Healing is one of the most important things you can learn about in life. Why? At some point in your life, you or someone very close to you is going to need it. You or someone very close to you will be sick, and the options given you by the medical community will not be good ones. They may have nothing for you but means to prolong your life without giving you quality of life. You may have to take medications that have side effects as bad as the original condition.

I have learned that you don’t want to wait until you are diagnosed with something serious before you learn about this. That would be like going off to war without ever having gone to boot camp.

Healing for some people is like winning the lottery, but for most people it is like fighting off somebody who is trying to break into your house.

But beyond all this, healing will teach you more about God than you will probably ever learn otherwise. When you pray for other people and other things, you are not the only person who is involved in the outcome. So the first mountains you want to move are the ones in your own life and body. As you see these move, you will gain confidence to move others.

Healing might be the first place in which you will see miracles from God. God will seem more real to you, and you will become more aware of His love when you see Him work on your behalf.

In 1996, I was diagnosed with stage 3, mixed cell, non-Hodgkins lymphoma. I refused all medical treatment and have not received any medical treatment since then for that. It was quite an experience, and I have written a book, called The Importance of Healing, that tells about it as well as just about everything else I have learned about healing from the Bible and life.

I am not trying to sell you a book here. I am trying to save your life. Or least give you an understanding of God and the Bible which is usually sadly missing today. I have started posting chapters from the book and will continue to do so.

You can get the book at amazon.com or other book sites on the internet.

I also have two other websites where I have posted my writings: poligion1.blogspot.com has my articles on politics, culture, and public life and LarrysBibleStudies.blogspot.com has my other articles on the Bible. And I have started to make videos on youtube.

If you want to contact me, email is best: lacraig1@sbcglobal.net

Thank you.

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Paul’s Thorn in the Flesh (2)



Paul’s Thorn in the Flesh (2)  II Corinthians 12:8
The Three Kinds of Prayer
II Corinthians 12:8 Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, 12:9 but he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness."  So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. 

Matthew  26:44 So leaving them again, Jesus went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words. 

            Many people who pray for healing are discouraged by these two accounts of prayers by Jesus and Paul, and they shouldn’t. 
            Without trying to give an exhaustive study of prayer here, basically there are three kinds of prayer.
            The first is perhaps the most common.  We can’t see the future.  We don’t know all the circumstances.  So we ask God to lead us to the right places.  We don’t know whether we should go to Harvard or Yale, Bethel or Biola, Trinity or Moody.  We may not even be sure if we should marry Linda or Susan.  We may meet Rachel next week, if we only waited.
            We know enough that we want God’s will, so we pray: let Your will be done.
            The prayers of Jesus and Paul here are similar but distinct.  In both cases, they knew what God’s will was.  Jesus knew He was to go to the cross and die.  Paul knew that he was given a thorn in the flesh to keep him from becoming exalted in his own mind. 
            They both prayed three times that this thing might be removed, but they knew nothing was going to change.  It doesn’t say that anyone said this to Jesus when He prayed the last time, but Somebody did speak to Paul. 
            The third kind of prayer is the kind where we know what God’s will is, and we pray for that.  What is remarkable about that prayer is that often the answer is slow in coming.  But it’s His will? 
            Get used to it.  For whatever reason, things usually change a lot slower than we would like.  If we didn’t know ahead of time what God’s will was, we can be tempted to accept something else as His will.  And we wouldn’t want that, and maybe particularly in the matter of healing.

            The book shows 36 reasons why we can believe that healing is for us.  You may need to know them when the healing doesn’t come as fast as you would like.
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