The Importance of Healing

Larry A Craig
POB 621
Wilmette, IL 60091
United States
lacraig1@sbcglobal.net

What's New

Friday, October 26, 2007

I haven’t written anything in here for a while. Hopefully those who have come to this site have pursued healing further and even purchased a book. I wasn’t sure if my writing further here would have helped more in that process. I have been trying to get more people to come to the site in the first place.

I want to do some more writing, and I was thinking of magazine articles. I also did some preaching lately, so I will add another page for sermons. What else? We’ll see.

The following is an article I wrote last night at 2AM. I woke up with this idea, and so I just got up and wrote the thing.

Book review How to Kill Giants,

by David bar Jesse

Bethlehem Press

So David, the son of Jesse, is now a writer. It wasn‘t more than a few years now that David was a shepherd boy on the hills of Judea. The story is almost legend now. His father sends him on an errand to bring some sack lunches for his brothers who are in the army, camped in the valley of Elah, ready to do battle with the Philistines.

The mothers of Israel were waiting with bated breath for any reports from the battlefield about the fates of their sons. But nothing was happening.

Like I said, we all know the story. David walks in, and in no time he is the hero, having killed the Philistine’s champion with a sling. Yes, David, we are all grateful.

But now he follows with a book. His arrogance was evident that first day he walked into the camp. Like a child watching his craftsman father making fine pottery. He clamors about: “I can do it. I can do it. This is easy. Let me try.”

Ah, yes, and he did do it. And, yes, David, we are all grateful. But to come along now with a book telling us that anyone can kill giants is a bit much. It’s like what veteran soldiers tell us about all the time. They get some raw recruit, and the first time they use a bow or throw a javelin, they hit the target. They aren’t good; they are just lucky. Some of them have the good sense to recognize it, but others start strutting around like they are God’s gift to the nation. The latest in a long line of soldier-heroes.

The secret to his success, and this is not a spoiler alert here, is his faith in God. Well, David, this is Israel. We all worship the true God. He acts like he’s the only one to believe in the One God. But, worse, he says that anyone can kill a giant. He doesn’t need to go to soldier school, just learn the lessons from one’s daily life, and you too can defeat the biggest enemies.

He soon generalizes and makes the smallest problems of your life into mini-Goliaths, which you can conquer by faith. Like God is concerned about whether you make the team at school. This is almost an insult to Him, bless His Name.

David’s answers are simplistic, even clichés. He takes his experiences and generalizes them, as if we are all to follow his example. All we have to do is live our lives like him, and we too can become heroes of Israel.

David, we hear you are doing well in the army now. Your luck is holding out, but leave the books to the scholars. Try this again in 40 years, and we will see what you have to say then. If you are still around.

0 stars

Ishaq ben Reuben

Professor of History School of Jerusalem

Saturday, July 14, 2007

A Day of Distress

Psalm 50:15 Call upon Me in the day of distress (trouble), and I will deliver you, and you shall glorify Me.

What is a day of distress? A day of trouble? And then what does it mean to be delivered out of that? If sickness is not a day of trouble or distress, I don’t know what is. People who have been around often say that if you have your health, you have everything.

As a Christian, we can think of something even more important than physical health. But this passage was written to God’s people, so we’re back to where we started. I contend that healing is one of the greatest needs that people will ever have. If it was not that important, I can’t imagine why Jesus would have spent so much time doing it.

So if sickness is a need, then what is being delivered from it mean? Being able to endure sickness with a smile is nice, but I couldn’t call that deliverance. Dying and going to heaven may be nice for the dead person, but if that is deliverance, then what is not being delivered?

I think sometimes we try too hard to get away from the obvious meaning of the text.

Monday, July 02, 2007

The Touch of His Garment

5:25 And there was a woman who had had a flow of blood for twelve years, 5:26 and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. 5:27 She had heard the reports about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. 5:28 For she said, "If I touch even his garments, I shall be made well." 5:29 And immediately the hemorrhage ceased; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. 5:30 And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone forth from him, immediately turned about in the crowd, and said, "Who touched my garments?" 5:31 And his disciples said to him, "You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, —Who touched me?'" 5:32 And he looked around to see who had done it. 5:33 But the woman, knowing what had been done to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. 5:34 And he said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease."

I have heard it said a lot that God may not want to heal somebody. We can ask Him to heal us, but if it isn’t His will, He won’t. You may ask why it wouldn’t be His will, and the answer is usually something like “God wants us sick to teach us things.”

That may make sense in some way, but that still doesn’t make it true. And the story we quoted here makes you wonder. This woman never asked Jesus to heal her. If she prayed for healing during those twelve years, the passage doesn’t say. If it had been relevant to the outcome of the story, it would have said so. She said that if she only touched his garments, she would be made well. She did, and she was. Jesus had to look around to see who had done it.

