I love serving on the Alpha team at church. I love sharing people's journeys as they are looking for meaning in their lives, filtering out the noise (as one girl so aptly expressed) and exploring the Christian faith. There is so much noise / 'false news', chaos and confusion around these days. There is even a television show I was watching last night, 'Would I lie to you?' where comedians try to spin a story and the opposite team needs to try to work out whether or not it is true. Sometimes it's hard to know what to think or follow.
We had the healing session a few weeks ago and I was very privileged to share my heart for healing ministry with a relatively simple message that Jesus healed people when he lived and ministered to people, he paid the price for our healing on the cross and it is still available today. Even in the face of doubt, a small seed of faith + courage to pray + partnering with God = the possibility of someone being healed and if not, we get to encourage, bless people and stand with them in love. You can't really go wrong. My encouragement to the people in the room was to give it a go.
Needless to say, we prayed for people that evening and the first person that came forward eagerly in our little group was a lady who was a brand new Christian. She who was deaf in one ear and had a chronic infection in the other. I think she had a personal experience of the Holy Spirit a few weeks earlier and she hadn't been around the church for long enough to have too much doubt in her mind. There really was a child-like faith and eagerness in her.
Not much happened that evening apart from this lady feeling some mild warmth or something in the palm of her hand. I spent all of the following day coming up with all the reasons why God didn't heal anyone that evening. People weren't praying enough, there wasn't enough worship, there were a few spectators around - who really were doubting and not participating, and the church we were in generally didn't see a lot of that stuff happen. We live in a society that values science and miracles are generally not acknowledged.
I am all for the scientific method and evidence based practice as a trained and practicing Physiotherapist. I am proud of my art (yes, art and science are not mutually exclusive) and I also believe a little in the science of healing. I have seen too much of it now to really doubt it and I guess these days I look for formulations and conditions in order to see it happen more frequently... Hence all the reasons and frustration and doubt going through my mind that day. It was my scientific mind at work. The trouble with this idea is that it is not me who heals, only Jesus. Jesus who had no set rules about how he went about healing people and Jesus, who tends to break out of all the boxes we try to put him in.
I think the idea of setting up 'conditions' for healing, if you like, is helpful. We do need to ask for healing. I think it helps also if the people present are participating or at least agreeing in the prayer. But then again, only Jesus. I once was praying for someone in El Salvador for healing with a girl who decided to pray in Russian. Our interpreter looked frazzled and I kind of took half a step back and checked out a little as none of us could understand a word of what she was saying. The person receiving prayer spoke Spanish. That person was healed. Someone did do the asking that day but in a way none of us would have expected....
Matthew 7:7-8
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened."
I also think a little faith goes a long way but it doesn't seem to always need to be the person on the receiving end. One time in healing rooms we prayed for a lady who had pelvic pain. The pain went altogether (it always surprises me when it does) and she was walking around the room, testing it out, with the biggest grin on her face. She was not Christian but Buddhist and had been brought to the healing rooms by a friend. I had no idea that she wasn't Christian. That day she decided to follow Jesus and she shared her story with someone as she left the room.
Matthew 17:20
He (Jesus) replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
I think healing is something that we need to 'go after' and seek out. To ask and keep asking, seek and keep seeking. Another, absolutely incredible healing I witnessed was with a lady with Fibromyalgia - who lived with severe pain every day of her life. We prayed a couple of times and she felt that maybe the pain had gone down a tiny bit - Say from a 8/10 to a 6/10. We thanked God and prayed again and again and again and again and again. Until we had been thrown out of the auditorium we were in so the cleaners could turn up and we were praying with this lady in hotel foyer / passageway. Her pain disappeared completely after maybe 15 or 20 minutes, she was pain free still 24 hours later - and her face had changed.... It almost makes me cry to recount the story. The first thing that happened in this slightly convoluted story was that her daughter came and asked for prayer the previous evening - 'for whatever'.... I eventually prayed with her for better sleep and that night she slept really well - sparking a seed of faith for her mother. It could have been very easy to miss what God was doing in that instance.
Matthew 13:44
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field."
Lastly I think there is a cost to healing ministry. Jesus paid that price in full 2000 years ago. But I think there is a sacrifice that we need to offer to some degree to see it come to fruition today. The things of God cost nothing and everything, paradoxically - all at the same time. If we are to offer a sacrifice on the alter - and if we are looking for the fire of God to consume it, there probably needs to be a cost involved and things can't stay entirely the same.
Matthew 13:45-46
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it."
2 Samuel 24:21-25
Araunah said, “Why has my lord the king come to his servant?”
“To buy your threshing floor,” David answered, “so I can build an altar to the Lord, that the plague on the people may be stopped.”
Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take whatever he wishes and offer it up. Here are oxen for the burnt offering, and here are threshing sledges and ox yokes for the wood. Your Majesty, Araunah gives all this to the king.” Araunah also said to him, “May the Lord your God accept you.”
But the king replied to Araunah, “No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.”
So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen and paid fifty shekels of silver for them. David built an altar to the Lord there and sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. Then the Lord answered his prayer in behalf of the land, and the plague on Israel was stopped.
Again, paradoxically, I say that the price for out healing was fully and totally paid for on the cross that Jesus died on. By His stripes we are healed (Isaiah 53:5). But if we want to seek out a healing ministry I kind of believe there is a personal cost involved...
Romans 12:1-2
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
And so my doubts on that day a few weeks ago were justified in some ways - maybe we hadn't prepared the way for the presence of God?? Maybe we didn't need to? Our God is a gracious and loving God. And his mercies are new every day. I am pleased to say that the new Christian lady at our Alpha course received something that day when we prayed for her, even if it was just a small feeling of warmth in the palm of her hand. Maybe we could have prayed differently in that moment but God is so much bigger than our doubts and my strivings. I am pleased to say that she woke up the very next morning with restored hearing (I heard about it the following day). The birds were singing quite loudly to her that morning in a way she hadn't heard for quite some time. And there was no longer any discharge (yellow or red) coming out of the other ear when she went to clean it. What the doctors couldn't heal with antibiotics and ear drops, our Lord Jesus Christ died for on the cross 2000 years ago. There was nothing really that we did, and nothing that we didn't do. Only Jesus.
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