Healing?

CrossPointe Community Church May 22, 2022

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CrossPointe Community Church
P O Box 126
Chippewa Lake, OH 44215

MORNING PRAYER

Alan Robbins

Please join me in prayer.
Dear Heavenly Father, from the words of today’s prayer song
“Cast all your cares upon the Lord for He cares for you”
How comforting and uplifting it is to be able to Cast our cares to God for He does care for us. He will help us through our times of need.
What a great uplifting message this song brings as we continue our thoughts throughout the Easter Season. Knowing the power of the Risen Lord and the hope it brings to all Christians, and the life with Jesus in Heaven.
A special prayer for my sister, Linda Graebe, who has recently went to heaven. God, please reach out to hold her family, but also reach out and hold all those that are grieving, for all those that are ill, for all those that are hurting in any way, and prayers for our own needs.
We pray for God’s strength and God’s heart and God’s Peace to those families and leaders in Ukraine and neighboring countries as they fight the evils that surround them.
Let us take a few moments to silently pray for those in need and those on the Church’s prayer list.
Thank you, Lord, as we give God’s Glory ….and Grace…… and Joy….and Refuge…… and Strength….. and Love ….and Peace ….and the Holy Spirit to our community and the world in which we live.
In Jesus name we pray. Amen

SCRIPTURE

Afterward Jesus returned to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish holy days. Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was the pool of Bethesda, with five covered porches. Crowds of sick people—blind, lame, or paralyzed—lay on the porches. One of the men lying there had been sick for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, he asked him, “Would you like to get well?”
“I can’t, sir,” the sick man said, “for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me.”
Jesus told him, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk!”
Instantly, the man was healed! He rolled up his sleeping mat and began walking! But this miracle happened on the Sabbath, so the Jewish leaders objected. They said to the man who was cured, “You can’t work on the Sabbath! The law doesn’t allow you to carry that sleeping mat!”
But he replied, “The man who healed me told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’”
“Who said such a thing as that?” they demanded.
The man didn’t know, for Jesus had disappeared into the crowd. But afterward Jesus found him in the Temple and told him, “Now you are well; so stop sinning, or something even worse may happen to you.” Then the man went and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had healed him.
John 5:1-15

This boasting will do no good, but I must go on. I will reluctantly tell about visions and revelations from the Lord. I was caught up to the third heaven fourteen years ago. Whether I was in my body or out of my body, I don’t know—only God knows. Yes, only God knows whether I was in my body or outside my body. But I do know that I was caught up to paradise and heard things so astounding that they cannot be expressed in words, things no human is allowed to tell. That experience is worth boasting about, but I’m not going to do it. I will boast only about my weaknesses. If I wanted to boast, I would be no fool in doing so, because I would be telling the truth. But I won’t do it, because I don’t want anyone to give me credit beyond what they can see in my life or hear in my message, even though I have received such wonderful revelations from God.
So to keep me from becoming proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud. Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. Each time He said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.”
So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
II Corinthians 12:1-10

MESSAGE

Healing?

Randy K’Meyer

Shortly after becoming a Christian in 1980, I began listening to Pastor Chuck Swindoll on his Insight for Living radio show. Believe it or not, he still preaches regularly at the age of 87 at Stonebriar Community Church in Frisco, Texas which averages about 6,000 people a Sunday. In fact, he preached last Sunday morning for 55 minutes in two services!

I have listened to a lot of preachers in my day and I have learned to respect him as one of the most well-balanced Bible teachers I know.

I at one time had a cassette tape on which he told a story about a close friend who he met as they served together in the Marine Corps. Their friendship deepened over the years even though Swindoll moved to a pastorate in Massachusetts, while his friend remained in Texas.

One day, Chuck received a call from his friend who asked him to pray for him. Swindoll’s friend had been recently been diagnosed with a malignant tumor in his tongue that clearly showed up on x-rays. “I just want you to pray that if it is God’s perfect will, He might do a miracle.”

As soon as they hung up, Swindoll went to his place of prayer in his basement and prayed for about an hour. He said that he did not hear a voice or see a vision, but he did have an unusual confidence and peace about his friend’s condition.

A couple of days later his friend called from the Mayo Clinic. “I have great news, I have seen several specialists, and my wife and I just finished meeting with my attending physician. He is baffled Chuck, he says there is no cancer.

He says I brought the wrong set of x-rays from Dallas. He showed me the two sets side by side, the set from Dallas clearly showing the large gray deadly mass, and the one just taken with no gray at all.”

And Chuck concluded that story by stating, “It was miraculous, almost instantaneous, and it remained permanent; he never again had pain or a growth in his tongue; he died many years later by a completely unrelated disease.”