We have this picture of God as a king sitting on His royal throne and people come before Him in their prayers, asking for healing. To some He says yes, and to others He says no. This woman saw healing as a blessing from God, like free food on a buffet table. Why do we always see God as Someone who is so hard to figure out?

Saturday, June 30, 2007

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.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

All Things Are Possible (5)

Mark 9:28 When He (Jesus) had entered the house, his disciples asked Him privately, "Why could we not cast it out?" 9:29 He said to them, "This kind can come out only through prayer."

Matthew 17:19 Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, "Why could we not cast it out?" 17:20 He said to them, "Because of the littleness of your faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you."

A man brought his son who had been afflicted with a demon for years to Jesus’ disciples, and they were not able to cast it out. And Jesus got upset. Not just with the disciples, but with that entire generation. They should have been able to do it. All of them.

The disciples, who had had some experience in these things, asked Jesus afterward why they couldn’t do it. Both Matthew and Mark give accounts of the conversation. Mark, the shortest of the gospel accounts, gives a one sentence answer from Jesus. Matthew, whose gospel notes many references by Jesus to faith, records a little more of what Jesus had to say to that question.

Some people might be troubled by the differences of the two accounts, but we already saw earlier in Mark that Jesus’ faulted all of them already for their unbelief. Here in Matthew He is making it clear that the disciples were included. Mark’s account that this kind of demon can only come out through prayer would suggest a deficiency with the disciple’s prayer life. So the two accounts are not really inconsistent but complementary.

Today, we don’t want to think that a person not being healed has anything to do with us. And nobody wants to say it does because we feel they have enough on their minds. But that person needs help, and we are not helping them when we say that God denied their prayers for reasons known only to Him.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

All Things Are Possible (4)

Mark 9:17 Someone from the crowd answered him, "Teacher, I brought you my son; he has a spirit that makes him unable to speak; 9:18 and whenever it seizes him, it dashes him down; and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid; and I asked your disciples to cast it out, but they could not do so." 9:19 He answered them, "O unbelieving generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring him to me." 9:20 And they brought the boy to him. When the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth. 9:21 Jesus asked the father, "How long has this been happening to him?" And he said, "From childhood. 9:22 It has often cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him; but if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us." 9:23 Jesus said to him, "If you are able! --All things are possible to the one who believes."

We saw in verse 19 how Jesus was angry that the people were unbelieving. They couldn’t cast a demon out of a boy, and this upset Him. The question, of course, is: why should anyone have thought that they could cast a demon out of a boy?

Then in verse 23, Jesus says that all things are possible to the one who believes. The problem here is that He acts like everyone should have known this already. But how? Jesus talks in other passages about moving mountains and how a person has to have faith without any doubting. And, again, He sounds like people should already have known this.

Prior to the ministry of Jesus, all the people had was the Old Testament. And so this is where we have to look first.

I remembered some passages from the story of Joseph where it says that everything Joseph did prospered, because the Lord was with Him (Genesis 39). I began looking for other passages where the Lord said He was with someone. I found over 70 in the Old Testament, and in almost every case God’s being with that person was the source of that person’s (or nation’s) prosperity, protection, or other obvious manifest blessing from God.

Today when we speak of God being with someone, we mean that He will cry with us, hold our hand, or in some way comfort us, but we have lost the idea that He is there to protect or deliver us. We are very ready to believe that God will allow all manner of misfortune to consume us, and He is there only to give us the strength to endure it.

Where did this thinking come from?

The Bible doesn’t teach that we won’t or shouldn’t expect to have problems in our lives, but it does teach that we should be able to expect God to deliver us out of our problems and not just help us to endure our problems.

Monday, June 18, 2007

All Things Are Possible (3)

This last statement of Jesus here has been a puzzle to me for years. “All things are possible to the one who believes.” It sounds wonderful, but how does a person get from unbelief to belief? What would make or should have made this man believe that he could have cast a demon out of his son? Even the disciples couldn’t do it.

I saw this movie recently, Face the Giants. Go rent it. On the surface it is a high school football movie. It isn’t even based on a true story like so many other recent sports movie. But it’s really a movie about God. I’m not ruining your movie experience by telling you that the movie tries to make the point that nothing is impossible with God.

As I was hearing this, something wasn’t right. You see, by definition, nothing is impossible with God. Of course, God can do anything. So to say that nothing is impossible with God is a meaningless statement, unless it means that God is perfectly willing to do the impossible in your life at the times when you need it.

And this is where our problem is. We have lost the sense that God actually wants to work on our behalf. We think that God would then be serving us and not we Him. And then we would become like certain TV evangelists who drive fancy cars and live in big houses.

So I started this Bible study. I will tell you about it tomorrow.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

All Things Are Possible (2)

We said yesterday that this is a difficult passage. Look at verse 19. A man has a son who has a demon. Neither he, the disciples, nor anyone the man has known had been able to cast it out.

