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 (3)



Paul’s Thorn in the Flesh (3)    II Corinthians 12:7
A Messenger of Satan

   II Corinthians 12:7 Therefore, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, that he might buffet me,  to keep me from exalting myself. 

            Those who don’t believe that it is God’s will to heal people (on a regular basis) have to provide reasons why God may want the person to stay sick.  Paul is usually held up as an example of God refusing to heal a person for a greater good.

            We haven’t talked yet about what Paul’s thorn in the flesh actually was, but we should look first at what Paul called it: a messenger of Satan.  The word messenger in Greek is the same word that we translate angel.  So whatever Paul’s thorn was, it was from the pit of hell.  If Paul is our poster boy of chronic illness being God’s will for us, we need to call it what it was: a messenger of Satan.

            This passage can almost give the impression that God and Satan are somehow working together.  The fact is that Satan does work in the world, and God has allowed it as a necessary evil
            We need to remember that whatever this thorn was, it was given to Paul because of the exceedingly great revelations that were given to him.  Read the previous verses in chapter 12, and you will see that Paul saw and heard things that perhaps no one else has ever seen or heard while still alive.  (I am not sure where to place Moses here.)

            Paul was uniquely blessed by God.  That word unique means that no other human being was given the privileges he was given.  Without an unusual amount of trouble in his life, Paul would have become insufferably proud.  And he knew it.  And he knew that this is why he was given this thorn.  Few people who are sick today can tell you the reason they think God has allowed them to remain sick except in some very general self-deprecating way. 


            If you are sick, the first step in getting well is to see that God wants you to be well.  That puts more responsibility on us, but at least then we can do something about it.
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