2. The Importance of Healing
What is your biggest fear in life? But maybe that is asking the wrong
question. I know that, as a Christian,
we are not supposed to be afraid of things.
The Bible says to fear the Lord,[1]
but we understand that in the sense of reverence. We would like to think we have the sense not
to fight with God. The only people who
need to be afraid of God are those who want nothing to do with Him. But
what are you afraid of? What situations
in life would shake you up like no other?
. In the affluent West. we don’t worry
about famines or plagues anymore. In
many parts of the world, even in the West, there are higher than average risks
for natural disasters, like hurricanes, tornadoes, or floods. I haven’t surveyed residents of those areas
to see their level of stress due to these possibilities, but I am doubtful how
much these affect people’s choices of continuing to live in those areas.
We don’t
worry about marauding hordes of Canadians sweeping through our country,
pillaging our towns and villages. There
are at this time increased threats of acts of terrorism in the world, yet the
risk of any one average person becoming a victim of terrorism is
miniscule. I mention these kinds of
fearful things, because they were common to people living in the Bible lands
during the times of the Bible. In many
parts of the world today, these are still very real fears. In the many of the Western countries now,
these are only remembered in history books.
One thing that can strike fear into
the hearts of even the strongest of us, especially those who have had a close
encounter with it, is a lawsuit, which can threaten a family’s entire life
savings. These can last for months and
even years, causing a constant state of anxiety and apprehension. But I am not sure how many people really
think of this happening to them. I
remember years ago of some company offering legal insurance, but the demand or
need for this is nothing compared to that for medical insurance.
And, of
course, those of us who are parents want to be sure that we outlive our
children and that they live healthy, productive lives. We may worry about our children, but as they
grow older ,we realize that our control over their lives decreases and we have
to let go. Losing a child can cause a
grief like no other, yet part of that grief is due to the fact that this is so
unexpected. We don’t expect to outlive
our children, so we don’t let it linger in the backs of our minds as something
that would actually happen to us.
I know that
when I got cancer, it was a little surprising at first, because you never think
it will happen to you. But we know that
the probability of each of us experiencing a major illness is more of a when
rather than an if. So, I think it safe
to say that the number one fear producer, everything considered, is illness,
especially the long, painful ones that can kill you and that require expensive,
uncertain treatments. The kind that
probably half or more of every person living will face at some time in their
lives. Couple that with the vast and
growing numbers of people without medical insurance, and we can have a real
crisis here..
But we are
a people who believe in God. And we have
to ask just what difference that makes in our lives. I know, I know. God is worthy of our worship and praise
whether He ever does anything for us or not.
And I agree. As Creator, His
power and greatness are impressive.
But the
whole point here is: we have a record here in the Bible of God’s interactions
with us humans, a revelation of God’s character. So the creation tells us of His power and His
care for His creation. But I think it is
a safe and fair question to ask if and in what way His power might be available
to us in our needs. And I believe the
Bible talks quite extensively about what God would like to do for us and under
what circumstances. The reason for this
book is that I don’t think most of us really know what we can expect from
God. I know there are many who will tell
us that we should concentrate on what God expects from us rather than on what
we can expect from God.
And I agree
with that. The problem is that God
expects us to call upon Him in our troubles[2] He wants us to approach Him boldly for help
in our lives.[3] So, no, God is not our servant; we are His servants. But God is also our Father, and He delights
over His children as we humanly parents delight over our own children.[4] If we need health and healing, we should feel
free to go to our Father in heaven and expect Him to help us.
So I am
saying in this book that not only is physical healing a concern and a need for
all of us, but that the Bible addresses the issue clearly and often, and we
need to take a fresh look at it so that we can live the lives that God intended
for us.
God gave us
a Bible to explain life to us, this world, Himself. If we look at the events of life, we will not
know how to understand them by themselves.
We need God explaining to us what is going on. But that means that life may often paint a
picture very different from what the Bible does. And we have to decide which is giving us a
truer picture of reality.
Every
person has to decide what they will do with the Bible. Is it God’s Word or not? Is it true or not? Does it mean what it says or not? Can we understand it, or does it mean things
far different from what it seems to say?
Does it say what it means, and does it mean what it says? And we will look at what the Bible says about
healing.
