I've been asked to explain why I believe so strongly in Christian healing. There are several reasons. The first, as I've pointed out before, is that Jesus healed everyone who came to him in faith asking for it. There is no record in the Scripture that he turned anyone away. Jesus said that this was part of his mission. In Luke 4:16-21 we have the occasion when Jesus was teaching in the synagogue in Nazareth, his home town. He read from Isaiah: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has chosen me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed and announce that the time has come when the Lord will save his people. Then Jesus proceeds to do just that in his ministry. The second is that he told his disciples to go and do likewise. Matthew records it as (10:7-8), "Go and preach, 'The Kingdom of heaven is near!' Heal the sick, bring the dead back to life, heal those who suffer from dreaded skin diseases, and drive out demons." Luke has Jesus sending the disciples out twice. In Luke 9:1-5, Jesus sends out the 12. Giving them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, he sends them out to preach the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick. In Luke 10, Jesus sends out 72 more men to do the same. The third reason is that the disciples were successful in healing people. Mark says, "So they went out and preached that people should turn away from their sins. They drove out many demons and rubbed olive oil and many sick people and healed them." (Mark 6:12-13). Luke tells us about the 12, "The disciples left and traveled through all the villages, preaching the Good News and healing people everywhere." (Luke 9:6) The 72 sent out in chapter 10 return to report (10:17), "Lord, even the demons obeyed us when we gave them a command in your name!" Then Jesus rejoices at their success and gives praise to his Father (Luke 10:18-24). Three reasons are enough for today, but there are more. Let us pray with Jesus today the prayer of praise upon the return of the 72 (Luke 10:21). "Father, Lord of heaven and earth! I thank you because you have shown to the unlearned what you have hidden from the wise and learned. Yes, Father, this was how you were pleased to have it happen."
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"What Would Jesus Do?" was a catchphrase a while back. It got a lot of people thinking and, sometimes, a lot of people arguing. They argued because they did not agree on what Jesus would do. In certain moral situations it is often difficult to determine what Jesus would do. And in our brief reflections here we can't go into those morally ambiguous debates. But we can look at what Jesus did. Matthew sums it up nicely when he says, "Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness." (Matthew 9:35) Then Jesus gave his followers the authority to do the same. (Matthew 10, Mark 6, Luke 10) And they did. They did it while he was alive and they did it after he returned to his Father and sent the Holy Spirit. Sometimes they too disagreed over how to go about preaching the kingdom and healing the sick even though they had been with Jesus day after day. I suspect the disagreements among Christians about how to go about things may not end, but what cannot end is our going out to preach the good news and heal the sick. It's what Jesus did. For reflection: Am I doing what Jesus did? Let us pray. Jesus, you set an example it is not always easy to follow. Help me to keep asking myself through the day, "Am I doing what Jesus did?" How many of us wear glasses? Obviously lots of people wear glasses and we are grateful for them. Think what our lives would be like without them. I, for one, wouldn't be able to drive. Using a computer would be difficult. I would miss the expressions on people's faces when they were talking. For millions of people, glasses are a wonderful benefit today. In his day, Jesus healed blind people. Matthew 9:27-31 tells us that two blind men followed Jesus. They even followed him from the street into someone's house. Perhaps, since they were able to follow Jesus, they were not completely blind but had suffered severe vision loss. They had heard of Jesus and the miracles he was doing, but they hadn't seen him. How could they? Yet they had faith that he could and would heal them. And he did. This is one of the occasions when Jesus told the people who were healed not to tell anyone. But you have to wonder, if they had been blind or nearly blind, how could the blind men not go home to their wives and children with a big a smile? How could their family and friends not notice that, all of a sudden, they can see. It's not something you could hide, much less not tell anyone about. So they ignored Jesus' instructions and spread the good news. For reflection: Do I need physical healing of my eyes? Spiritual healing? Who else do I know who needs to have their eyes opened? Let us pray. Jesus, I don't know why so many people lose all or part of their eyesight. But I have faith that you are able and willing to heal all of us. Come, Lord Jesus, and heal our eyes both physically and spiritually. Another day, another miracle. If we've been Christian a long time, and read the Scriptures for many years we can become ho-hum about