Our attitude towards sickness and healing

Here are some thoughts, jotted down after listening to a teaching by Bill Johnson on unanswered prayer. I hope you will find some encouragement and/or some food for thought and further reflection. God bless!

• "If you just had enough faith, you would be healed!" This is not a cruel thing to say to somebody who is sick (even though it certainly can come across in a condemning way), but it is throwing them a life-line, pointing them to the only solution to their problem. It is actually cruel not to tell them that they should have faith for their healing!
• The opposite of "a little faith" is not GREAT faith, but NO faith! Jesus said that with faith as small as a mustard seed we could move mountains – no "great" faith required even for such a monumental task. Jesus also simply asked whether He will find "faith" on the earth when He returns – again no "great" faith required or expected. Similarly, Jesus asked the disciples after He stilled the storm WHERE their faith was. He did not rebuke them for not having "enough" faith, but simply made it clear to them that their faith was in the wrong thing (i.e. in their own ability top maneuver through the rough sea, in this case).
• "Complacency and ignorance tolerate unanswered prayers." Bills Johnson
• Accepting sickness in our lives somehow seems to be easier than believing God for healing, as you will not be disappointed (you cannot be disappointed if you didn't really expect to get anything in the first place), but it simply does not glorify God.
• If we pray for somebody to be healed, but doubt that God wants to heal that person, we are actually saying that we have more compassion for that person than God, but that is impossible. That makes me think that God wants to heal me more than I want to be healed myself!
• If we expect to be healed because of some kind of merit from our side, we are doomed. God is our Father, and as such we do not have to and we cannot do anything to earn His favor. He heals us because He loves us.
• I want to be healed so that my life glorifies God. It's a sad, man-made theology that says God would be glorified when we accept sickness because He wants to teach us something or build character in us. Jesus never told that to ANYBODY who came to Him for healing!
• Rather than shaking or being bedridden or being dependent on medicine, I am convinced it glorifies God much more when I am hiking through the mountains, enjoying His creation while snorkeling off the coast of the Cayman Islands, riding a bicycle to a waterfall around Chiang Rai, or playing football, being fully alive FOR Him, IN Him and together WITH Him.
• I do not want to be healed merely so that I can SERVE God better, but to ENJOY Him more (even though it will certainly be much more fun to preach, teach, drive busses, clean stuff or do whatever, rather than being miserable, unable to do anything. Jesus did not die on the cross because the Father needed servants… He wanted CHILDREN J
• God wants us to pray for His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. There is no sickness in heaven, thus to "seek His Kingdom" here on earth entails for people to be healthy and whole.
• 2. Timothy 3:12 says that everybody who wants to lead a godly life will suffer PERSECUTION, not sickness.
• I do not want to accuse God ("You don't want to heal me") and neither do I want to blame myself ("I deserve to be sick") but I am guilty of self-pity, believing that I have to convince God of how miserable my situation is – as if He had not noticed.
• Healing was God's idea, not ours.
• Mt 6:33 ("Seek first His Kingdom"): We should never make our needs the primary focus of our prayers, even though it is absolutely legitimate to pray for our "daily bread" – instead, we should always be praying for what is on HIS heart.
• "Answers to prayer reveal God" – we need to pray for more than one thing at any given time, not to focus on just one issue. The breakthrough in one area will give us the hope and perseverance to see breakthroughs in other areas.
• Some things God does not give to soldiers / fighters, but only to sons and daughters. This point seems to be the easiest one, but often turns out to be the hardest, because we grow up being taught that we only get what we deserve…
• Just in case you were wondering: No, I am not a parrot. God created me to be a son, made in His image, not a parrot who just says what we think He wants to hear…

Times Prayer Changed Everything - Instantly

We all believe it: Prayer changes things. But sometimes change seems to come slowly. And when we don't see a prayer answered after a while, we more often than not give up prayer altogether. After all, we reason, it must not have been God's will, otherwise He would have done something already. As I thought about this today, I was reminded of some situations in my life when the Lord responded to prayer instantly and the idea was born to write them down and post them on this Blog. Thus the start of this little series today. I hope that you will be encouraged to be uncomplicated and spontaneous in your prayer, as it seems to be the pattern in the stories that came to my mind so far: It is when we pray simple, childlike and not pre-meditated prayers that our Father in heaven rushes to move heaven and earth, and even people's hearts!

Story #1: A drug addict set free!