And Jesus gets upset. Jesus, meek and mild, Jesus the perfect man, Jesus the Son of God, didn’t get upset too often. He got upset at moneychangers in the temple, and He got upset with the Pharisees for the hardness of their hearts. And here He is upset with an entire generation because they can’t cast out a demon. And it’s because of their unbelief.

Do you think they thought they had unbelief? The disciples at this point had done a lot of miracles in their brief time of ministry. They had seen God work through them.

But the bigger question is why should any of them have thought that they could cast out a demon? But wait. That’s not how we talk today. We would say that God chose not to answer our prayer for deliverance for reasons that only He knows.

But Jesus would have none of that. He was angry. For some reason He expected that people, people everywhere, should have seen that this situation was not something that God wanted and that they should have been able to rectify it.

If we had been there, what would we have done? If we couldn’t have helped the man, then we need to admit that we have work to do. We need to get hold of God and His Word and say, Lord, teach me about faith, your will, and how I can see Your will done on earth.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

All Things Are Possible (1)

This is a very difficult passage. Why? Because it says a lot of things that we don’t want to hear. It goes against a lot of the things we have been taught and believed.

Jesus asked the father how long the boy had had this spirit tormenting him. The father says: “From childhood.” That wouldn’t make much sense if the boy was still young, so we are talking about a long time.

Did the father pray for his son? Of course, he did. Did He cry out for God to deliver him? Of course, he did. Yet nothing happened. For years, nothing happened. We are commonly taught that God must have wanted this to last for some reason, some higher good, part of God’s mysterious ways with us.

But that was not Jesus’ attitude. When the man asked Jesus if He could help him, Jesus told him that all things are possible to the one who believes. Jesus essentially told the man that he could have delivered the boy himself years ago, if he could have believed.

It was not God’s will for the boy to be tormented this long. It wasn’t God’s will for this boy to have this torment at all. But like David and Goliath, it was a giant that the man felt was too big for him.

We attribute many things to God’s will that are not God’s will. God wants us to rise up in faith and stand boldly against the enemy and declare God’s victory over the situation.

It make take some time for you to develop this faith. That’s why you need to start now, because the time will come when you will need it.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

What is a Need?

Philippians 4:19 My God shall fulfill every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

If healing is not a need, then what is? I have heard well-meaning people try to distinguish between a want and a need, as if they could not be the same thing, as if one is always selfish and immature and the other is always something we don’t want or even think about, something we aren’t even aware of. We may think something is a need, but we are often told that we have a greater need and that we won’t have that need met if we have this first so-called need met.

Confused yet? Let’s make it simple. If you are a parent of young children and you are dying, that is a need. If you are sick and are missing work and you need the money, that is a need. The way Jesus healed people, I would say that if you are sick period, that is a need.

Why would we think that God might want our children to be orphans?

If healing is not a need, then words have no meaning and communication is impossible. If God doesn’t want to heal you when you are sick, what makes you think He will help you get a job, find a spouse, or fix the marriage you already have? If it can be His will for a young parent to die a miserable death, then almost anything can be His will, and we know virtually nothing about God. We can say that God loves us, but what does love mean if He will not act on behalf of His beloved?

Monday, June 11, 2007

He Bore Our Sicknesses

Matthew 8:16,17 When evening came, they brought to Him many who were afflicted by demons. He cast out the spirits with a word and healed all those who were sick, that what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, saying, He Himself took our sicknesses and bore our diseases.

When Jesus fulfills a prophecy, does that mean that He only does that for a limited time? Obviously when the Bible says that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, that can only happen once. But when the Bible calls him a shepherd tending his flock (Isaiah 40:11), does that mean that Jesus acts like a shepherd for, say, six weeks, and then He doesn’t have to do that anymore. Or does that mean this is who Jesus is? Jesus came to be our shepherd. He started back then, and, since He doesn’t change, He does this now.

And when it says that He healed all those who were sick because He took their sicknesses and bore their diseases, does this not mean that taking and bearing sicknesses and diseases is what Jesus does, and we should expect Him to continue doing just what it is He does?

Sunday, June 10, 2007

For Whom Did Jesus Die?

Isaiah 53:4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. 53:5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his stripes we are healed.

In this passage from Isaiah, we read of Jesus’ coming to die for the sins of the world. Did He die for the sins of the people living at that time, or did He die for the sins of all the people yet to come, including us? I think we can agree that when Jesus died for sins 2,000 years ago, He died for our sins as well.

In the first line quoted above, the Hebrew word for ‘griefs’ means ‘sicknesses’ and the Hebrew word for ‘sorrows’ means ‘pains.’ Jesus bore our sicknesses and carried our pains. Did He bare the sicknesses and pains of only those living in that generation, or did He bare the sicknesses and carried the pains of all those for whom He died?

Some people have said that the sicknesses and pains referred to here are emotional ones, not physical ones. Frankly, I don’t see how that makes anything any easier, because emotional problems seem harder to fix than physical ones, though perhaps less deadly.

