I’ve been a Christian for 40 years or so. I’ve been in lots of churches, various denominations, and listened to some great messages. I’ve also listened to a lot of religion and down right error. No subject has been preached on more than healing, no doubt. Why? Because we have lots of folks that are sick and infirmed. The other is that there is more emphasis put on physical needs than spiritual needs.
I was in a church for a time that regularly took prayer requests at the pulpit during service. 95% of what was asked for was physical healing in one form or another. Yes, we need physical healing. Yes God cares about our physical difficulties. But where is the balance. Friend, you can go straight to hell in a perfect body. You can also go straight to heaven with a sick one. Actually, you’ll leave both behind you. But a healthy body is not necessarily the key to spiritual victory and eternal good health.
No, I’m not saying that we ought to be content with our sicknesses. Yes we should pray and ask God for healing. But if that is the focus of your existence and measure of His love, I really don’t’ think your prayers will avail much.
Not even Jesus had “carte blanche” healing gifting. Some people He prayed for were not healed. It wasn’t that they lacked faith in healing. They lacked faith in Who He is. Take for instance, the man who was healed by Peter and John at the opening of the new church in the book of ACTS. This man had been there for years. He was near the temple gate. Surely Jesus must have past by him many, many times. Why didn’t’ Jesus heal him long before the day that Peter came by? Was it the Lord’s lack of compassion? Or did God have greater glory and honor to share with His children by allowing them to be part of His plan of love toward all men?
Surely it is God’s will for us to walk in good health. So what’s the problem, you ask? Well, there is no pat answer. Christianity is not a catalog of prescribed answers. It is a daily walk with God through the Son by the Holy Spirit. There is a trust that must be aligned between man and God. This trust goes beyond religious certainty. It goes beyond human wisdom and understanding. How?
Jesus said that He did not do anything unless He saw or heard His Father doing it. When the Father told Him to raise up that mother’s only son, it then became a certainty that the child would be raised. He did not have to pray the prayer of faith. He simply told the child to rise up, and the child did rise up. Jesus had all the power of heaven backing Him up. If we are His disciples, should we not do as He did? Should we not steal away to the secret place and be alone with God so that He can direct our steps rather than us going out on limbs of faith that have no objective fruit?
I’ve noticed, in my life, that 10 out of 10 people die. If a heart attack don’t’ kill you, something serious will. All will die in the flesh. No amount of faith will keep our bodies indefinitely out of the grave. I do believe we can all agree on that. This being so, then we must yield to the fact that some physical problem or problems will overtake everyone sooner or later and we will die, regardless of who is praying for us and for how long. No amount of fasting will keep us out of the grave. Does this mean we should not pray to God for healing? No. But don’t let the lack of healing after prayer crush your faith. Our blessed hope is not in our healing, but in the shed blood of Jesus Christ. Don’t let some preacher steal your salvation because he claimed you lacked faith and were not healed. Yes, again, God has our welfare at the center piece of His love. So why aren’t more people healed? I believe the biggest problem is sin. What sin? The riches and cares of this world have choked off the word and have kept it from bearing fruit. Too much compromise, and too much permissiveness in our personal lives and in our ministry. Why? Because the truth of the Bible in regards to how we should live our lives is no more popular today than it was in the day of the rich young ruler. Preach the truth regularly today, and you will have a very small amount of people to preach too.
Smith Wigglesworth saw many people healed in his ministry. But not all. Surely he was more successful than most any other modern era minister. His key to success? Seperation of world and faith. Smith couldn’t read or write. His wife taught him these skills. Then she gave him a bible. He soon decided that it was the only thing he needed to read. And He would not read anything else. He lived before the age of TV. I’m dead certain that if he would not allow a newspaper in his home, surely TV would not have made it in either. He lead a peculiar life, saints, free from attachment to worldly passions. He stayed attached to God. And God told him what to do and when to do it. He was a disciple of Jesus Christ. He did things the way Jesus did them. He talked them over with the Father, and then obeyed the Father’s leading and guiding. Alleluia.
