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Showing posts with label Miracle Healing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Miracle Healing. Show all posts
Tuesday, 26 March 2013
Friday, 23 March 2012
God Heals
All healing is, in some way, divine healing, spiritual healing, perhaps even a 'miracle' healing. We can speak of 'natural' processes for healing, but who created nature? Who set its rules, gave it its direction? God, of course. So when body tissue repairs itself and the immune system works, it is doing what God intended it to do. We can also speak of Me' medical' healing or cure (Gk. therapeuô). But medicine is rooted in the understanding of how nature works. It gives a boost to the systems for healing that we already have within us, clearing away roadblocks to restoring health, and does some things that nature does not have the ability to do on its own. Medicine itself has no ultimate healing power.All medicine can do at its very best is to delay death's inevitable arrival. Even medicine's ability to delay death is a great gift from God. The Holy Spirit is, according to the Nicene Creed, the Giver of life. The Spirit is also the sustainer of life, the breath you keep drawing in as long as you're alive. Just as the Spirit can heal your soul, the Spirit can work within you to heal your body.
The kind of healing that the Bible talks about also takes place today in our day and time. It is real. It's in the toolbox that the Spirit has given Christ's followers. As we do with many of those tools, we try to be in control, to manipulate people using faith healing, or to fake it in order to become famous. That is the human way. The real gift may be hard to find because so many are claiming to do it.
In today's world, many people turn to spiritual healing ministries and faith healers for many of the same reasons they use for turning to alternative medicine, unusual therapies, and New Age spiritual healing:
spiritual hunger;
meaning in life;
direction for life.
It's best to address these needs without letting them overwhelm the healing task at hand. A true congregational healing ministry is not a psychiatrist's couch or a medical practice or a weekend with a guru. It is neither modern therapy nor another way of saying 'salvation', though it is related to both. A congregation's task for health has a different task. It must not try to imitate them.
Faith healing is not there to replace medicine or the body's healing processes. But Western civilization has gotten even most Christians to look to medical science as their only source of healing. When the Bible speaks of healing, it is speaking of God's stepping in to bring about healing by divine power rather than just medicine. The natural processes obey God's command rather than operate as they normally do. What we call 'miracles' are simply the loving response of the One who's already driving those processes. Thus, the Christian's prayer is not just that the ill be comforted, but that they may be made whole inside and out. When that wholeness occurs, whether miraculous or not, we are not to ask what we did right, but to ask what God is up to.
http://www.spirithome.com/healings.html
The kind of healing that the Bible talks about also takes place today in our day and time. It is real. It's in the toolbox that the Spirit has given Christ's followers. As we do with many of those tools, we try to be in control, to manipulate people using faith healing, or to fake it in order to become famous. That is the human way. The real gift may be hard to find because so many are claiming to do it.
In today's world, many people turn to spiritual healing ministries and faith healers for many of the same reasons they use for turning to alternative medicine, unusual therapies, and New Age spiritual healing:
spiritual hunger;
meaning in life;
direction for life.
It's best to address these needs without letting them overwhelm the healing task at hand. A true congregational healing ministry is not a psychiatrist's couch or a medical practice or a weekend with a guru. It is neither modern therapy nor another way of saying 'salvation', though it is related to both. A congregation's task for health has a different task. It must not try to imitate them.
Faith healing is not there to replace medicine or the body's healing processes. But Western civilization has gotten even most Christians to look to medical science as their only source of healing. When the Bible speaks of healing, it is speaking of God's stepping in to bring about healing by divine power rather than just medicine. The natural processes obey God's command rather than operate as they normally do. What we call 'miracles' are simply the loving response of the One who's already driving those processes. Thus, the Christian's prayer is not just that the ill be comforted, but that they may be made whole inside and out. When that wholeness occurs, whether miraculous or not, we are not to ask what we did right, but to ask what God is up to.
http://www.spirithome.com/healings.html
Catalysts for Divine Action
People report that they go through strange things when they are miraculously healed:
-- shaking or shivering hands;
-- heat where a healer and heal-ee make contact;
-- a gift of being led as to what to pray for;
-- the feeling of being 'bathed in prayer', a sense of peace and assurance that there are people really actively praying for the person's wellness, and that God is giving a positive response to their prayers.
-- a 'parting of the fog', a sudden clarity of mind or return of awareness during illnesses or treatments that produce dizziness, extreme weakness, headache, or disorientation.
