"To Him be glory forever": healing

Showing posts with label healing. Show all posts

Thursday, November 3, 2016

God's chemotherapy

One of the practices we have when we gather for worship each Sunday is to offer prayer for healing. I extend an invitation for anyone in need of healing of body, heart, mind, soul or spirit to come forward. Sometimes I read the words of James 5:14, which say:

"Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord."

Each Sunday anywhere from one to a dozen people come to the front of the church, where they stand in a semicircle. I go around the circle and make the sign of the cross on their forehead, using a little oil on my thumb. As I do so I say their name, adding, "I bless you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." Those who have come forward for prayer then join hands and I invite anyone who would like to lay hands on them as we pray to come forward. When everyone is in place I also join their hands and offer up a prayer that God would bring the healing they seek, closing the prayer in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

I never ask why anyone comes forward. Sometimes I know, such as the Sunday following the sudden death of a member's daughter. Other times I think I have a general idea, because of things I am aware of in a person's life. And other times I just don't know, and I don’t need to know. We are God's people, gathered to worship, and I pray with whomever the Spirit moves that morning.

Does God answer their prayer and bring the healing they desire? Yes in some cases, and not yet in others.

In three years as their pastor I have prayed with some people on Sunday morning many, many times. Practically speaking, what is the point of praying with the same people each week, lifting their concerns to God one Sunday, and lifting them again the next Sunday, and the next?

The point is this. Each Sunday I lift them to the Lord. praising Him, thanking Him, and asking Him to be powerfully active in whatever way it might be that they need healing, leaving the results and it's timing in His hands.

In a sense our healing prayer is like chemotherapy. I have a friend with an incurable cancer. He was diagnosed several years ago and received an initial period of treatment that put the cancer into remission. His doctors have no cure for the cancer. All they can do is monitor its status in his body and regularly give him chemotherapy: powerful, nearly deadly medication, designed to keep his cancer levels low. To the best of my knowledge he will receive chemotherapy for the remainder of his life.

Our healing prayer is like chemotherapy, in the sense that in its own way the prayer is an ongoing kind of treatment for something that is not right and for which we long to be made well. But there the similarity ends, for where chemotherapy uses deadly chemicals, prayer is a treatment that by it's very nature brings life.

The specific healing may not be provided immediately, or it may not come for a very long time. But to approach the Lord God Almighty and to trust that His word and His promises are unfailing, is a powerful act of faith. In the darkest storm of life the light of God may seem to be invisible, but in our prayer for healing we trust that it is there and we anticipate the day when we will see it in all it's glory.

Monday, November 5, 2012

Better than 'okay'

I know someone in ministry out in New York who is seeking some suggestions for prayers to use with victims of Hurricane Sandy. Among the types of things that may be appropriate and meaningful are words of lament and words of hope. I think that the goal is to find things that are emotionally honest in speaking to God what comes to our mind when sudden and dramatic suffering occurs. The Psalms are saturated with these types of thoughts; thoughts that are honestly, painfully expressed by God’s people to God. My friend’s request was also specific in what was not wanted, i.e. “not any cheesy “It’s all gonna be okay” prayers.””

Which got me to thinking…

In times of suffering is it acceptable to pray “It’s going to be okay” in some way? Living through a Sandy, or Katrina, or 9/11 or any other catastrophe, be it large or small, affecting hundreds or thousands of people, or even just one person, amidst any other prayer we would offer in those circumstances can we also include “It’s going to be okay”? Should we include “It’s going to be okay”?

I think that part of the answer lies in where our vision is cast. Are we only looking around at the place where we are at and remembering what once was? In that case there is no way we can say, or even guess, that things will turn out to be okay.

Another part of the answer is found in the place where we are looking from. If we are looking from a place that is very firmly fixed in this world as the only form of existence, then to pray “It’s all gonna be okay” is to speak empty words into empty space, hoping to find something solid. And it won’t happen.

But if we are people who know God as revealed in Christ Jesus, then both the place where we are standing and the place we are looking towards are profoundly different. The place where we are standing is temporary and the place we have an eye towards is eternal.