When Jesus died for our sins, He also died for our healing. When sin came into the world, so did sickness. Jesus came to redeem us from all of that.

Still have questions? That’s why we had to write a book. Just too many questions.

Saturday, June 09, 2007

The Works of Jesus

John 14:12 Truly, truly I tell you, the one who believes in Me (Jesus) the works that I myself do, even that one shall do, and greater than these he shall do, because I am going to the Father.

When Jesus was on earth, He did many works. A major part of what Jesus did was healing people. In this passage, it is clear that Jesus wants others to do the very same things that He did. We should expect healing to be a very basic part of the Christian life, whether healing others or seeing healing in our own lives.

This can be hard when we haven’t seen much or any of that before in our lives. That doesn’t mean that God has changed His program or that it is no longer His will. This passage tells us what His will is. It is up to us to pursue God and His will such that it is done in our lives. It may not come immediately or even quickly. But if we know something is His will, we can be confident that God wants to do it in our lives.

Saturday, June 02, 2007

The Sovereignty of God

Romans 9:14 What shall we say then? [Is there] unrighteousness with God? God forbid. 9:15 For He says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. 9:16 So then [it is] not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God who shows mercy.

It is often said that God is sovereign. He can do what He wants. He doesn’t have to heal anyone if He doesn’t want to.

These are all true statements, but they miss the point. God has given us the Bible to show us what He is like. I have written the book, The Importance of Healing, partly to show that God wants to heal us. We don’t have to wonder about what God wants or doesn’t want to do. He has already told us.

These same people act as if there is no consistency in how God acts. Today He chooses to do this, but tomorrow He may choose to do something else.

The point of the sovereignty of God is that no one can thwart God in His purposes. What He has said, He will do.

The passage quoted above from Romans says that God will have mercy on those He chooses. Where we go wrong is that we forget that those who believe in Jesus are those whom God has had mercy on (Ephesians 2). It’s not as if God has mercy on us today, but tomorrow He may not.

What shall we say then? [Is there] unrighteousness with God? God forbid. Ro 9:15 For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. Ro 9:16 So then [it is] not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Blessed Above All People

Deuteronomy 7:12 Wherefore it shall come to pass, if ye hearken to these judgments, and keep, and do them, that the LORD thy God shall keep unto thee the covenant and the mercy which he sware unto thy fathers: De 7:13 And he will love thee, and bless thee, and multiply thee: he will also bless the fruit of thy womb, and the fruit of thy land, thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep, in the land which he sware unto thy fathers to give thee. De 7:14 Thou shalt be blessed above all people: there shall not be male or female barren among you, or among your cattle. De 7:15 And the LORD will take away from thee all sickness, and will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which thou knowest, upon thee; but will lay them upon all [them] that hate thee.

What causes confusion for a lot of people is that the Bible contains two major covenants between God and His people: the old covenant, or testament, and the new covenant, the new testament. They are concerned that things that applied in the Old Testament, or covenant, may not apply in the New Testament, or covenant.

The problem is that approximately 90% of the Bible falls under the Old Covenant. The four gospels with the ministry of Jesus would all be considered old covenant. And the Old Testament, of course, was the Bible of the early church.

Now healing was a part of the Old Covenant. And the New Covenant is supposed to be better than the old one. So, if healing which was part of the covenant for 90% of the Bible is no longer in God’s program for us, what else has changed? How much of the other 90% doesn’t belong to us as well?

In our book, The Importance of Healing, we show that healing is indeed something that still belongs to us.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Oppressed by the devil

Acts 10:38 how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.

This passage says that Jesus healed all who were oppressed by the devil. Does this mean that Jesus healed only those who were oppressed by the devil, that everyone who was healed was oppressed by the devil, or the passage only chooses to mention the ones who were oppressed by the devil?

I think the most obvious way to understand this passage is to say that everyone Jesus healed was oppressed by the devil. When we read the gospel accounts, many times when a person had a physical ailment, it was directly attributed to a spirit or the devil. Sometimes the accounts talk about Jesus casting out demons and healing, like these were two separate categories.

I offer the explanation that often people were afflicted by spirits, and there was no accompanying physical illness as such.

We noted earlier the story of Job. His friends attributed all Job’s problems to a direct hit from God, but no doubt if Job had consulted doctors, they would have noted all kinds of chemical changes in his blood and immune system. They may not have been able to actually name a cause for Job’s condition, but they would have seen no reason to label it a supernatural one.

The Bible purports to give us information that we could not garner on our own. The passage above doesn’t explain everything, but it helps us to understand better exactly what we are up against.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Your Adversary the Devil

I Peter 5:8 Be sober, be vigilant. Your adversary the devil walks like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour, 5:9 whom resist, firm in your faith, . . .

Did you know that you have an adversary? Did you know that this adversary wants to devour you? The Greek word used here means literally to swallow or consume. Peter says here that we must be sober and vigilant, otherwise we may be devoured. He is talking to Christians here.