But first I
think we still need to establish the importance of healing. Somehow there seems to be this lingering
thought that desiring or expecting physical healing is self-centered, selfish
in some way, immature, material, something that we need to be freed from in our
pursuit for spiritual growth, maturity, and fullness. The thought is prevalent that the presence of
sickness and disease is an important means for God’s work in our lives and our
desire for healing is our immature desire to escape a necessary work in our
lives. Very simply, I believe we are
confusing the means with the ends.
Illness
certainly has a way of opening our eyes to new truths and priorities and
forcing us to face up to unpleasant
realities, things that must be changed in our lives. But just as pride and materialism and
self-centeredness are evils that we must eradicate out of our lives, so is
sickness. It is not the tolerating of
sickness in our lives that is God’s goal for us
but the overcoming of it.
I am sure
there are still many people who are wondering why we are making such a fuss
over this one thing. Why is healing so
important in the grand scheme of things?
Let us count the ways.
1) We
have already noted that health is one of the greatest needs and desires of the
human heart. We have the expression:
When you have your health, you have everything.
Those of us who believe the Bible would say there is something more
important than physical health: the health of our souls, our eternal
salvation. And I don’t want to diminish
that at all. But all too often that
seems to be the only thing that churches or God think or care about. God will save your soul, but after that you
are pretty much on your own. He will
help you, but usually not in the way you want and seldom in any way that you
can expect. In fact, you will never know
what He will do next.
There is no
discernable pattern except a lot of pain and suffering. He is not the source of the relief but
generally He is considered the cause of the problems. For good reason, of course. But this is not often a source of
comfort. We are expected to find hope
and comfort in our misery, believing that some ultimate or higher good will
come out of it, but when a spouse dies leaving young children, it is difficult
to fathom what this higher good might be.
I doubt if any of us ever find out.
To use the same reasoning that the
Bible uses, if we are admonished in James about clothing the naked and feeding
the hungry and told that merely to tell someone to be warm and satisfied
without giving them what they need would show that our faith is empty,[5]
what does that tell us about God? Is God
one who merely sits by and watches us sympathetically while we suffer but has
no intention to help us or to relieve that suffering? Then what does that say about God? God would not hold us to a standard which He
Himself would not hold to. If we are
expected to relieve the suffering of those we meet, then He is expected to do
the same. If some then make the case
that we are His instruments in the world to do just that, I have no problem
with that at all. It’s just that we
limit our help to what we can do medically or physically, while we will see
that healing is something that we should be able to minister in Jesus’ Name.
2) Healing is important, because that is
the pattern of the Bible. If that
pattern has now changed, then the Bible is incomplete. We now need a new updated version to tell us
how things are now.
We will see
that healing was part of the covenant that God made with Israel in the Old
Testament. That covenant was first made
in Genesis 12, the first book of the Bible, and continues through the end of
Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament.
Prior to that time, the earth was still young, and people lived hundreds
of years. Health and healing was not an
issue at that time.
In the New Testament,
the Gospel period was still under the Old Covenant. Healing was still promised to God’s people,
and we see in the ministry of Jesus that healing was still the norm. After the time of Jesus, we see in the Book
of Acts that healing was common throughout that time, which covers the writing
of almost the rest of the New Testament.
Even those who believe that healing is not to be the norm today would
agree that healing was common throughout the period of the rest of the New
Testament, at least through the time of the last apostle.
So we have
the Bible, which is considered God’s complete revelation of Himself to
humankind, revealing His will and purposes and plan for us. Throughout that revelation it was His will to heal His people. We may think that there have been exceptions
(Paul’s thorn in the flesh, Timothy’s stomach problems), but if that is the
case, they are just that, exceptions.
Healing was the norm, and for some reason we think God chose not to heal
in some cases.
The problem
is that today that pattern is completely reversed. The norm today is that God doesn’t heal
(apart from medical treatment or the common built-in work of our immune
systems). The exceptions are cases where
a person gets well apart from or beyond what can normally be expected. We might then call these miracles. We define miracles today as a suspending of
the laws of nature, where God breaks His own laws through His personal
intervention, while the Bible calls miracles ‘acts of power.’[6]
God isn’t
breaking His laws; He is exercising power.
I am not breaking the law of gravity when I lift something off the
ground. I am exercising power. God is not breaking laws of nature when He
heals someone. He is exercising power by
destroying harmful forces or by energizing growth.