Pentecostalists dispute about whether the spiritual gift of healing is given to a 'healer' (so said Oral Roberts) or to the 'healed' (so said David DuPlessis). There's reason to suspect that the Spirit is giving matching gifts to both. There are some people who just seem to be able to bring healing with them wherever they go. They act as great catalysts for healing. Yet in order to do the spiritual healing, the Spirit must also be operating inside of the ill person to make the change happen, with or without someone else healing them. The dominant gift, I would think, would be the one to the 'healed' person, as they are the beneficiaries; however, that's by no means clear, and we don't have God's mind so we be certain of what's afoot. Whatever the case, one of the joyful rewards of being in a healing ministry is when you see the Lord bring healing in a way you didn't expect, especially when God gave you a part in what was done.
Someone can talk a lot about spiritual healing, share methods of healing, use anointing oils and liturgies at the scene, discover that they may have a healing touch, teach about intercessory prayer, and learn how to conduct healing services. That's all good, all part of a valid healing ministry. But, unless many actual healings come from that work, that person has less of an actual healing ministry than any of the tens of thousands who take part in prayer chains and hospital visitations for their congregations. Or for that matter, less of a ministry than the countless Christians who are doctors, EMTs, nurses, psychologists and counselors. These unsung heroes of the Christian faith look illness, insanity, human frailty and even death right in the eyes every day. Yet, how often is it that anyone calls big-time attention to them, or stages big church events to whip up a frenzy of praise for them, even after what they did on 9/11? How many Christian congregations fail to even acknowledge such ministries? These people are taking part in what is best seen as a 'Body' gift of healing -- the kind of gift not focused in a single person or moment, but given to Christ's followers as a group as well as to those people within it who take on these tasks.
"Honor physicians for their services,
for the Lord created them;
for their gift of healing comes from the Most High...
And he gave skill to human beings,
that he might be glorified in his marvelous works.
By them the physician heals and takes away pain;
the pharmacist makes a mixture from them.
God's works will never be finished;
and from him health spreads over all the earth."
----- Sirach 38:1, 6-8. (NRSV)
-- shaking or shivering hands;
-- heat where a healer and heal-ee make contact;
-- a gift of being led as to what to pray for;
-- the feeling of being 'bathed in prayer', a sense of peace and assurance that there are people really actively praying for the person's wellness, and that God is giving a positive response to their prayers.
-- a 'parting of the fog', a sudden clarity of mind or return of awareness during illnesses or treatments that produce dizziness, extreme weakness, headache, or disorientation.
Pentecostalists dispute about whether the spiritual gift of healing is given to a 'healer' (so said Oral Roberts) or to the 'healed' (so said David DuPlessis). There's reason to suspect that the Spirit is giving matching gifts to both. There are some people who just seem to be able to bring healing with them wherever they go. They act as great catalysts for healing. Yet in order to do the spiritual healing, the Spirit must also be operating inside of the ill person to make the change happen, with or without someone else healing them. The dominant gift, I would think, would be the one to the 'healed' person, as they are the beneficiaries; however, that's by no means clear, and we don't have God's mind so we be certain of what's afoot. Whatever the case, one of the joyful rewards of being in a healing ministry is when you see the Lord bring healing in a way you didn't expect, especially when God gave you a part in what was done.
Someone can talk a lot about spiritual healing, share methods of healing, use anointing oils and liturgies at the scene, discover that they may have a healing touch, teach about intercessory prayer, and learn how to conduct healing services. That's all good, all part of a valid healing ministry. But, unless many actual healings come from that work, that person has less of an actual healing ministry than any of the tens of thousands who take part in prayer chains and hospital visitations for their congregations. Or for that matter, less of a ministry than the countless Christians who are doctors, EMTs, nurses, psychologists and counselors. These unsung heroes of the Christian faith look illness, insanity, human frailty and even death right in the eyes every day. Yet, how often is it that anyone calls big-time attention to them, or stages big church events to whip up a frenzy of praise for them, even after what they did on 9/11? How many Christian congregations fail to even acknowledge such ministries? These people are taking part in what is best seen as a 'Body' gift of healing -- the kind of gift not focused in a single person or moment, but given to Christ's followers as a group as well as to those people within it who take on these tasks.
"Honor physicians for their services,
for the Lord created them;
for their gift of healing comes from the Most High...
And he gave skill to human beings,
that he might be glorified in his marvelous works.
By them the physician heals and takes away pain;
the pharmacist makes a mixture from them.
God's works will never be finished;
and from him health spreads over all the earth."
----- Sirach 38:1, 6-8. (NRSV)
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