated to the depths of me so that I realized I had been thirsting for Christ to speak these words to me. He said: “Guinevere, I understand that your penitence is real and that the things you’re confessing are still sins, but I honestly sense that underneath all these symptoms is a wound in your heart that is NOT your fault.” The priest continued with words of tremendous comfort, reassuring me that I do indeed love Jesus in spite of what a screw-up I have felt like, and that Jesus wanted to HEAL the root of what ailed me. After giving me absolution, he said an extra prayer asking for healing in my heart. What a breakthrough.
My Savior can move mountains. What joy is mine, that I am able to say I am SO in love with Him!