Is this a cause for fear and worry? No. But like when you drive your car, you don’t worry about having an accident, but you drive alertly, because you know it is a very real possibility if you are not alert.

Life is like that too. Peter says that we need to be firm in our faith to stand against this adversary.

And just what kinds of things might this adversary do to us? Stay tuned.

If you are reading this and haven’t already done so, I would urge you to get the book. We are only touching the surface here on things of which we need to have a solid grasp.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Killing Giants

II Samuel 21:16 Ishbi-benob, one of the descendants of the giants, whose spear weighed three hundred shekels of bronze, and who was fitted out with new weapons, said he would kill David. 21:17 But Abishai son of Zeruiah came to his aid, and attacked the Philistine and killed him. Then David's men swore to him, "You shall not go out with us to battle any longer, so that you do not quench the lamp of Israel." 21:18 After this a battle took place with the Philistines, at Gob; then Sibbecai the Hushathite killed Saph, who was one of the descendants of the giants. 21:19 Then there was another battle with the Philistines at Gob; and Elhanan son of Jaare-oregim, the Bethlehemite, killed Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver's beam. 21:20 There was again war at Gath, where there was a man of great size, who had six fingers on each hand, and six toes on each foot, twenty-four in number; he too was descended from the giants. 21:21 When he taunted Israel, Jonathan son of David's brother Shimei, killed him.

When the Israelites were first challenged by Goliath, a giant from the Philistine nation, no one in the Israelite army had the courage to face him, yet alone kill him. After David killed him, now a number of Israelites were able to kill giants.

Did God change? Did God now supernaturally endow more people with courage and strength? No. It took seeing someone else do it to help them believe that they could do it too.

We don’t see too many miracles today, so it is hard to believe for one in our own life. It is not that God is unwilling, but it’s always harder to be the first. We may need to be the first in our neighborhood, like David, to believe God for a miracle, and then others will follow. We don’t want to wait for someone else to do it first, because we don’t know when or if that will be.

Monday, May 21, 2007

Facing Our Enemies

I Samuel 17:23 As he (David) talked with them (his brothers), the champion, the Philistine of Gath, Goliath by name, came up out of the ranks of the Philistines, and spoke the same words as before. And David heard him. 17:24 All the Israelites, when they saw the man, fled from him and were very much afraid.

The question is often asked why if healing is God’s will for His people, why there isn’t more of it. The story of David and Goliath shows us why.

The Philistines were the enemy of God’s people, but the Israelites were afraid of them, at least of Goliath, their champion. Out of the entire Israelite army, not one man was brave enough to face him. Until David a shepherd came to visit his brothers in the army.

Why didn’t God just strike the Philistine down Himself? Didn’t the Israelites pray for deliverance during the 40 days of that standoff.

Maybe the bigger question is: did God just supernaturally fill David with confidence and strength for this one task, or should all the Israelites have been able to kill Goliath because of their own faith in God? When sickness comes, do we stand helpless before a giant pleading with God to intervene, or like David say that this giant must fall because it is challenging the people of God?

Sunday, May 20, 2007

All God’s Promised Lands Have Giants

Numbers 13:27 And they (the spies) told him (Moses), "We came to the land to which you sent us; it flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. 13:28 Yet the people who live in the land are strong, and the towns are fortified and very large; and besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there.

Where most of us make the mistake on healing is that we think of God sitting on His throne granting and denying requests for reasons known only to Himself. We call this the sovereignty of God.

A better picture is that God has given us far more than we can imagine, if we can but believe Him for them. God promised the Israelites a land flowing with milk and honey. A relief to them after having spent 400 years in slavery in Egypt.

When they arrived at this Promised Land, they were surprised to find the land already occupied and by giants. God expected them to go into the land and conquer it. We would have said that it must not have been God’s will after all. We were mistaken.

Sickness is your giant. Jesus healed all who came to Him, and He wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t God’s will for all to be well.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Forget not all His Benefits

Psalm 103:1 Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name. 103:2 Bless the LORD, O my soul, and do not forget all His benefits-- 103:3 who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases,

The same David who wrote that the Lord is his shepherd, which we feel very comfortable quoting and using in our own lives, also wrote that the Lord heals all his diseases.

I am sure some people will say that these are only emotional diseases, diseases of the soul, because the Psalm says: Bless the Lord, O my soul. But then it says: and all that is within me, bless His holy name.

If we actually were to believe that God heals all our emotional diseases, that still would be quite a step. I think more of us have emotional diseases than have physical, and surely the rate of healing there is a lot worse than the physical.

But we have to start somewhere. If we can quote the 23^rd Psalm, The Lord is my shepherd, then we should quote the 103^rd Psalm, He heals all my diseases. Believing this is the first step in seeing it.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

The Compassion of Jesus

Matthew14:14 When Jesus went ashore, He saw a great crowd; and He had compassion on them and healed their sick.

