Spiritual Nursing

1 Thessalonians 1:1-2:8 I was at a time in my life when I felt I needed to get more education and go to work. My sons were facing college later, and I wanted to do my part in paying for their education. One morning as I was having my quiet time, I read 1 Thessalonians 2:7: “But we were gentle among you, just as a nursing mother cherishes her own children.”

That’s it, I thought to myself as soon as I read this passage. God wants me to be a nurse. The next week I found myself down at my old college. I prayed for favor with the admissions to count all my former credits. They informed me I could finish a nursing course in two years, and in fact, this was the last two-year R.N. course they would offer at this school. In the future you would have to go for four years to receive your R.N. I was delighted. This had to be God because it was the seventh day of the seventh month in 1977. I bounced out of the admissions and came home to report to the children that their mother was going to be a full-time college student.

Two quarters into nursing I realized I might have missed God. I attended a course called “Introduction to Nursing,” and the professor only talked about when she retired how great it would be when she could do her needlepoint and garden. I thought to myself, I can do this now. Nursing must not be all it is cracked up to be if she is looking so forward to retirement. When I hit Chemistry 101, I knew I could not go on, so I left college and returned to cook my boys’ dinner that evening. I had not been able to do that for six months. The boys and my husband asked, “What happened? Did you flunk out?” “No,” I replied. “I copped out before I flunked out.”

The following week I asked the Lord, “What on earth was all that about? After all, I thought You were telling me to be a nurse.” The answer I received was so comforting. I heard the following with my spiritual ears: “I do want you to be a nurse, but not in the physical. You are called to be a spiritual nurse—to bind up the brokenhearted and to set at liberty those who are bruised.”

The mistake I made is one many of us make in the course of our lives. I had interpreted a spiritual instruction with my natural mind, and I moved in haste on my own understanding rather than inquiring more of the Lord. That day in prayer I also was instructed not to worry about financing the boy’s education. Instead I was just to pray for my husband to prosper in his job, and he did.

Today the Lord is giving you instructions. Will you listen with spiritual ears?

READ: Jeremiah 12:1-14:10; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-2:8; Psalm 79:1-13; Proverbs 24:30-34