So we will
see that the pattern throughout the Bible is that of healing. Not to be healed would be the rare
exception. The contention made today is
that things have changed. This is a new
dispensation, or the New Testament period was a period of transition. We are now in a new era. If that is the case, then we need another
Testament of the Bible, a Newer Testament, or the Latest Revised Up-to-date
Testament, telling us how things are now.
If healing has changed from the pattern of the New Testament, then what
else has changed? The Bible is no longer
our guide, because something as basic as healing has changed, and we don’t know
what else has changed as well. The Bible
merely becomes a record of what has happened in the past, but its relevance to
our lives today is greatly diminished.
We know
that many practices of the Old Testament were changed in the New
Testament. Even moral matter were
changed to a higher level. Instead of mere outward acts of evil being
condemned, now even intents of the heart are spoken against. Maybe that was only a transitional phase as
well. How do we know? We weren’t warned that healing would no
longer be God’s common purpose and plan for His people.
One of the
basic tenets of Christianity is that we are said to have a personal
relationship with God. I think most of
us who have a personal relationship with our spouses could probably go a
restaurant and order for them. We know
what they like to eat. We could probably
buy them clothes (except we don’t know our wives’ sizes). We know what style they like, what they look
good in. We can often finish a sentence
which they begin; we know what they are thinking and how they think.
Yet with
God and healing, most Christians I know have no idea what God’s will is. And God won’t tell them either. If they are seriously sick to the point of
death, God won’t reveal His will until they are either dead or well again. In the meantime, they have no idea. They can ask and ask, but He’s not
saying. They may think they heard Him
say that He will heal them, but if it is not immediately forthcoming, they will
doubt they heard right. The biggest
thing in their life and they have no idea what God wants for them. And this is a personal relationship? I think we misuse the term.
We have a
1000 page book telling us what God is like, and then in something so common and
basic as our health, or even life and death, we are clueless. It’s like the whole point of the Bible is
just to tell us how to get saved and to live a moral life. Well, He could have done that with a Four
Spiritual Laws pamphlet and the Ten Commandments written on stone. The rest is just an historical record of what God has done in the
past, but certainly not a revelation of His character, because though we say
that He never changes, how He acts certainly does, and that is all that really
has any meaning. It means little to say
that God is love, if at one time it meant that He would have compassion on you
and heal you, but now it only means that He will sit by your side and watch you
suffer and die in pain. But He will do
it with sorrow in His heart.
3) Healing is important, because it shows
that God is not like the other gods. In
the Bible, God makes much of the fact that He is not like the idols that the other
nations worshipped.[7] The other nations at that time worshipped
gods of stone and wood. We may say today
that these images only represented a higher reality and that the people knew
that. In reality, they did not
distinguish between the idols and a higher god, and God Himself didn’t think of
them as really worshipping Him but in their own way. He condemned them for their blindness and
stupidity.
But what
was the complaint? Were these people not
sincere in their beliefs? God says it
should have been obvious to them that they were false gods, because they cannot
deliver their people. They have eyes
that don’t see, mouths that don’t speak, and arms that don’t move. So what does that mean for us? That means that our God sees, He speaks, and
He acts. God says that the idols can’t
deliver their people. So He is saying
that He does. And what is deliverance? If we suffer and die like the heathen, only
that we have a smile on our faces when we die, is that deliverance? In some small way, it is an improvement. But if the only changes in our situation is
in our reactions to it, then God is not the One who is acting. He is as passive as the idols, and that is
what He condemned Himself.
There is a
strong thinking in Christianity today that the value of prayer is primarily how
it changes us rather than the circumstances.
God doesn’t have to do a thing but listen to us rattle off about how we
feel and then like some good indirect counselor, God just nods and listens and
we then come to some new understanding as we talk. Yes, prayer changes us, but you won’t find
many or any examples of that in the Bible where that is the purpose of the
prayer. People prayed for a change in circumstances,
and God answered by doing just that. And
if things didn’t change, that was not a good sign.
Our God
delivers us. And if we are out of work
because we are sick, if our life is threatened by disease, if we are sick
period, why should we not expect Him to deliver us?
In many ways our world today is like
that of Bible times. There are many gods
and religions vying for our attention and allegiance. We Christians like to think that we know the true God and the rest are idols. And the world asks us: how do you know? Why should we believe you? What difference does it make?