The place where we are standing, or sitting, or crying, or wailing, even screaming out in hurt and brokenness is our home but for a time. It is a home that will one day be redeemed. And that redeemed home is the place where our vision is truly set upon. In Revelation 21:5 the promise of God is:

“And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.””

Bringing comfort into a painful place is a difficult thing and the Christian does well to seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit before speaking into those moments. And while it may take the passing of a great deal of time before the situation looks hopeful the Christian can know, with complete confidence, that the outcome won’t just be okay, but that in the end, God’s end, it will be so much better than “okay” even hints at.

Monday, May 21, 2012

Healing and God’s glory

Last week I wrote a post around the topic of healing. One of the claims I made in that post was that God could heal absolutely anything. I added the qualifier that in doing so he would do it for his purposes and not for ours.

This morning I learned of just such a case, here where I live in Rochester, MN. Here are the links to the story as it appeared in the local news. Part one describes the circumstances and part two describes more specifically what the woman, Ema Mckinley, felt as she was being healed.

Miracles do happen. While I have seen evidence of many remarkable things happen in my work at the hospital what, in my mind anyhow, separates a remarkable event from a miracle is that miracles serve God’s purposes by bringing him glory in the world.

God’s power and glory are given powerful testimony in this story. It is seen in the faithful witness of Ema Mckinley, who never abandoned her faith throughout the many years of her disability. And it is seen in the testimony of Dr. Stanhope, who states that the healing came in response to answered prayer, prayer that God answered for reasons that are known only to him.

In his letter to the church at Ephesus Paul writes these words in Ephesians 3:20-21, the only words I find to be a response to Mckinley’s miraculous healing:

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Healing

Can God heal our bodies when we get sick? When they break down? When they are on the verge of death? I believe that he can, because my understanding of God, as revealed in the Bible, is that he can do absolutely anything and everything.

All of creation came into existence through the mere speaking of his voice. He created every star that I see in the night sky. He created the pine tree sitting outside of my window. His creative act in the human mind led to the invention of the very computer that I am writing with and the technology that you are using to read this post.

Healing, and specifically God’s power in healing, floats through my mind every once and a while, and it has been on my mind again the past few days. I work in a hospital providing care to people recovering from serious injuries and illnesses. Some of my patients are in the hospital a few days, and I have worked with people who have stayed in the hospital for many months.

I have cared for some people on and off for many years and some of the people who I met through their time in the hospital are among my best friends.

No one likes being sick, and when we are ill there is nothing as good as having our health restored. But time and again in my work at the hospital I have met people who will likely never experience a return to the health that they once had. Their bodies have acquired injuries that even the best medical and surgical treatment has little to offer.

As I stated in my beginning, I believe that God can heal absolutely anything and everything, but there is a qualifier to that, which is that God works healing according to his will. And this can be hard for us to grasp and accept.

We want God to work healing according to our will, and for our purposes, and we find it hard to accept that God’s purposes in our illnesses, even in our routine aches and pains, may be different. Paul wrote of this in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10, saying,

"So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

Paul understood that God’s purpose in his suffering, which he very much desired to be relieved of, was for Paul’s own good. Paul’s suffering remained in order to serve God’s purposes rather than Paul’s.

I don’t mean to be trite about any suffering that anyone is going through, be it physical, mental, emotional or spiritual. This post isn’t about the question of “Why suffering exists?” but rather to briefly address why we may experience healing in our suffering.

What I want is to be mindful that in times of suffering we are never alone. When we are suffering it may rarely be our first focus, but God is always with us.

There have been times when I have ardently longed for healing and it hasn’t come, at least not in the way I desired it. And in my longing I was eventually able to see God’s presence and have my own faith strengthened, like Paul, in the midst of my suffering.

While we most often think of healing in terms of our bodies and the day-to-day lives that we lead, we can also be mindful of God’s promises, promises of a time when for the people of God there will be no more suffering. In Revelation 7:16-17 the Apostle John writes,

“They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

We may or may not know the healing of our various ailments. We may earnestly yearn for, and pray for, the healing of those whom we hold dear, healing which may or may not come in this life.

And as we do so let us also be mindful that in the finished work of Christ God has a healing awaiting his children that is so glorious as to be almost unimaginable in its goodness and perfection.

To God be the glory, now and forever, amen.