It is commonly taught that Jesus healed the sick to show people, including us, that He was the Messiah. Yet when the religious leaders asked Him for a sign, He always refused to give them one.

Here it says that Jesus healed the sick, because He had compassion on them. And He didn’t pick and choose among the crowd. He healed all of them. Well, it doesn’t come right out and say all, but it’s hard to think that His compassion on a crowd would mean that He would help some but not others.

We say we have a personal relationship with Jesus. The only Jesus we know is the Jesus of the Bible. We believe in the compassion of Jesus, but we don’t think that Jesus acts on His compassion. He may feel our pain, but we cannot expect that He will relieve it. Why is that so hard to believe?

I know there are so many questions about healing, and these little snippets hardly do justice to all of them. That’s why I wrote a book. I hope you will take advantage of that.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Every One

Matthew 4:23 Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and every sickness among the people.

Did something look strange in this Bible passage?

If I were writing about Jesus’ ministry, I would have said that Jesus healed every person who was there. But the passage says that Jesus healed every sickness.

Other passages talked about the people that Jesus healed, but this shows us something else about Jesus’ ministry and God.

We often act like Jesus, or God, healing people is quite an arbitrary act, at least from our point of view. Maybe, when Jesus was on earth, He healed everybody who came to Him to prove a point, that He was the Messiah.

But here Jesus is showing what is really on God’s mind. Jesus healed every sickness, because sickness is a blight on God’s creation. Sickness is not God’s will. How can we really be sure?

Your very body is programmed to heal itself. If you cut yourself, you don’t even have to think about it, but your body gets to work trying to repair the damage. Sometimes the damage is too great for your own bodily system, and sometimes that same bodily system breaks down. But that’s the whole point.

When everything is working right, your body will heal itself. That is the way you were designed and built. For it not to be God’s will to heal you is to say that God does not want something that obviously was His will.

We know that God works in mysterious ways, but sometimes we act like God can’t make up His own mind.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

The Example of Paul

Acts 28:8 It so happened that the father of Publius lay sick in bed with fever and dysentery. Paul visited him and healed him by praying and putting his hands on him. 28:9 After this happened, the rest of the people on the island who had diseases also came and were healed.

I Corinthians 11:1 Become imitators of me as I am of Christ.

(I need to begin today by adding a little technical note on the passage in Acts. The two words for ‘heal’ in that passage are different words in the original Greek. The second one is the word from which we get our word ‘therapy’ and can be used to denote medical care. Some Bible commentators believe that at this point Luke joined in with his medical expertise and treated the people as well. So it would appear some people would have been healed immediately by Paul and others received medicine and had to wait a few days to get better.

This same word is used frequently in the gospels to describe Jesus’ healings, so the word by itself wouldn’t suggest medical care. Acts doesn’t even mention Luke by name, so it is hard to think that the reader should conclude that there was a doctor present. And, thirdly, Luke was a writer who wrote in a learned prose, and skilled writers often try to avoid using the same word so close together.)

The Book of Acts is the only historical account we have of the earliest days of the Church. As modern day Christians, we have a choice to make in interpreting this book. Is it meant to be an example of what the Church should look like, or is it merely a record of a unique time to satisfy an historical or theological curiosity.

We know Paul was especially gifted, but even Elisha asked for a double portion of Elijah’s power, and it seems God was pleased to grant it. We are so quick to believe that the time of the apostles needed a special dose of heavenly power that we shouldn’t expect today.

This belief usually has something to do with the fact that we now have the completed New Testament in written form. Yet Jesus said that if people didn’t believe in Moses and the Prophets, neither would they believe if someone were to come back from the grave (Luke 16:31). So the people of that time already had enough of the Bible that they were accountable for their faith in God.

When we prepare for the mission field or even the pastoral ministry or any kind of ministry, we should ask God to do again what he did through Paul.

Monday, May 14, 2007

Paul’s Thorn in the Flesh (5)

Acts 28:3 Paul had gathered a bundle of brushwood and was putting it on the fire, when a viper, driven out by the heat, fastened itself on his hand. 28:4 When the natives saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another, "This man must be a murderer; though he has escaped from the sea, justice has not allowed him to live." 28:5 He, however, shook off the creature into the fire and suffered no harm. 28:6 They were expecting him to swell up or drop dead, but after they had waited a long time and saw that nothing unusual had happened to him, they changed their minds and began to say that he was a god.

Does this sound like a man suffering from a physical malady that God refused to heal? If Paul had had physical problems that God wouldn’t heal, in spite of his persistent requests, then when this poisonous viper attached itself suddenly to Paul, his first reaction would have been, “Is this something else now that I am supposed to have?” That never crossed his mind. How do we know? The Bible is pretty good about telling us what a person is thinking when that is relevant to the story. What is relevant here is that Paul gave it no thought.