We can try
to defend the truth of Christianity through apologetics or some other form of
formal argument. We can also share our
experience through the reality of God working in our lives. Let us tell the world that we know our God
is alive and is the only true God, because He delivers His people out of all
their afflictions.[8]
4) Healing is important, because it is one
of our most important needs and God promised to meet our needs. And if healing is not a need, then what is?
In writing
this book, I am aware that some points will be repeated at times or expressed
in different ways. I have found this
subject to be one where so many people have such strong feelings, yet it is a
subject that so few have really researched to see what the Bible says. For that reason I have attempted to err on
the side of completeness and fullness.
My wife said I should keep this book short, but I feel like the
resistance to healing is like one of those monsters you see in the movies. You can’t kill it enough. You think you did it, but then it comes back
in the final frame. You almost can’t
overdo it. And if one vestige of doubt
remains that God really wants to heal you, that doubt will grow like a patch of
weeds in your yard and take over the whole lawn.
Serious
illness is probably the biggest problem that most people will face in life, and
one that will touch probably every family at some point. And how we see God respond in our suffering
will tell us how we can expect Him to respond in our other needs. If His compassion and power will not help in
our pain, then when will He help?
Sickness can be an incredible drain on one’s finances, even with
insurance. It certainly affects our
quality of life. Some people have been
able to use time alone in their beds to great benefit in spending quality time
with God. I suspect that, far more often
than not, that time is spent in noisy entertainment in an attempt to get one’s
mind off one’s pain and problems.
But still the question
remains: if healing is not a need, then what is? Paul was trying to give some reassurance to
the Philippians when he wrote this. They
had contributed to Paul in his
needs. So they provided money and
perhaps supplies of some sorts, food, and clothing.
I know at this point
people will quibble about how much food and clothing and money are actually
needs and not just wants. I think when
they do that, they are trying to find some explanation for what they see and
what they read. But that could be a
whole ‘nother book.
So what is a need? Just enough food to keep us from
starving? But what about terminal
cancer? If God will let us die from
cancer, because it is not really a need, then He can let us die from starvation
as well, or hypothermia from lack of clothing or proper housing, for the same
reason.
If we say that God will
give us our healing when we die and receive our glorified bodies, then that
could go for everything else that we think we need. So we still have to ask: just what will He do
for us now? I think we need to know.
5) Healing is important, because of
the example it gives to our children.
When I was told I had cancer, one of the things that I thought about
when I decided not to have the chemotherapy was: what would I tell my kids? All their young lives I told them about God
and prayer. If you have a problem, you
pray and expect God to help you. I
know. Someone will say that this is
God’s way of helping me. Like the story
of the man in the flood who refused the offers of help from various rescue
teams because he was trusting in the Lord.
When he finally drowned in the flood, he went to heaven and asked God
why He let him down, and God replied: “I sent you two boats and a helicopter.”
For me, once I started the
treatment, I, or my kids, wouldn’t know what God did or the doctors. Any heathen can get chemotherapy. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it
doesn’t. We can say what we like about
God working through doctors, and we will talk about this more later, but the
fact remains that it is hard to separate God’s work from the doctors’. If we still need God’s intervention anyway,
then why do we have to spend thousands of dollars first before He does His
part. It’s like the woman of Mark 5, who
spent everything she had on physicians over a period of 12 years before she
came to Jesus and was healed. Was it
necessary for her to become poor before God would heal her? Was it because she was relying on the
physicians and not God that she wasn’t helped by them? If they are God’s appointed instruments, is
it necessary to make that distinction?
Certainly
many doctors are not people of faith and wouldn’t think of themselves in that
way. Science and medicine have long
opposed faith and God, because both science and medicine are based on
naturalism. Things happen a certain way
because of natural laws, and God is essentially irrelevant for the
outcome. They are now seeing a value of
prayer in the healing process, but why should God depend on or expect that
medicine and science should be our first method of choice?
To say that we must exhaust first
all our human resources and efforts before God does His part can only lead to
despair, because we will never feel like we have done everything we could. Must we spend all that we have and be broke
before God intervenes? We have seen
many cases where doctors have not been able to help. So that is not the final answer.
As a parent, I am responsible to
teach my children about God. Not just
facts, but truth borne out through experience.
They need to know what is true, not just what I believe.
If we as young children see our
mother or father die a slow painful death, all the while asking God for healing
and help, but nothing happens, what will they conclude about God? Jesus had harsh words for anyone who would
put a stumbling block in front of children.[9] They were precious and special in His
sight.
We know people do die from serious
illnesses and at young ages leaving younger children. It is our contention that this is not God’s
plan, and there is much that we can do to prevent this from happening. And the first step is becoming convinced that
this is true.
Raising children is important and
serious business. If it is so important
that we teach our children to be kind and loving and honest, is it not just as
or more important that we teach them that God is kind and loving and
trustworthy, that God is indeed our Helper in time of need.[10] If they see God either unable or unwilling to
help us in our time of need, how can we ever expect them to see God as this
loving, heavenly Father? They will soon
learn to compartmentalize their lives: their private religious, spiritual lives
where they believe all kinds of things, and then their real lives, which is
built on entirely different rules. And
what happens in the one life has no or little relevance in the other. You may talk about God’s help and prayer, but
in real life you are pretty much on your own, relying on your own knowledge,
foresight, planning, and the best wisdom of the world to plan and prepare for
your life and future. God is little more
help than what you can get from the best doctors, lawyers, or financial
planners.
6) Healing
is important, because it validates our witness to the world. We have a responsibility to tell the world
the Good News about Jesus Christ, that Jesus died on the cross to pay for our
sins and that He rose from the dead to give us new life. And the world will look at us and ask us why
they should believe us.
We can then recount for them all the
reasons why we believe the Bible is true and all the proofs for Jesus having
risen from the dead. Then, of course, we
will need to explain to them why only Christianity is true, and what about the
people who have never heard the Gospel, and why there is evil in the
world. Some will tell us all we need to
be able to do to share the Gospel effectively with others is to be able to
share our own story of salvation. You
can’t dispute a personal story. Except
that it’s just that. A personal story.
One of the marks of our age is that
everything can be true at once. It is
possible to believe many contradictory statements, because they all are
different parts of the ultimate reality, and so your story can be true, but that doesn’t mean that it
will be true for them.
One of the characteristics of the
early church was that people saw the reality of God manifested in their
everyday lives. And the biggest way they
saw it was in God’s power to heal. They
weren’t going around trying to impress people by doing healings just to make
the point, but healing was a basic part of their Christianity and it had that
effect. And they could heal people as a
part of their witness, and the results were powerful.
We today
are too quick to say that God only wanted to do that back then to give the
early Church a big boost, like He gave it a big push and the Church has been
sailing along on that momentum ever since.
The problem is that momentum diminishes over time, and the object pushed
gradually slows down. And this is how I
would describe the Church in the West today.
Many of us in
approaching a non-believer have no idea of what to say. We know the facts of the Gospel, but we have
nothing to say as to why we should expect this other person to believe what we
are saying. It seems like just our
opinion. We have our authorities whom we
go to for our support, and they have their philosophers and teachers who speak
authoritatively for them.
But it’s when we see the
power of God in our lives that we can say: I know what I am talking about. When I pray, I see God answer. God is real and alive. I know, because I have seen Him work in my
life. Once I was blind, and now I can
see. We use that phrase metaphorically,
but the man who first said it meant it literally.[11] It is when we see God do miracles in our lives
and particularly when He answers us in our needs and prayers, that we will find
ourselves having a boldness in our witness to the world. And that is precisely what we and the world
need.
7) Healing is important, because it provides
a paradigm through which we will see God work in every other area of life. Healing is important, because this is not
just about healing. It is about your
whole life and your entire relationship with God. The principles about healing, how it works,
discerning the will of God and seeing His will come about in the world, apply
to every other area of your life. When I
first started dealing with cancer, and before I knew I had the cancer when God
told me to rejoice always, I felt that this was the hardest thing I had ever
gone through in my life. Years later, I
faced problems which made all that seem easy.
It was like David who had killed a bear and a lion before he had to face
Goliath. He saw that the principles were
the same, and so he could face the greater challenge when it came.
Nothing is
more immediate than our physical bodies.
Our spiritual lives can be forgotten about or otherwise pushed out of
our consciousness by all the sights and sounds and demands of everyday life. But how we feel in our bodies, the aches and
pains, the moods, every way in which we feel discomfort in our bodies, these
scream out to us to get our attention.