I believe that physical healing is part of the redemption victory. Again, God is more interested in our spiritual health than He is in our physical health. Sometimes sickness or disease keeps us ever before God and dependent on Him, whereas if we were healed physically, our health might afford us the opportunity to get caught up in idolatry, that is, dependent on our personal effort and ability rather than on God. Liberty is not always good to some.
There are some animals that do not need to be fenced to keep them at home with their master. On the other hand, others have to be corralled continually, or off they go into the wide open spaces. Sickness and infirmity are often a means of getting ones’ heart turned toward God and keeping it there. Had they continued on in health, they would not have seen the need for God and they may likely have lost their soul. That is not God’s will. God’s will is that all men be saved, and He will allow most anything to enter our path, if our path is not the narrow way.
A.W. Tozer penned one of my favorite quotes. He wrote, “God crucifies without pity, those whom He wishes to raise without measure”. See God wants us molded into the image and likeness of Jesus Christ. For that to happen, we must die, by faith and affirmation. We must present ourselves as living sacrifices. Flesh does not welcome death. Flesh does not welcome the cross. But if we are to live in Christ, we must die with Him. If we are to enjoy the fellowship of His victory, we must suffer death of our selves. If we labor to keep our life, we shall surely lose it.
The proverbs writer wrote, “trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding”. Take everything to God in prayer, but leave how He answers that prayer to Him. I don’t have to understand how God does things to be blessed by Him. I just have to believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
Now, about “faith healers”? In my humble opinion, 99.9% of them are a sham, a phony, and a disgrace to God. I’ve seen too many up close and personal. The same people that are in their healing line today are in it for the same thing the next time they come to town. I’ve only seen one person get up out of a wheel chair in my life. I’ve seen hundreds leave a service in their wheel chairs, discouraged and disillusioned. Very sad.
I believe that what God wants is for His Body to come back to Him. Come back to Him in faith. Come back to Him in worship. Come back to Him in personal relationship. Come back to Him in separation from the world and all it’idolatrous passions and lusts. We need to become a holy nation once again. Then we will see more people healed. But we will see countless more saved, and filled with His Spirit. Thanks be to God. I believe that is God’s heart and design for our lives. We must repent, and turn from our wicked ways, humble ourselves in prayer. We will find God there, rest from our labors of self righteousness, and healing for our souls, and our bodies too.
Now, in closing, I don’t want to imply that I am judging anyone’s personal situation, their faith, or their battles with sickness. Each one’s walk with God is personal and unique. Take your troubles to God. Make spiritual health your number one goal, and all other things shall be added unto you. God promised. He always keeps His Word.
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All of the Law and the prophets are completed in:
"You shall love the Lord with all of your heart, all of your mind, all of your soul and all of your stregth, and your neighbour as yourself."
The New Covenant reads:
"For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.”Heb 8,10-12
Notice how in the New Covenant, God puts His laws into our mind and writen them into our hearts and how it leaves out the soul and the body.
This has to do with the journey from children of God to disciple of Jesus-Christ. The full grown disciple is one who has been taught to deny her/himself, self being the soul, to daily pick up the cross, which is the liberation from the power of sin and of death and to follow Jesus as He feeds and leads His servants by His Spirit into the service of worship and into the Ministry of reconciliation.
Paul makes it clear that the Spirit gives life to our mortal bodies: "And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. Rm 8,10-11
Once sealed by the Covenant of God by God, eternal life grows and moves from the Spirit to the body and from the renewed heart to the soul's salvation. Therein and therewith lies all of what governs our time on earth, once we are children of God. Be it in our body or our soul, when we suffer, it is for the sake of God's authority to manifest His glory through our searching, feeding, growing, deepening and learning to worship in spirit and truth.
Regarding the energy production of such spiritual life, I had offered the following at a Christian Classic site: http://www.ccel.org/node/788/6623
In the four gospels, we see in several intances that Jesus would release His disciples for their night of sleep, while He would go away to pray for the night.