What is interesting too was that Luke, the physician, was with Paul. Paul didn’t even ask Luke for some medicine, just in case. You would think that with a doctor present, that should have been Paul’s first course of treatment. But he didn’t even think he would need treatment.

Paul then proceeded to heal every person on the island. It doesn’t even say that Paul preached to the people. And Luke just watched and recorded all this for our benefit.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Paul’s Thorn in the Flesh (4)

Numbers 33:55 But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then those whom you let remain shall be as thorns in your eyes and pricks (thorns) in your sides; they shall trouble you in the land where you are settling.

Joshua 23:13 know assuredly that the LORD your God will not continue to drive out these nations before you; but they shall be a snare and a trap for you, a scourge on your sides, and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land that the LORD your God has given you.

II Corinthians 12:7 Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan, to torment me, to keep me from being too elated.

Paul used the expression ‘thorn in the flesh’ to describe the activity of the devil that was at work in his life to trouble him. The figure in itself would seem to refer to some minor but persistent annoyance. We might say a pebble in our shoes. But that still doesn’t say what that annoyance is.

Any person who studies the Bible in the original languages, and particularly when you look at the Greek translation of the Old Testament, you become aware of how often the writers of the New Testament used expressions from the Old Testament to say what they wanted to say.

Paul does not directly quote the Old Testament here, but the similarities are close enough to believe that Paul was thinking of the constant harassment and persecution of his enemies as his thorn in the flesh. Everywhere he went, trouble followed. Paul’s sufferings is one of the basic themes of this very letter of his, II Corinthians. This suffering was primarily persecution but also included things like shipwrecks.

Tomorrow we will look at another reason why it’s hard to imagine Paul’s thorn as being sickness.

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Paul’s Thorn in the Flesh (3)

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.

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Paul’s Thorn in the Flesh (2)

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.

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Paul’s Thorn in the Flesh (1)

Matthew 26:38 Then Jesus said to them, "I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and stay awake with Me." 26:39 And going a little farther, He threw himself on the ground and prayed, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not what I want but what You want." 26:40 Then He came to the disciples and found them sleeping; and He said to Peter, "So, could you not stay awake with Me one hour? 26:41 Stay awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." 26:42 Again He went away for the second time and prayed, "My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, Your will be done." 26:43 Again He came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. 26:44 So leaving them again, He went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words.

In conversations about healing, two passages in the Bible are talked about more than all the others put together. One is Paul’s thorn in the flesh, and the other is Jesus’ prayer in the garden. And the two passages are related in more ways than just this. When we look at them together, we will understand them both better.

Jesus, the Son of God, came to die for our sins. He was not surprised by the events that happened. He came to Jerusalem at that time for that very reason. He knew what the will of God was, but it was hard even for Him. He asked if there might be another way. Yet He never wavered in His commitment to doing the will of God.

What is remembered most about this story of Jesus praying in the garden before his arrest and crucifixion are the words: Not My will but Thine be done. Good words of advice.

The problem is that we think we can’t know what God’s will is in regard to healing, so we just leave it up in the air, and whatever happens is God’s will. Jesus knew what God’s will was, and it was not what He wanted at the time. But He was willing to accept that will.

When we are praying for healing, we don’t need to wonder what God’s will is nor will we find it so disagreeable that we might pray for something else. When we don’t know what God’s will is in a matter, we want to pray for His will to be done. When we do know what His will is, we pray for that to be done as well. It is just our contention that God has revealed His will in regard to healing. If you are in a hurry to find that out, order the book. Otherwise, stay tuned.

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Your Faith

Mark 5:25 Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. 5:26 She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. 5:27 She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 5:28 for she said, "If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well." 5:29 Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. 5:30 Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, "Who touched my clothes?" 5:31 And his disciples said to him, "You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, 'Who touched me?'" 5:32 He looked all around to see who had done it. 5:33 But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. 5:34 He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease."

This is the third time in a week that we have looked at this same passage. (And we aren’t done yet.) That can appear to some that we are trying too hard to make a case for something, that our evidence is slim, so we have to stretch what little we have to cover a lot of ground.

Actually there is a lot of material. And, since I am hoping to write something everyday in this column, we will get around to maybe all of it.

This woman came to Jesus for healing, and He told her that her faith had made her well. Faith is being downplayed a lot today. The reason it is is that it puts responsibility on the person praying, and we don’t like that. The thinking today is that we pray, and God answers according to His mysterious will. He may choose to heal a person, and He may choose not to. All according to His overall glorious plan.

But this is not what Jesus said here, and this is not the only time He said this to someone who was healed.

But someone will ask: what about Paul’s thorn in the flesh? Good question. Tomorrow we will look at that.

Monday, May 07, 2007

Catching God on a Good Day

Mark 1:40 A leper came to Jesus begging him, and kneeling he said to him, "If you want to, you can make me clean." 1:41 Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, "I want to. Be clean!"