It seems ironic or even unfortunate that we seem to have put such an
emphasis on the physical parts of our lives.
But “we have this treasure in earthen vessels,” and we learn about the
spiritual so often through the physical.
So what is this paradigm?
It begins
with the awareness that something is wrong, or otherwise undesirable. It could be a pain in the body or some
unusual sensations. It could be the loss
of your job, the breakdown of your marriage, or the welfare of your
children. The first step is always
determining what the will of God is.
Yes, we know that life has suffering and that that is unavoidable. But does that mean that there is nothing that
God intends to do about it and we just have to let the situation run its
course? Or is God our Helper in the time
of trouble? And if He is our Helper, just
exactly what does this help entail? Is
it a listening ear, a peace in spite of our difficulties, or should we expect
Him to actually deliver us out of these troubles?
I believe
that far more than Christians today are believing, God wants to deliver us out
of our troubles. No, that does not mean
that we won’t have troubles again, but it means that the trials of our lives
are not meant to be simply endured, as in living with them, but the trials of
our lives are enemies to be defeated, not accepted. We say (far too often) that God allowed or
brought this suffering into our lives for a reason. So we accept the problem as something to live
with, because God allowed it.
But when
you think about it, everything that has ever happened in the world, all the
sickness, disease, killing, rapes, starvation, and natural disasters, God must
have allowed, because they have occurred.
But are we saying that whatever happens is God’s will? Then why pray? Some are saying today that prayer is to
change us, not the circumstances. But is
that Biblical? We will look at that more
in depth later in the book.
So after we
see the need or the problem, we look to discern God’s will. Our source is the Bible, where we can see
what God has done in the past or where we can read specific statements of what
God has promised to His people. After we
learn what God’s will is, we look again at our situation as to how they
correspond. We may often find that they
don’t. Then we pray that the
circumstances change. Then, probably
more often than not, nothing happens right away. So we have to decide what to do next.
Very often
we may think that we got it wrong, that God really does not want to change
these things, that for some reason we are to be an exception. Or we endure and persist and wrestle with
God, or we try to figure out what is happening, why things are taking so
long. But do we persist in our belief
that God must honor and keep His Word, or do we doubt what the Word says or
doubt our understanding of the Word?
Jesus talked about moving mountains through faith.[12] But just how fast can or will a mountain
move? He says we are to believe that it
is coming to pass, that means we are not then seeing it come to pass but
believing that it is happening.
We will
talk about this more later, but often we find that the circumstances we are in
don’t match what we think the Bible says that God wants for us. And we have to decide then what we should do
or think. Does God want to change them,
and will He do so? It is my belief that
too often we give up too soon and conclude that God for some reason does not
want to change our circumstances, though we would think from the Bible that He
would. So we find the Bible becoming
increasingly more irrelevant to our everyday lives as we see more and more
often that it doesn’t really apply to our lives. We treasure it for its great stories, but we
find more and more that it doesn’t give us a clue as to what to expect from God
for our own lives.
8) There is another reason why healing is
important, and this may be the most important.
Imagine that you are up in years.
You reflect on your life, and you think that life has been good. You have had your share of sickness and
troubles, but your kids turned out okay, your house is paid for, you live in a
good neighborhood, and you know things could be a lot worse. So you count your blessings, and you are
content.
Are you
happy? Well, you have learned to live
with a myriad of disappointments. Life
did not turn out anywhere like what you hoped, but you can’t really complain. Isn’t it like that for everyone. You take the bad with the good, and you go
on. You don’t want to be
ungrateful. After all, life is a gift
from God; and, as we said, things could be a lot worse.
Then one
day, your last remaining parent dies.
And you have the task of going through all their belongings and affairs
to settle things and dispose of their property.
While going through their things, you discover a packet of letters and
legal documents. You find out first of
all that you were adopted. You try to
locate the adoption agency, but you learn that the adoption agency was closed
down years ago, because it was learned that they often would steal babies for a
fee and put them up for adoption. You
learn that most of their babies came from a certain country, so you hire a
detective to go there and research children who were missing at the approximate
time you were adopted. He compiles a
list, and you go there to meet the families to find your real lineage. And what do you find?
You find
that the king of Bolgovia had a younger brother who presumably drowned as a
baby with his parents. Only the body of
the baby was never recovered. You see a
picture of the father, and you see yourself.
