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

What I Have I Give to You


What I Have I Give to You

 Acts 3:1   Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour.  3:2 And a certain man lame from his mother’s womb was being carried, whom they laid daily at that gate of the temple which is called Beautiful to ask alms of those who entered the temple.  3:3 Seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked for alms.  3:4 And Peter directed his gaze at him, with John, and said, "Look at us."  3:5 And he fixed his attention upon them, expecting to receive something from them.  3:6 But Peter said, "Silver and gold I don’t have, but what I do have this I give to you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise and walk." 
            So just what was it that Peter had?  The gift of healing?  No.  Because he said later in chapter 4 that it wasn’t anything in him that healed the man.  It was faith in the name of Jesus that healed the man.  So what Peter had was knowing that the name of Jesus has power to work miracles and then having faith in that.
            I know all this raises a lot of questions.  Which is one reason I wrote a book on healing.  I’m not going to be able to answer all these questions in these short essays.     
            In Matthew 14, Peter walked on water.  Now we know that this was nothing in Peter which allowed him to do this.  It was his faith in Jesus and his focusing on Jesus that kept him from sinking.  Now in Acts 3, Jesus was no longer physically present, but Peter knew that faith in Jesus’ name had the same powerful effect. 

            This man had been lame all this life, but there was never a question that maybe God wanted him to remain that way.  What Peter did was something he had seen Jesus do many times.  What’s hard for us is that we have never seen it done before, so deep down we wonder if God would still do that today.  It may be harder to believe, because we have never seen it before, but the danger is that we construct a theology that says God no longer wants to do this that way.
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