"Are you willing to make an experiment tonight?" I asked. He looked at me with big eyes and said "What do you want to do?" "I want to pray for you, and see what the Lord will do." That didn't seem to be too threatening to him, and so he agreed. We were in downtown Los Angeles on a rather chilly night. Together with a team of students from our Discipleship Training School I had come to what is known as "Skit Row" to hand out sandwiches, hot coffee and cocoa to the homeless that populate the streets here after business hours. In many ways it was a crazy night. Hundreds of men were more or less aimlessly walking around, some had made fires on the street to keep warm. Drug dealers waited for their regulars, many of the men were drunk, here and there were quarrels with people yelling at each other. A police car had stopped by a few minutes earlier and one of the officers had made it clear to us that we should not be there as it was too dangerous. They urged us, just as some of the homeless people themselves, at least not to go into certain side streets, but I am not sure whether all of the team members even heard the warning and thus some of us probably went there anyway. I was glad that I had called a prayer meeting before we had jumped into our two vans to get here. This way we knew that God wanted us to be here and we felt completely safe and were very much aware of the peace of God surrounding us. While I had talked to Peter*, an obviously demon-possessed man tried his best to make us scared by yelling at us and rolling his eyes weirdly. But he kept a respectful distance to us. So did the drug dealer who was eager for me to finish talking to his client. "Okay, let's pray: Father, I pray for Peter, that in the moment he walks away from here you would change his heart so that he would no longer want to use drugs. In Jesus' name. Amen." When I opened my eyes after this short prayer, Peter looked at me curiously and maybe just a little bit mockingly. "So you think God will answer your prayer?" he asked. "Yes," I said, with a confidence that you cannot manufacture by your own effort even if your life depended on it. "But I don't feel any different," he said, and I heard his dealer laughing a few meters away from us. "You remember," I reminded him, "I prayed that in the moment you walk away from here God would change your heart." I had never prayed like that before, and I had not thought about what to pray before I had closed my eyes. And I certainly had not thought about how to respond to his questions after the prayer. As it was time for us to go back to our base on the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, I pointed to our vehicles and asked Peter whether he wanted to walk with us to send us off and maybe grab another sandwich. He agreed. We had walked just a few steps when he pulled his drug equipment out of his pockets and cheerfully handed them to me: "Here, please keep this, I don't want to do this anymore!" I was stunned, but then again not even really surprised. Rather, me and my friend who had been part of this encounter were genuinely happy and thankful. Don't ask me what it was that Peter actually handed over to us, because I have been blessed with total ignorance in regards to things related to drugs - I've never tried anything but cigarettes and never made it my mission to study up on the subject in regards to how exactly to use the various drugs, whether you smoke, inhale, shoot, sniff or simply eat them. I do know the difference, though, between a fake surrender for whatever reason and a genuine change of heart. And Peter didn't pull a stunt on us, but he was delivered from his drug-habit in an instant. As our vans had parked at one of the Missions that are offering meals and shelter for the homeless in the area, we connected Peter with it for follow-up and discipleship. 

This happened in January or February 1996. I haven't heard anything from Peter since, but I trust that the Lord continued what He started in this young man's life. I also have never prayed for other people in this way again. I simply was led to pray in this way on that day for that man. I didn't use any "technique", didn't go through 10 steps of intercession and didn't even spend time listening to how the Lord might want to have me pray. I just prayed whatever came to my mind in the situation and God answered. 

I guess you could write volumes of books on the theological implications of this incident, and maybe someday I will do that. But much more do I wish for the same child-likeness in my everyday prayer-life. To help me (and maybe some of you who read this) to get there, I wrote down this little story. If you were encouraged by it, please feel free to post a comment, click on "Like," share or let me know in some other way. I want to post more stories in the weeks to come, so come back to this site every now and then. Be blessed, and be a blessing! :)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Probably this is not the actual name of the person we prayed for that day. It's a long time ago and I don't remember the person's name. The rest of the story, however, is a true report, with the quotes reflecting the heart of what was said, not necessarily the exact words that were spoken.

Sickness and Healing in a Believer's Life

Introduction

To say one thing very clearly in the beginning: God is able to heal any disease, any sickness and any kind of pain at any given time. In Psalm 103 David says: "Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits - who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases"! Every true Christian believes that God forgives all our sin, so it is only appropriate to believe that he heals all our diseases as well. When Jesus walked the earth the Bible reports that he healed “every disease and sickness” (e.g. Matthew 9:35). Jesus gave this same authority to his 12 disciples (Matthew 10:1) and to everybody who follows Him (Mark 16:18). In addition to that, some people have a special gift of healing (see 1. Corinthians 12:9). God is the same yesterday, today and forever, so there is no doubt that He can heal and is still doing just that all over the world to this day. By Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, God has provided for healing of our physical bodies, because “he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).

A realistic look at causes of sickness 

However, experience of Christians throughout the centuries, ever since the early church, shows that many times Christians are sick and are not miraculously healed (e.g. 2 Ti 4:20, where Paul himself, though plenty of people were healed through/by him, left behind his co-worker Trophimus sick in Miletus). It seems that more often than not God chooses not to heal people through prayer and a miraculous intervention. It is certainly wrong to base our believes and our doctrines upon experience - they have to be based upon the word of God. But it is nothing short of denial if we ignore the experience of many faithful believers who have struggled or who are currently struggling with sickness, be it a common cold or more serious illnesses like cancer. A simple “You just have to believe”, or “You just need to claim the promises of God” might not always do justice to the one who is suffering, even though it is no doubt well-intentioned advice. God seems to be bigger than that, and at times might have other things in mind, rather than an instantaneous healing. It is absolutely not my goal here to make people (or myself) feel comfortable with their sickness and to stop pursuing God for healing. On the contrary: As Psalm 103 says that the LORD heals all our diseases, it only makes sense if at times we do have diseases - otherwise God wouldn't have to heal us from them... It is therefore my goal to bring a balance and hopefully some understanding about why at times we are sick. God is God, and we are not - thus there will always be things that we will not be able to figure out before we get to see Him face to face, and once we see Him like that all our questions about “why” and “how” might cease to be important. But as long as we journey on this side of heaven, I think it's worthwhile to fight for understanding. God is after being glorified, and a people who understand His ways glorify Him! But there is a “but” here…: A people who do not understand all His ways but worship Him anyways, might glorify Him even more!
Besides having been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2007, there have been 6 times so far in my life when I was no longer able to walk because of back pain. Every one of these 6 times (plus many more times with minor issues) has been completely different. Causes and cure were not always the same. So, I am far from making general statements. But I want to suggest 7 different categories of causes for sickness. There might be more, but I find these categories helpful to consider:

• Bad care 

• Emotional problems affecting the body 

• Spiritual Attack 

• Simply for God's glory 

• Sin 

• Accidents, Natural Disasters and Terrorism 

• Other Purposes of God