Did this leper just happen to catch Jesus on a good day? Are we to assume that Jesus’ answer would have always been Yes, or does it change from day to day?

Would Jesus’ response have depended on the spiritual life of the leper? Today the leper didn’t have any unconfessed sins in his life, and he was particularly humble.

But we don’t know that. We have to take the Bible for what it tells us and not try to read things into it that are not there. We would never be able to understand any of the Bible if we had to do that.

So the leper asks Jesus to heal Him, and He says: Of course, I will heal you.

Now the only Jesus we know is the Jesus of the Bible. Now some Christians will limit what they think God will ever say to them by what they read in the Bible, but that is another question. But either way I think it is unsafe to think that now Jesus might say something different to that question.

If we hear a different answer, how do we know it was Jesus? Why should we think the answer would ever be different?

Sunday, May 06, 2007

If God is for us

Romans 8:31 What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 8:32 He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? 8:33 Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. 8:34 Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.

Yesterday we saw that the devil was able to go before God and almost demand that God or he afflict Job with incredible suffering to see if Job could love and serve God even if God did not bless him.

The devil had a point. It’s like the rich person who doesn’t really know who his friends are. There is a common theme in literature where the prince feigns poverty and obscurity to find true love. And God thought enough of the devil’s argument to permit the test and to have the whole incident recorded for our benefit.

It is a basic question that we will all have to answer: do we, can we, love God for who He is and not just for what He does for us? And related to that: can we trust God when we don’t know or understand what the *%&^%* is going on in our lives? We will never understand everything about God or our lives. Can we still believe in God’s goodness and justice in those times?

But the question we need to answer now is whether the devil still stands before God and gets God to afflict us to test us. Is all the crap that we experience in life something that God is permitting to test us and we need only grin and bear it?

The wording of the passage we quoted from Romans suggests otherwise. Paul explicitly asks who is there to condemn us and he then notes how that Jesus is at the right hand of God to intercede for us. No mention is made of anyone else accusing us.

In the book I show in more detail why I believe that the devil no longer appears before God and irks God to afflict His people for some grand test. Job did it so we don’t have to. The question still needs to be answered by all of us, but the means have changed.

Saturday, May 05, 2007

Behind the Scenes

Job 2:3 The LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil. He still persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason." 2:4 Then Satan answered the LORD, "Skin for skin! All that people have they will give to save their lives. 2:5 But stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face." 2:6 The LORD said to Satan, "Very well, he is in your power; only spare his life." 2:7 So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD, and inflicted loathsome sores on Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.

If Job had gone to Mayo Clinic, what would they have said to Job and what would they have done?

For those to whom this story is not familiar, let me give a little background. The devil told God that Job only served God because God blessed him so much. If God were to take His blessings away from Job, Job would no longer love and serve Him. So God let the devil take away all Job’s possessions, including his children.

Job continued in his worship of God, so the devil went a step further. Take away Job’s health, and he would curse God to his face.

The devil was permitted to afflict Job but not to take his life. (There are a lot of questions that this story raises, which we can’t go into today, but we will. Today I just want to stick to our original question. If you can’t wait for the other questions, buy the book. Even when we ask the other questions, the book will still have more information than we can give here.)

So Job is now in the Mayo Clinic. Job doesn’t know how he got this condition. The doctors don’t know. They do a blood test and find abnormalities. They give him an ointment to relieve some of the itching. They give him antibiotics to fight the infections. They may even give his condition a name: Job’s syndrome.

But the source of Job’s illness is spiritual, supernatural. At the human level, we speak of viruses and bacteria, but we rarely ever know how a person got what they got.

There is far more to life than just those things that we can see and measure. The Bible shows us some of those things that take place outside our normal human knowledge. Without those insights, we will never understand all that we need to understand about life.

Friday, May 04, 2007

The Will of God

I John 5:14 And this is the boldness we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 5:15 And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of Him.

Do you see the problem with these verses? It says that we can have a boldness with God. The boldness comes from asking for things that are according to His will. Because then we have an assurance that God has given us what we have asked. Not even that God will give us these things, but that He already has. We may not see the results right away, but the paperwork has been done; we are just waiting for the delivery.

So what’s the problem? The problem is that we have lost a sense of God’s will. We don’t know what it is anymore. And this applies especially for healing.

We have this 1,000 page book, the Bible, to tell us about God, but if we want to know what His will is, we don’t have a clue. Instead of seeing a pattern in the Bible, we talk about God’s sovereignty and say that God can do whatever He wants to do, and that can mean almost anything.

So we pray for healing, but we have no idea if God wants to heal us. We have taken the picture of God in the Bible and say that God works different ways at different times in history. The problem with that is that the entire Bible is in a different time, so we need a new Bible to tell us what we can expect from God today.

We have lost something here, and we need to get it back. Stay tuned. Better yet, buy the book and start now.

Thursday, May 03, 2007

Which is Better?