On the other hand, listen to the prayer request written by my cousin, Tom Lutz, concerning his little boy.

December, 1986
Dear Family and Friends,
Little David will soon be 6 months old by the calendar. Most of you know he was born 11 weeks early, on June 20. Quite a big boy really – 3 lbs. 11 oz. and almost 17” long.
He has fought many battles in his short life. The doctors now tells us not to expect to bring him home. They say his chances of getting off the respirator are less than 10%. His lung disease (BPD – caused by his prematurity) has resulted in heart damage.
David is one of our greatest blessings. We thank God for him. it gives us some idea of the love that God has for us that “He gave His only son so that we who believe in him will not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
It has been a rough 6 months. We love our baby very much. David recognizes us now. He likes his musical pony, enjoys his evening bath and loves to look at that blue-eyed baby in his mirror. We know that God can heal him if He chooses to do so. If not, David will go to a far better home in heaven. Please pray for David’s comfort and that God’s perfect will be done.
Tom and Rota Lutz

A week after I received Tom’s letter, I received the sad news that little David had died.

Chuck Swindoll’s story and my cousin Tom’s story typify the mystery of why some are healed and many are not.

What does the New Testament have to say about healing?

Most of us are aware that Jesus had the ability to heal any illness that he encountered, and on three occasions He raises someone from the dead.

The gospels record twenty-four times when Jesus healed sick individuals; one woman who was sick for eighteen years, one each of a deformed hand, a deaf-mute and a man suffering gout, two of a fever, and two men (including the one in today’s text) who were paralyzed, five who were blind and eleven were cured of that awful skin disease, leprosy.

Beyond those, there are several occasions when it is recorded that Jesus healed both “many” and “all” who came to Him.

When you spend some time reflecting on Jesus’ healing, you begin to see that, for whatever reason, He didn’t always heal all. Today’s text reveals that He healed a paralyzed man by the pool of Bethesda. But what about the ‘crowds of sick people’ who were left to lie there that day?

Even so, certainly no one questions the ability of Jesus to invoke God’s power to heal whomever He wished.

The question then becomes did He pass this ability to His disciples? And the answer is, “Yes.”

Luke 9:1 says, “One day Jesus called together His twelve disciples and gave them power and authority to cast out demons and to heal all diseases.” Although the gospels do not record a specific incident when this occurs, the Book of Acts records seven times when various disciples are involved in healing others.

Then we must ask, do the letters of the New Testament have any light to shed? Paul in I Corinthians 12:28 in the midst of his most comprehensive writing on ‘spiritual gifts,’ Paul mentions that some in the church have been given the gift of ‘healing.’

James, while taking a different approach than Paul, still affirms God is more than able to heal the sick through His people: “Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed any sins, you will be forgiven.” (5:14-15).

The question now becomes, are certain people within the body of Christ, be it people with a spiritual gift or elders, that is leaders in the church, still manifesting God’s healing power?

The answer to that $64,000 question depends on who you ask.

Some Christian teachers, like Charles Swindoll and those associated with Dallas Theological Seminary ascribe to the idea that God did miracles (healing) in order to lend God’s authority to the messenger and believe that miracles and healing gifts passed away with the early church.

For Biblical support, they note that there were four periods in the Bible in which God worked miracles through Moses, Elijah, Daniel, and finally Jesus and His disciples. That God used those miracles to get peoples’ attention to authenticate the messenger and their message at critical junctures of the history of the faith. That God no longer needs to authenticate the message, because we have the written revelation of God given to us in the Bible. They note that if Paul could heal at will, why didn’t he heal his son in the faith, Timothy, who had constant stomach ills, or his traveling companions Epaphroditus who was so sick he almost died, (Philippians 2:25-27) or Trophimus, who Paul had to leave sick in Miletus (II Timothy 4:19-20).

What about Paul himself, in which God replies to his prayer for healing, “My grace is sufficient for you” (II Corinthians 12:9).

At the other end of the spectrum, there are those ministers who operate from within the ‘health and wealth’ gospel, who build their ministries around the proliferation of healings. Though the percentage of churches and ministries involved in these movements is relatively small, they, nonetheless, attract a lot of attention because they have enough money to buy TV air time. We can tune in about any time day or night to learn how to be healthy and wealthy by following their ‘prosperity’ formulas.

Some of the key elements of these kinds of teachings are:

God desires for all of His children to be healthy and wealthy.
The bible contains laws of prosperity for health and wealth that are set in motion by faith and will produce miraculous results when used as directed.
It is a sin to be poor or sick because to be either denotes a lack of faith.

