Taking the Prescription

ONE time I was battling a cold and couldn’t shake it. I called my doctor, told him my symptoms, and he told me I didn’t need to come in. He was going to call in a prescription for me. He told me what medicine he was prescribing and how he wanted me to take it.

Now, a number of things went into motion. First of all, I had to believe that I was talking to the person I thought I was talking to, because I couldn’t see him. It was just a conversation over the phone. So I had to listen to his voice.

I listened to his voice and he told me how to fix my problem. Now, I could’ve lain in bed and meditated. I could have believed him, but stayed in my bed thinking about how good it was that I had a doctor who understood my problem and provided me with a solution.

I could have lain there thinking how great it was that I had a solution, but all that lying around and thinking about the good words that the good doctor shared with me wouldn’t make me better. It may have given me warm fuzzies because he talked to me, but I’d still be sick as a dog.

Guess what I had to do. I had to get up, get in my car, drive to Walgreens, and say to the pharmacist, “Do you have a prescription with my name on it?” There’s a lot of medicine in there, but I needed something with my name on it.

I needed something that wasn’t generic but personal to me. The doctor told me it was there, and because I believed his word I acted on it and went to Walgreens. Taking this illustration further, I could have just received the medicine and looked at it. I could have gazed at it and made sure that it looked medicinally acceptable to me.

But, I’d still be sick as a dog. The doctor’s instructions were not for me just to drive to Walgreens and get emotionally fixated on the look of the medicine. He told me to take it. By following his instructions to the T, my faith was matching up with my works and I began to feel much better.

A lot of us are spiritually sick and every week we come to hear what the Doctor’s got to say. Some of us stop there and just think about how good it was to talk to Him. Some of us leave church feeling good about how great the prescription sounds, but still sick as a spiritual dog because we don’t take it and ingest it by acting on it.

Therefore, we’re not transformed.