So it’s been a while since I ‘blogged’ but I have been
incredibly challenged recently in a number of different ways and feel the need
to document this challenge, for my own benefit if nothing else!
God recently gave us a fresh vision at my church and the heading of this is ‘Loving, Reaching, Building. Jesus: God’s Answer for our Community.’ Over the last few months we have been working through this vision during our services, exploring what the Bible teaches on the different areas of this vision from God.
Most recently we have started a series on Reaching and have
been looked at the book of Acts, looking specifically at how God used the
apostles and others to spread the Word.
Last Sunday morning we read from Acts 8 where it talks about Philip
proclaiming Christ in Samaria and performing ‘miraculous signs.’
Verse 7: ‘With shrieks, evil spirits came out of many, and many paralytics and cripples were healed.’
This coming Sunday I am preaching from Acts 11:19 onwards,
exploring the ‘Unknown Christians at Antioch.’
All of this, as well as a conversation which I had on Sunday morning
with a chap which the Holy Spirit had led to my church with a clear message
from the Lord, has got me thinking and really challenged me about healing and
about how we ‘do church’.
If you read through the book of Acts, as we read about the
Holy Spirit coming at Pentecost, the birth of ‘the church’ and the mission of
the Apostles and others to spread the Word, we constantly see recounts of the
Holy Spirit coming on those who were hearing the message, God anointing people
with ‘power’, people being baptised and healed through miraculous signs.
How much of this is present in the way which we ‘do church’
today? Are we ‘doing church’ as God
intended or are we doing it for ourselves, the way which we want to do it? How much ‘control’ does the Holy Spirit have
over the way which we ‘do church’, in fact, how much control does the Holy
Spirit have over the way which we ‘do Christianity?’
If you ask many Christians today about healing, as I have
done, the answer you invariably receive is that God will heal ‘if it His will.’ Well, if you explore Scripture, we quite
clearly see that it IS God’s will that everyone may be healed.
We believe that God can heal but we are not sure it is always His will. ‘My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge,’ Hosea 4:6.
We believe in Jesus right?
Jesus, God’s Son is ‘the exact representation of his (God’s) being….’
Hebrews 1:3. Jesus ‘healed all the sick,’
Matthew 8:16. When Jesus healed the
sick, he never prayed about whether it was God’s will or not for one simple
reason, he knew it was God’s
will! Nowhere in the Bible do we see
Jesus refuse to heal anyone and we know that Jesus always did the will of God
(John 5:19). Jesus healed everyone who
came to him, no question about whether his Father wanted him to or not!
We then look at the ‘Great Commission.’ We often, as Christians acknowledge the command
to ‘Go into all the world and preach good news to all creation,’ whether we
actually do or not is for another time.
But do we follow through the Great Commission in Mark’s Gospel to the
end, where it says ‘they will place their hands on sick people, and they will
get well,’ (16:18b). Note, it doesn’t
say they might get well, it says they
WILL!
It’s important at this stage to acknowledge the fact that it
was the sick people who had the desire to seek Jesus and to touch him. Jesus never did and never will force healing
on anyone.
Hebrews 13:8 says, ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever.’ What Jesus did when he was on earth, he will do today and tomorrow and next week and forever!
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| God speaks to us in mysterious ways! |
I could go on and on with different Scripture references and
examples, but how can you argue with what has already been said? It clearly is God’s will that people be healed, God hates sickness, we hate
sickness so why don’t we step up and through Jesus, in line with God’s will,
heal people! I was very challenged by
many things which the man that the Holy Spirit sent to us on Sunday morning
was saying but one thing in particular spoke to me and as I was organising the
church sanctuary this morning I was reminded- why do Christians sit in church
with tissues up their sleeves? You could
apply this logic to any ailment that Christians sit in church with from tissues
up their sleeves, crutches by their chairs, depression, medication in their
handbags, even people sitting in wheelchairs.
Where is our faith that God wants to heal us? I am preaching to myself too, as a sufferer
of anxiety as well as psoriasis, when did we start to doubt that it is God’s
will to heal?
We read a minute ago that Jesus Christ has never and will
never change, the verse before that in Hebrews chapter 13 says ‘Remember your
leaders, who spoke the word of God to you.
Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.’
Remember those people I alluded to at the beginning of this blog, the
people who spread the word in Acts? Paul
says in 1 Corinthians 4:16, ‘Therefore I urge you to imitate me.’
Ephesians 5:1, ‘Be imitators of God.’
God’s perfect will is to heal His children. Jesus came to earth and carried out the will
of his Father. The Apostles followed and
others still do today. We see healings
in the town centre of Bognor Regis on a Saturday, we see healings at Soul
Survivor, we see healings online and through films (The Holy Ghost- highly
recommended!). Do we see healings in our
churches? Do we see healings in our
lives?
The question we have to ask ourselves is not, ‘is it God’s
will,’ the question we need to ask ourselves is ‘do we have the faith in God’s perfect
will, that we can be healed and that we can heal those people that God sends
our way?’
Remember this, ‘I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing
by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the
Father does the Son also does.’ John
5:19. Have you seen the Father heal
people? ‘Go into all the world and
preach the good news to all creation.
Whoever believes and is baptised will be saved, but whoever does not
believe will be condemned. And these
signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons;
they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and
when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people,
and they will get well.’
That is you
and I brothers and sisters and it’s about time we believed it!