all the miracles Jesus performed and how much he suffered on our behalf. The challenge can be to read them with new eyes and hear them with new ears. Before we read Scripture, we should ask the Holy Spirit to be with us and help us to hear what God is saying to us today through that particular passage. Today let's read Luke 6:6-11 (The same story is also told in Matthew 12:9-14 and Mark 3:1-6.) Jesus heals a man with a useless right hand. Perhaps the hand had been crushed in an accident or maybe the man had a stroke and no longer had the use of that hand. We have the description of the hand being shriveled, but we don't know why. The healing is intertwined with the Jewish leaders' criticism of Jesus for curing people on the Sabbath - which they considered to be work. Of course, none of them had ever restored someone's hand. So perhaps the real reason they were mad was that Jesus made them look bad. He could cure people and they, the educated and most faithful, couldn't. In Luke's version the healing of the hand is almost incidental to the story. But it was not incidental to the man. No doubt his life was changed by having his right hand back. For reflection: One method of getting something new from a Scriptural passage we've read many times is to place ourselves in the story. There are many options for who we might be in this story: the person with the shriveled hand, a Pharisee or teacher of the law, Jesus, a family member of the man being healed, one of the bystanders. Where am I in the story? What do I see and hear now? Let us pray. Holy Spirit, I don't want to become immune to the message. Help me to see what you want me to see, and hear what you want me to hear, and do what you want me to do today. Photo credit: Copyright: <a href='http://www.123rf.com/profile_aparagraph'>aparagraph / 123RF Stock Photo</a> As I looked around the church on Sunday, I noticed how many people in the congregation were using canes, walkers and crutches. Those are great testimonies to the treatments of modern medicine, but not such great testimonies to the healing power of Jesus. When Jesus saw the faith of the man's friends, he healed the paralytic. We looked at this story of healing on Monday (Matthew 9:1-8; Mark 2:1-12; Luke 5:17-26). We don't know if the paralyzed man had faith. Maybe he did; maybe he didn't. But we know that his friends did. They carried him to Jesus, tore a hole in the roof, and, using ropes, lowered him in front of Jesus. That took planning, preparation and persistence. This may be the case when we pray with someone. They may not have much faith, but their friend does or we do. The person in need of prayer may be hope-filled but not faith-filled. They may be doubtful or skeptical. They may be incapable of getting to Jesus on their own. We may be the only one praying who has faith. We may need to plan, prepare and persist so that the experience of healing can bring them to faith. What would have happened to the man who was paralyzed if he hadn't gotten a little help from his friends? He could not have gotten to Jesus on his own. His friends helped him get his life back. For reflection: Is there anyone among my friends with a knee, hip or ankle injury? Anyone facing joint surgery with weeks of rehabilitation afterward? Am I the friend who will take them to Jesus? Can I help them get their life back? Let us pray. Jesus, you instantly healed the man who was paralyzed because his friends brought him to you. I bring to you today _____. I don't want him/her to suffer any longer. I don't care what the doctors say about the length of their recovery. I care about their health and their relationship to you. Another of Jesus' healings is of a man who is paralyzed (Matthew 9:1-8). The man's friends brought him to Jesus on a mat. Now we don't know how long the man had been paralyzed or why he was paralyzed. Was he born that way or was he hurt in an accident? How old is he? Is he married? We are not told. The encounter is a little strange because the first thing Jesus says to the man is, "Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven." His friends didn't bring him there to have his sins forgiven; they brought him to be healed. Evidently Jesus thought it more important to forgive his sins than to heal him physically (recall Matthew 5:27-30). Nevertheless Jesus heals him physically also. Jesus attends to the full person - body and soul. For reflection: Jesus is interested in the whole person. When I pray with someone for healing, am I listening to Holy Spirit for guidance about praying for the whole person? Who have I seen in the last few days who needs prayer for healing? Let us pray. Jesus, you set an example that is not easy to follow. People don't bring friends to me for healing. I have to be brave enough to step up and ask if they would like prayer. Even though people seldom say "No", it still takes courage on my part. Strengthen me with more courage, please. How many miracles did Jesus perform while he was on earth? Lots, but we don't know precisely now many. John says toward the end of his Gospel that Jesus did many miracles that are not recorded, but that John wrote his gospel so that we might believe that "Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing have life in his name." (John 20:31) Let's spend some time looking at a few over the coming weeks. More than once Jesus healed lepers. At that time lepers were shunned from society because leprosy was contagious. So being healed of leprosy was a life changing event. The man approaches Jesus on his knees, begging to be healed. "If you are willing, Lord, you can make me clean." Jesus replied, "I am willing. Be clean!" There is no doubt in the leper's mind that Jesus can heal him. The doubt is in whether or not Jesus would want to heal him. Jesus' response is to assure the man that he does indeed want to heal him. (This healing is recorded in Matthew 8:1-4, Mark 1:40-45 and Luke 5:12-16.) There was no medical cure for leprosy until the 1990s. For reflection: Jesus does indeed want to heal me. What do I want healed today? Will I believe more strongly in Jesus if I am healed? Will someone else believe in Jesus if I am healed? Let us pray. Jesus, because you healed a man instantaneously of a disease for which there was no known cure, I ask for your healing. I need to be healed of _____. Like the man with leprosy, I will tell others what you have done for me. What do we get by forgiving and loving others? What's in it for us? Jesus actually answers those questions. "I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven" (Matthew 5:44-45a). In 6:14-15 Jesus goes on to say, "For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins." If we go beyond loving those who love us (Matthew 5:46), we can participate in the divine forgiveness that God the Father offers, be true sons of the Father, and have our sins forgiven also. Those promises would be incentive enough, but forgiving others sets us free from the judgments we have made (Matthew 7:1-2) and brings spiritual and (often)physical healing to our bodies. For reflection: What lingering unforgiveness can I get rid of this week, before Easter? Let us pray. "My prayer is not for them alone (the apostles). I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me" (John 17:20-21). The Rwandan genocide began 20 years ago this week. There was already a civil war going on, but now there was a government-ordered mass killing of civilians of all ages, even babies. Those being killed could offer little to no resistance. It was a horrible time. What has happened since? The new government realized that they could not put half the population on trial for war crimes. So they chose, for the most part, to emulate the truth and justice commissions of South Africa. Neighbors faced neighbors with the facts of the murders. The guilty were asked to repent; the innocent were asked to forgive. It is hard to imagine even one of those meetings. Yet with one million people killed, how many of the face-offs had to be held? What if the Rwandans had followed an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (Matthew 5:38-42) instead of repentance and forgiveness? Who would be left? For reflection: From what do I need to repent? Whom do I need to forgive? Let us pray. "If today you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts" (Psalm 95:8). Let me hear your voice today, Lord. Grant me the grace of repentance and forgiveness. Snowboarding, free skiing and other events have been added to the Olympic games in recent years. These are sports that only developed recently. People invented these sports. They invented the equipment; they invented the moves. Someone did it first and then spread the word. Usually these innovators are young people who are willing to try anything. They don't have a fear of failure (or many times a fear of death). When they get to a certain age, they retire from the sport to get married, raise families and pursue other dreams. They settle down; live normal lives. I'm not sure as Christians that we should settle down and live normal lives. We should be the ones trying new things in the Spirit, finding new ways to achieve healing, working miracles to feed the hungry and house the homeless, even raising the dead. We should be the ones soaring above the earth in the Spirit, being transported supernaturally to other places, getting "big air". These are radical things in the Spirit today which for Christians should be the new normal. For reflection: What is the new normal to which God is calling me? Where have I settled for less than God wants? What new moves does God want me to develop? Let us pray. Jesus, in you all things are possible. I want to know you and the power of your resurrection. I don't want to settle for less than you have planned for me and will enable me to do. I want to keep pressing on toward that to which you have called me. With you I have no fear.(based on Matthew 19:26, Ephesians 3:10, 13-14 and 1 John 4:18). |
AliceI started this website and blog on May 1, 2012. I am a Catholic who has been in ministry for many years. I first developed what I would call a close relationship with Jesus in the early 1970s. Ever since then I have been praying with people for healing and other needs. It is because I have seen so many of these prayers answered that I am so bold as to offer to pray for you individually through this website and phone line. Archives
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