You visit the palace, and the staff is confused, because you look just
like the king. Who are you? You tell them your story, and they arrange a
meeting with the king. And indeed, you
are his younger brother, a prince, heir to his throne.
The kings
says to you: “Welcome home, my brother.
All that is mine is yours. Come
and live with me. Share my throne. You shall rule with me and live in my
palace.”
Now I know
that we are to be content with what we have.
No, that does not mean that we don’t try to improve things for
ourselves, but it does mean that we shouldn’t become complainers or live our
lives for those things that don’t really matter. But I have seen and learned that few things
can come between a family or cause distress in a person like being cheated out
of one’s inheritance. Yes, we learn to
be content; but when we know we were this close to inheriting a bundle, and
someone deprives us of it by whatever means, look out. I have seen people who were angry for years,
because aunt Nellie or someone took an heirloom or some money that rightfully
belonged to them.
But we are
saying here that not knowing about healing is like being heir to a fortune and
living in moderate means because you never knew who you really are. Many Christians are content with what they
have. They think that if they expect
healing, they are being ungrateful and selfish.
I am saying in this book that healing is something that belongs to
us. It is part of our inheritance as a
Christian. Salvation is not just
something that happens to us when we die.
If we are children of God by faith in Christ,[13]
then we are children of God now and not just when we die. Do not the children eat at the table of their
father? Does not the father provide for
his family, and does he not give them the best that he has?.
So, yes, healing is
important. Healing is very
important. And not just because we don’t
like being sick or in pain. Because of
its immediacy and frequency, it is one of the best teachers we have in learning
how to see God work in the rest of our lives. God is certainly concerned
about a lot more than your physical wellness, but physical healing establishes
a certain base line of your relationship with God. If God does not want to heal
you when you are sick, why would He help you find a job when you are out of
work? Or find you a spouse? Or protect you and your children from harm? What will
He do for you? When you see the
availability of God’s power for healing, you can and will more readily believe
God for more of the other and harder trials that you will face in your life.
[1] Psalm
34:9, Proverbs 1:7, 9:10
[2] Psalm
50:15
[3] Hebrew
4:15f For
we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but
one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 4.16 Let
us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive
mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
ou) ga\r eÃxomen a)rxiere/a mh\ duna/menon
sumpaqh=sai taiÍj a)sqenei¿aij h(mw½n, pepeirasme/non de\ kata\ pa/nta kaq'
o(moio/thta xwriìj a(marti¿aj. proserxw¯meqa ouÅn meta\ parrhsi¿aj t%½ qro/n%
th=j xa/ritoj, iàna la/bwmen eÃleoj kaiì xa/rin euÀrwmen ei¹j euÃkairon
boh/qeian. Confidence: parrhsi¿a, aj, h(
(par-ray-see’-a) as an attitude of openness that stems from freedom and
lack of fear; in speech boldness,
plainness, outspokenness; courage,
confidence, boldness
[4] Psalm
103:13
[5] James
2:14-17
[6] The
Greek word du/namij (doo´-nah-mis), plural duna/meij
(doo-vah´-mays), means ‘power’ or ‘act of power.’
[7] Psalm
115:1-8, Isaiah 44:9-20, 46:5-7
[8] Psalm
34:19
[9] Matthew
18:1-10
[10] Psalm
46:1,2
[11] John
9:25 He
answered, "If He is a sinner, I do not know; one thing I know, that though
I was blind, now I see." a)pekri¿qh ouÅn
e)keiÍnoj, Ei¹ a(martwlo/j e)stin ou)k oiåda: eÁn oiåda oÀti tuflo\j wÔn aÃrti
ble/pw.
[12] Mark
11:23 Truly,
I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, Be taken up and cast into the
sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is
coming to pass, it will be done for
him. a)mh\n le/gw
u(miÍn oÀti oÁj aÄn eiãpv t%½ oÃrei tou/t%, ãArqhti kaiì blh/qhti ei¹j th\n qa/lassan,
kaiì mh\ diakriqv= e)n tv= kardi¿# au)tou= a)lla\ pisteu/v oÀti oÁ laleiÍ
gi¿netai, eÃstai au)t%½.
[13] John
1:12,13 But whoever received Him (Jesus), He gave to
them authority to become children of God, to those who believe in His name, who
were born, not of bloods nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man,
but of God.
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