Week Three: Day Four
The Story
Anna received amazing healing from the hurt of believing that she had caused her parents’ divorce. God reached her through someone whom she calls “her TV preacher”. She knew that she had been delivered from a great lie. What she didn’t know was that her healing had only just begun. It was going to be as if it were an onion. When she pealed back one layer she found a new, unaddressed layer needing attention.
The day after her healing she committed to going to a healthy church again. She immediately thought of her youth leader, Pastor Jordan, who had walked alongside her during her parents’ divorce. He now works for Hope Community Church. This is the church that Matt attended regularly. Pastor Richard was still the senior pastor. It is remarkable when a senior pastor is with a congregation for more than thirty years!
Anna asked Pastor Jordan for a meeting in his office. She had heard from several friends that finding freedom in Christ would take several steps and she didn’t know which step was next. Pastor Jordan warmly welcomed Anna as they sat down together.
First, Pastor Jordan asked to hear about Anna’s prayer of healing lead by her TV preacher. Then he asked her what she remembered about the day her father walked out on her and her mom. Immediately, Pastor Jordan recognized a need for Anna to be free from a fear of rejection. It had burdened her throughout her life. In fact, she was always asking others for their opinion of her, never being quite satisfied with what they had to say. This was especially so when others’ opinions were positive.
Pastor Jordan lead Anna through a prayer of accepting her identity in Jesus. Immediately, Anna felt another weight lift from her life. As Anna left his office, he recommended that she read about the many instances in the Bible about healing. He wanted her to see for herself that healing has many parts and is not a singular process. She couldn’t wait to get home to begin.
The Devotion
The ministry of healing is a tenet of the Christian faith and it’s often misunderstood. Meet two Christians and ask them for the definition of healing and you will hear two very opposing viewpoints. How can this be for such a simple word and concept?
In Malcolm Hedding’s book called Mark: A Devotional and Contemplative Study of Jesus’ Remarkable Ministry and Passion, he writes that the Bible demonstrates four interlocking types of healing. Here they are as a bulleted list:
- Spiritual healing or healing that delivers us from sin and saves us eternally
- Physical healing or deliverance from disease
- Inner healing or the healing of a wounded spirit
- Demonic healing or deliverance from satanic powers
Pastor Malcolm speaks to how Jesus never walked around asking if someone wanted to be healed. Throughout the book of Mark, the healing stories of Jesus were sacredly performed only after someone presented themselves to Him for healing. It was in that presentation when Jesus revealed their faith to be healed. Without such faith, healing could not take place.
What’s important to understand is that these types of healing are not mutually exclusive. They are additive. How often is it that you and I pray for someone to be physically healed without looking at the emotional healing that may have needed to take place before the physical?
Jesus healed the crippled man’s sins before healing his legs [Mark 2]. Most certainly the crippled man’s friends believed that his healing needed to come in the form of physical healing, but couldn’t recognize his need for spiritual healing first. Jesus is the best discerner who has ever lived. You and I also need to become great spiritual discerners and not just recognizers of what is in front of us.
The most troubling part of praying for someone to be healed is when we pray and it doesn’t happen. To be honest, this must be the toughest question that I often ask of God. Why are my closest loved ones’ healing either taking longer than expected or perhaps not at all?
An answer to this question may be in Ben Carson’s book called Gifted Hands. Carson, who operated on some of the toughest cases of children’s diseases, speaks to how we are the Lord’s. We are only entrusted to one another for seasons and as benefactors of a gift. God is sovereign and his kingdom is eternal. Our hope is not of or in this world.
This is not to say that we shouldn’t believe in healing. I believe healing comes through anointed prayer. I believe intercessory prayer moves mountains. What opens my mind in Malcolm Hedding’s book Mark is that healing may need to be unlocked by one or even all four types found within the Bible before restoration can occur.
In my son and daughters’ children’s Bible called The Jesus Storybook Bible, author Sally Lloyd Jones calls God’s love, “Never stopping, never giving up, unbreakable, always and forever love.” God sees his work through to completion and it’s our job to believe and act on that faith.
If you are awaiting healing today, I pray in Jesus’ Name that you will be healed. Continue to find those who will act in faith on your behalf. Do your best to seek God’s counsel through scripture and rely heavily upon it. Be careful to stay rooted in the words of the Bible and not drawn into following mystic ideas that are here today and gone tomorrow. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. This is our great hope!
The Bible
John 9 | Psalm 139 | Deuteronomy 28
The Prayer
“Dear Lord Jesus, I thank You that You bore every stripe on the cross for my healing. There is nothing that I should be burdened with because You said You would carry it instead. Today I choose blessing and not curse. I lay my fears down at the foot of the cross, never intending to pick them back up. I renounce a fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of insufficiency, fear of ___________. Instead, I take on Your identity for me. You knit me together in my mother’s womb for a great purpose. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I trust Your leading and acknowledge my need for a Savior. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
