The Lord may use means to heal us, but He is the Healer, the secret ingredient in every medicine.
One of the drawbacks of independence from God is that, when things fail—as they will—who is there to blame? Just the person I see in the mirror each morning. In Asa’s case, the Lord sent Hanani the seer to deliver the corrective. “Were the Ethiopians and the Lubim not a huge army with very many chariots and horsemen? Yet, because you relied on the Lord, He delivered them into your hand” (2 Chron 16:8). But this time, instead of the Sovereign, he settled for Syria’s help. Then when someone points out our mistakes, there are two options. One is to take the exhortation to heart and benefit from it. The other is to get angry. Of course, no one makes me angry. I choose that option. How do I know? A man’s wife burns his toast at breakfast, and he becomes angry. But if his boss does something far worse—surprise—he doesn’t get angry! Why? He knows when it’s inappropriate. “Then Asa was angry with the seer, and put him in prison, for he was enraged at him because of this. And Asa oppressed some of the people at that time” (v 10). The next thing we read? “Note that the acts of Asa, first and last, are indeed written in the book…” (v 11). I wonder. Would he, would we, be more careful of our actions if we remembered they were all being written down? Then we read, “In the thirty-ninth year of his reign, Asa became diseased in his feet, and his malady was severe; yet in his disease he did not seek the Lord, but the physicians” (v 12). These weren’t medical doctors, but shamans using charms and exorcisms to try to effect healing. They were as useless, it seems, as the spices and ointment burned at his funeral to try and remove the bad odor of his diseased and wayward feet (v 14). “Ponder the path of your feet” (Prov 4:26).