After my first time here R… stopped me on the way out and
said… They would like to hear some teaching on healing… I had to stop and think
about that. I’m part of a prayer and healing team in our Presbytery, we are
invited to various churches to teach on and pray for healing. I know you guys
have good medical care here as well. But I said I’d take that as the Holy
Spirit prompting me. But can I say I’ve been a bit scared to do it… Reluctant.
I know many of you have been through the pain and sorrow of losing someone
close to you, you’ve probably wrestled with praying for someone to get healed
and felt as if the doors of heaven were closed shut, and God had gone home for
the day, put his feet up and dozed off in front of the TV. But every time I’ve come
back she has reminded me to speak on it so I am today.
I believe God heals people, yes by medical science, but also
through prayer by the Holy Spirit, I love the truth in what John Wimber said “
he found that more people got healed when he believed that God healed people
and started praying for them, than when he didn’t and so didn’t pray’. In Psalm
30 it is David’s witness that God heard his prayer and delivered him from the
pit, from a dire illness, and death. In our gospel reading today Jesus healed a
man at the pool of Bethseda… I love the story because the man seems to be
resigned to not ever getting well again and displays no faith, he does not even know who Jesus is! But in the mercy
and Grace of God Jesus heals him.
I just want to talk about four types of healing.
1.
The first is death. Look I know that sounds
rather pat, rather pie in the sky when you die, opiate for the masses. But in
the end it is to go home to our maker, to be with Jesus a place where there is
no more suffering or sorrow. I’m preaching on Luke 16 on Sunday the parable of
the rich man and Lazarus. Jesus paints the picture of Lazarus in heaven in Abraham’s
bosom, all his suffering and sorrow behind him. Through deprivation,
homelessness, illness and the shame of being a beggar he had kept his faith in
God and now he finds himself, with God, consoled and cared for. It still leaves us here to deal with the
grief with unanswered questions with loneliness that someone is not with us
anymore. But it is the gospel hope.
2.
The second is forgiveness and reconciliation: Is
healing. Healing of our relationship with God, the start of the process of
finding wholeness in our lives, spiritual life and spiritual growth. It also
enables reconciliation with each other the healing of broken relationships. I
love the story of Louis Zamperini. He grew up a wild kid in California, became
an Olympic athlete in 1936, was shot down in the pacific in world war two,
survived 40 days in an open life raft, was captured by the Japanese and
brutally treated as a prisoner of war. You might have seen the film ‘Unbroken’.
After the war Zamperini became an alcoholic full of bitterness and hate from
his mistreatment. One night he went to a billy graham crusade and his life
changed. He became a Christian. He stpopped drinking right away and found his
life starting to be on the up and up again. However he sensed to be made whole,
be healed, God wanted him to go to Japan and seek reconciliation and forgive
the guards who had mistreated him. He meet with all but one. The Japanese
people so respected him for this he was invited to be part of the Olympic torch
relay for the winter Olympics in Ngagano. God’s forgiveness opens the way up for
healing and wholeness in our lives.
3.
People come to a new place of knowing God’s
presence and peace even in the face of pain suffering, illness and even death.
Walter Brueggemann is an Old Testament scholar. He talks about a process that
he sees in the Psalms. He says there are the psalms of orientation, the happy
clappys when everything is as it should be, life is good, God is good, its all
good. Then he says there are Psalms of disorientation, like life is like going
to the beach and being picked up by wave after wave and spun round and round
gasping and fighting for air, and you don’t know which was is up… they are
laments where people cry out well where are you God. Finally Brueggermann talks
of psalms of reorientation, where the psalmist, come to the place of realising
that God is present and with them even though it may feel he is far away, a
distant disinterested deity. Psalm 33 has that in it it starts off you my
refuge but I feel like I’m refuse, and comes to the point of saying But I will
trust in you, I say my times are in your hands. Often when we pray for people
to be healed God will lead a person through to that place… of spiritual health
and maturity. the hebrew word for peace is shalom which means wholeness, finding that peace and trust in Christ is wholeness.
4.
Finally God does answer prayer and heal people
physically as well. Some would call it a miracle but the God who created it
all, who is able to forgive sin and restore us to right relationship with him
is also able to deal with the consequences of our fallen world as well. There
is no formula to it, or a person or anything it is simply the sovereign grace
and love of God. Often we can get put off by the showmen and the charlatans, or
the rigmarole and razzmatazz that seems to go along with our Pentecostal
brothers and sister. But you know what it is simply a matter of asking God and
trusting in him to do what he wills.
I’ve experienced in my own life. Deloras
Winders was a very ordinary Presbyterian women from the states and when she
came to New Zealand I had just started going out with Kris, my wife of 29
years, we were at Bible College (bridal college) which is now Laidlaw and she
was thinking she’d have to go home because her asthma was so bad… The bible
college is out in Henderson on what was a swamp and it was affecting her badly.
When Deloras finished preaching she said ‘God wants to heal someone here of
asthma’… Kris thought that’s nice but its not for me…about five minutes later
Deloras looked up and said “god wants to heal someone of asthma and they are
sitting over this side of the church… and pointed to the side of the church we
were sitting on… again Kris though that’s nice… but its not me… finally after
about ten minutes Deloras kind of put her hands on her hips and pointed down
the back where we were sitting and said God wants to heal someone of asthma and
they are sitting down the back… and pointed to us…like being told off by your
grandma. Kris thought God might be talking to her and so she went forward Delores
prayed for her, she was healed of asthma and has never had it again. Praise God
because she stayed at bible college and against all odds fell in love with me
and we have been married and ministered together for 29 years.
Can I just finish by saying I
believe that God heals people… I’m always happy to pray with people and just
see what God does.
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