During His darkest hour in the garden, the disciples could not stay awake to pray with Him, no matter how crucial was the moment. This is explained as being caused by the weakness of the flesh, before the time when the power of God, the Holy Spirit, was poured upon all flesh, from pentecost on.
I have been and go on pursuing for several years now, the aim of becoming such a disciple of the Lord Jesus-Christ, who knows how to fulfill such experience of service, in the discipline of ceaseless prayer. Such spiritual State is what I ubderstand maturity of the one Faith to be deployed in one's life and upon the Church's victorious ground.
Ceaseless prayer secures among other things, what Jesus describes as being:
"“Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Jn 3,5-8
Paul is also quite clear from his own walk with the Lord, in echoeing that the Holy Spirit is the driving force of such discipline, keeping us going even when we have no clue as to how to proceed:
"Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified." Rm 8, 26-30
The key to such discipline seems to be:
"...the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God."
Those "groanings which cannot be uttered" is the music that I ceaselessly fail to rejoice the Lord with. I go on uttering my pain, when in fact, all that is needed is my silent breathing of the Spirit into my attention and action.
-Please Lord, have mercy upon me and us all sinners and set me free to serve You and the Church in the complete measure that You've given me-
As I wrote earlier, I am seeking how to grow into praying ceaselessly, as the main exercise into the completion of the measure I am given of Christ. No more, no less and I am quite far from such completion, as I find myself thorned between the possibility of such maturity and the impossibility of my existantial-animal nature to comply with such spiritual basic need.
Can we share the experience of the Holy Sprit's power, love and wisdom in the midst of His family? The Holy Spirit, the disciple and the Church become overcomers in answering God's calling by meeting Presence-to-presence with God, in the simplicity of our personal and communal devotion to our Savior, Lord and Brother Christ-Jesus.
In conclusion, the ceaseless prayer goes on in our spirit by the Holy Spirit, with or without our participation. I am of the opinion that "the inner zone" of genuine ceaseless prayer is the only where and the only way for the children of God to remain aware of our participation into heaven's offer to heal humanity.
Please, let us pray until the connectivity of the All-Mighty emerges in all of His glorious simplicity of our being into His Being and of His Being into ours, personally and communally...
-------------------- ...all blessings be with us all... Benoit Couture
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Dear saint, What an awesome piece you've shared with us. It is a deep truth that so many miss, never coming to the knowlege of truth. Amen and amen. Jesus said He did not do or say ANYTHING unless He first heard it from the Father. Oh if we could just catch that. Where did He hear from the Father? As you so eloquently put it, in His time of stealing away to be alone with God and pray. If I had only "one key" to the kingdom of Heaven, I would want the key of "prayer". (after the key of faith of course) To pray means to "meet" with God. There are many things that keep our prayers from being answered. Often times it is our own carnal behavior, allowing distractions to enter our spirit by the ungodly things we allow ourselves to see and hear. That is why just last February, I placed a hedge around my being. I carefully guard what I listen too, and what I allow my eyes to see. I keep ungodly distractions to an absolute and unavoidable minimum. I watch no TV, I listen to nothing in music or in word apart from those things that do edify. I can tell you that it has taken a while. But I stay more in communion with God now, than I ever have in my life. It's like there is this witness right in my very heart that is there all the time and never goes away. It is ever longing, ever groaning, just like you testified. If God never showed me another thing, He has already exceeded my wildest dreams. He has already done more than I ever thought I'd witness. It is my joy to obey Him, my joy to take up the power of the cross day by day, to be an overcomer. I overcome my own sinful sinfilled flesh, because I crucified it by faith with Christ and set my heart to obey God, no matter what the cost. I'm not perfect. But I'm more sanctified in my life and living than I've ever been before. Thank you again for sharing your heart with all. May our loving Father so richly bless your heart and life today, as you go on with Him. I'm excited for you, because I know His best is yet to come, but it is also just ahead.
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