So where does the truth lie? As it usually does . . . somewhere in the middle.

Experience confirms what the Bible indicates; sometimes God heals and sometimes He does not.

I encourage you to google healing and prayer and read for yourself the many online articles that scientifically attest to that link. One WebMD article titled Can Prayer Heal? details non-biased studies done at Duke, Dartmouth, and Yale indicating prayer definitely has a positive impact on hospital patient outcomes. ¹

Another article, Science Proves the Healing Power of Prayer, states, “For the devout, there never has been any question that prayer has the power to heal. More and more medical research from leading hospitals and universities across the U.S. has shown conclusively a belief in God really is good for you, making you healthier and happier, and helping you live longer. Studies have shown prayer can prevent people from getting sick, and when they do get sick, prayer can help them get better faster.” ²

Even so, you have to agree that the power of prayer has its limits. No prayer will reverse the aging process, eliminate the need for nourishment, or cure baldness.

One well-known faith preacher/healer is now famous, or infamous, for having his parishioners place their hands on the heads and yell with him over and over the words, “Hair grow!” ³

I didn’t see any hair grow.

By the way, at the beginning of the pandemic, the same televangelist prayed “COVID be gone!” and then assured his people that no one in America would die from COVID. ⁴

Dr. Paul Brand who before he died wrote for Christianity Today said, “From my own experience as a physician I must truthfully admit that among thousands of patients I have treated, I have never observed an unequivocal instance of a miraculous healing.” ⁵

Phillip Yancey notes the medical literature today estimates that 2 or 3 out every 1000 people with cancer will experience a sudden cure unrelated to treatment. ⁶

Yancey also tells of a famous faith healer who one day confided to him that he had seen only 2 or 3 cases he would classify as a miracle. ⁷

And he also points out that the medical board at Lourdes in France has examined over 7,000 cases of claimed healing and have only authenticated 67 as miraculous cures; only 1 since 1987. ⁸

It seems as if we are left to struggle with the dilemma of prayer and physical healing.

And yet in the midst of our struggle with this issue, I would never turn away anyone who would come asking for healing prayers. Neither would you. James 5 and other scriptures invite us to come before God and make known our requests asking in Jesus’ name for God’s will to be done in the lives of those for whom we pray.

We should always be ready to bring that request for a friend or loved one to God whom the Bible describes as “the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort” (II Corinthians 1:3).

I counsel people to pray as does Dr. Vernon Grounds “Lord, I know you have a plan and purpose for this person, I don’t know what it is, but I’ll tell you straight out what I desire for them.” ⁷

With that in mind, I would like to invite anyone who wishes to be prayed for emotionally, physically, or spiritually to come forward.

In the end, trusting God no matter what is one of the most important lessons that God desires for us to learn in our short stay on the earth.

If that miraculous intervention of God that some of us are hoping for, and others are praying for does not take place, we must not conclude that God does not love us or care for us or has somehow forgotten us. For reasons that are beyond our understanding, God chooses to allow us to endure various kinds of trials.

When I took my mother to see her brother Jack, father of my cousin Tom and grandfather of David, after he was diagnosed with colon cancer he told us that he was praying to God for a miracle of healing and was going to act as if God had healed him. But God, for whatever reason, did not heal Uncle Jack despite the fact that many Christians in his family and church were praying for him.

My Uncle Jack’s story has all the appearances of a sad, hopeless story, but it is not a sad story. It is not a sad story because the story is not over. It is not a sad story because cancer did not have the final word. Christ Jesus had the last word about Jack Lutz, when He said to him, “Well done thou good and faithful servant, enter into your rest!”

My uncle Jack believed that no one comes to the Father except through Christ and that because he went through Jesus, He was going to the Father and that dwelling place that Jesus talked about preparing for him. God did not remove the thorn but God gave my uncle Jack the grace to bear it until He called him home!

The truth of the matter is that something is going to get us all. We’re not going to live forever; not here anyway. The greatest healing miracle of all occurs when death does for the Christian. Eternal life is the ultimate healing.

Pondering what God has in store for us in the next life can put wind in our sails during those times when life throws us a punch and that much-desired miracle eludes us. “No eye has seen, no ear has heard no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him” (I Corinthians 2:9).

1 Can Prayer Heal?
WebMd
https://www.webmd.com/balance/features/can-prayer-heal

2 Science Proves the Healing Power of Prayer
https://www.newsmax.com/Health/Headline/prayer-health-faith-medicine/2015/03/31/id/635623/

3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLHWxGNnzmc

4 https://scallywagandvagabond.com/2020/04/pastor-kenneth-copeland-blow-coronavirus-away-video/

6 Ibid, Page 257.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid.