The Believers Prayer....

"On their release, (from interrogation by the authorities, and threats of violence if they don’t shut up about this Jesus) Peter and John went home and reported…

When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God… "…Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your WORD with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus."

And after they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly." Acts 4:23-31 (ish)

I was convicted by this prayer of late… When I say convicted, I mean that I was shown, by God, that my thoughts, my desires, my prayers, were not entirely in line with his in this area. The kind of ‘showing’ that demands a response, a decision to act and to think differently. Repentance…

You see, I’ve been seeing a need for quite some time to see people healed of physical sickness and disease. I see it in the Bible, I see promises made, provisions made… I want to see it ‘lived out’ in the here and now. This is my desire. So, for quite a while, I’ve been praying the ‘believers’ prayer… but, I’ve only been praying part of it.

I’ve been praying for God to "stretch out his hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of his holy servant Jesus." I knew this was in line with the will and the WORD of God, because it is written right here in Acts. And God was clearly pleased with this prayer, because after they prayed the place was shaken, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit, and the prayer was answered.

The part that GOT my attention recently is the verse directly before, and directly after the one I’ve been praying. It goes like this… "and enable your servants to speak your WORD with great boldness….." and afterwards, " and they spoke the WORD of God boldly." In other words… PUT MYSELF OUT THERE… no matter the risks, no matter the threats, no matter the clucking tongues, no matter the potential for misunderstanding, no matter the controversy. Speak the WORD of God BOLDLY.

For me, that means die to self protection……. It means die to the need to be accepted by my peers. It means I can’t cower in the corner. I wanted God to stretch forth his hand, while I remained cowardly and silent and uncertain, while I muttered silent prayers unseen and unheard by those whose approval and respect I crave.

I have expanded my prayer to include the "enable your servant" part, when I have the courage, and I take it back and go back to cowering when I don’t……. I’m on a journey…… pray with me… if you dare…..

I posted three in a row here...I've been having trouble getting my 'create a new post' page to come up, so have been stock piling a bit... Please read them in order, from bottom to top... not that it matters a lot... but, that is the sequence of my thoughts....

the Boy next door...

I recently heard about a man (or rather…some men) who are being referred to as ‘a modern day Peter and Paul!’ I heard about how these men are preaching fearlessly in sometimes dangerous and increasingly hostile territory. I heard about how miracles are happening… how people are having their sins forgiven, their diseases healed, and their lives redeemed from the pit! I heard about how people are seeing the New Testament ‘lived out’ in the here and now! There is great excitement – as well there should be! There are bold declarations that our God – our Jesus – is ‘the same! Yesterday! Today! Forever!’ There is amazement!

I love hearing this! But, there is something about it that makes me a little sad. These words are not being said about my church, in my town.

There is something else. Every one in my church (not that I’ve spoken to everyone…I’m making assumptions) would boldly say that they believe, wholeheartedly, the WORD of God. And yet, we are amazed when we SEE that our God is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. If we had truly believed…all our lives…the WORD of God… we would not find it AMAZING that his WORD is true. Do you get what I’m saying?

We are very, very reluctant to say that we don’t believe the WORD of God. There is good reason for this. We should be ashamed to admit to the God who created the universe in a moment, in a breath, in a WORD, that we don’t believe what he says. We are very, very reluctant to say that anything depends on our faith, because that would mean we would have to have faith, which would mean that we would have to admit that we don’t have faith, which actually means that: we have to admit that we don’t believe that what God says is true! And we recognize the absurdity of that and shrink from it. We hide from it. We deny it.

We piously use the story of the father of the son with seizures to say that ‘faith is not required, because the father said ‘help thou my unbelief’ (proving that he did not believe) and Jesus healed his son anyway,’ even though absolutely everywhere else in the Bible it says that faith IS required. It is...our loophole for unbelief. The thing we miss when we say this is: The father admits that he has unbelief. We, however, stiff-neckedly say, "You can’t tell me I don’t believe…I believe the WORD, I believe in Jesus!" We get angry (or hurt, which is a different form of anger) at the implication. Our pride gets seriously ruffled. "Help thou my unbelief" was not a ‘formula phrase’ used to cover all the bases. "Help thou my unbelief," to be of any real value, requires fall-on-your-face repentance and humility and shame that we could dare to doubt the God of the universe. The God who loved us so much that he sent his only son. The God who said ‘who heals all your diseases.’ The God who said ‘by His stripes we are healed.’

**Whew…I went on a bit of a rant there… got a little side tracked from the title… anyway…

I wonder if…having grown up, all my life, with Jesus… if I don’t have a bit of ‘the boy next door’ syndrome.

The story I’ve recently heard is punched full of exclamations that God is powerful, that Jesus is POWERFUL! There is POWER! Again, this should not amaze us! This is what the WORD has been saying all along! Paul asks the question of the Galatian church ‘Does God work miracles among you because of this…or because of this??’ The fact that he works miracles is a given, it is taken for granted, it is commonplace, it is everyday, it is undisputed in the Galatian church.

**Ooohh – getting off track again…**

The problem is, I’ve grown up with Jesus. He’s ‘the boy next door.’ I know, I know, I was told that I needed to place my faith in him, or I wouldn’t get to heaven… I know, I know, He lead a sinless life, blah, blah, blah… but really… he’s just Jesus… his mom is Mary, his dad’s a carpenter… yah, yah, yah. He grew up down the street from me… he shared his lunch with me sometimes. He moved away a while back and there was some big hoopla about him, people followed him around like he was something special. He was nice and all, a really good friend actually, …but… POWERFUL??

"…in his hometown and in his own house is a prophet without honor." An he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith." Matt.13:58 and Mark 6:4-6

Again my heart cries out for revelation..........

Metaphorical...

As in… not literal….

God created the heavens and the earth… in SIX days… Literal? Or metaphorical?? Was God being poetic when he wrote this? Was he really doing something in the physical, or was he alluding to something much deeper, more… spiritual?

He forgives all our sins… literal? Or metaphorical?

He heals all our diseases… literal? Or metaphorical?

He redeems our lives from the pit and crowns us with love and compassion… literal? Or metaphorical?
He has bourne our sorrows… literal? Or metaphorical? "…and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death", "And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground."

He took our infirmities and carried our diseases… literal? Or metaphorical? Physical? Or spiritual?

Get this now... Hear this... Read it in your own Bible... Settle this...

"When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed ALL the sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: "He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases."" Matt.8:16-17

"And he healed them ALL"…literal? Or metaphorical? Physical? Or spiritual?

"And he healed them ALL"…

"And he healed them ALL"…

"And he healed them ALL", the deaf, the blind, the lame, the one’s with seizures, the ones with fevers, the ones with arthritis, the ones with leprosy, the one’s with issues of blood, the ones with demons… Physical? Or spiritual? Or…could it be?? BOTH??

By his stripes we are healed… Physical? Or spiritual? Or BOTH?

Which is harder? To forgive this man’s sins? Or to say "take up your mat and walk?" Notice he doesn’t answer the question? Maybe because they were equally hard? They BOTH required the shed blood of Jesus, they were BOTH promised at the same time, and BOTH delivered at the same time….

time spent waiting...

One argument I always hear when I say that I believe that physical healing was included in the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, when I say that physical healing was bought and paid for by the blood of Jesus, an inheritance we receive along with salvation, is: that I am focussing too much attention on the physical body and being distracted from the far more important spiritual person. I also hear that I am taking the focus off of Christ and putting it on the physical here and now.

To that I have several things to say:

One: Physical healing comes from Christ. If I spend time looking at a diamond from the third side, rather than the first or the second side, have I stopped looking at the diamond? Or, in looking long and hard at the third side have I come to a fuller and deeper revelation of the whole of the diamond? Have I possibly learned that there are many, many sides (facets) to this diamond, each as beautiful as the rest?

Two: Is the ‘too much focus on the physical and not enough on the spiritual’ statement just a bit hypocritical? On average, how much time do we spend looking after our physical bodies? My morning shower routine takes about 45 minutes a day. I have recently begun disciplining myself to exercise (for the sake of my health). I’m feeling pretty picked-on, and strangely proud, if I spend 20 minutes a day on cardio. I know many people who spend an hour or more a day. I know people who pay for time at a gym, pay for the gas to get to the gym, write off the hour or so in the car to get there. Why? For the physical body. For health… (sometimes, truth be told, for less noble reasons…like…appearance…)

This is just normal physical body maintenance. Factor into this, the time and resources spent if the physical body starts to malfunction. How many weeks will you wait for a doctor’s appointment? How far will you drive? How long will you wait in an emergency room to have an ear infection looked after by a doctor? An hour? Two? Six, seven? You’ll wait as long as it takes. How many times will you go back if the original treatment doesn’t work? Or helps a little, but not enough? How many pills will you pop in a day (knowing full well the side effects) to get the problem solved?

What if you’re told you need a surgery? How many hours will that take out of your life? How many weeks will you be off work? How many things will you have to re-arrange in your schedule? What changes to your lifestyle will you be willing to make? What risks are you willing to take at the hands of a fallible human - with a knife - who may or may not have had enough sleep the night before? All for what? For physical health?? Isn’t that a little off focus? (Do you see the hypocrisy of the statement?)

When it comes to our health, we take it very, very seriously. A woman who goes three years without a pap smear or a breast exam is considered irresponsible. Am I right? All else stops when it’s an issue of health. So let’s be careful then, with this argument that ‘we’re getting off focus’ when we begin to look closely at a third side of a diamond, or talk about "all our sins forgiven, all our diseases healed, our lives redeemed from the pit…(Psalm 103)" He provided physical healing for us because we need it. He has given us everything we need for life – through… (do you remember? – through what?)

Whatif… we applied the same diligence to knowing God, and to ‘forgetting not all his benefits’, and to knowing the ‘glorious inheritance in the saints’, and the ‘incomparably great power for those who believe, that is like the power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead?’ Whatif… we determined to know God as he revealed himself in His WORD, rather than in popular belief, rather than in our experience or the lack there-of.

Whatif… when we went to the elders for prayer, we invested the same amount of time – to ‘wait’ on God? When you wait in a waiting room, you wait…. Whatif… we did that in prayer, instead of the quick 3-4 minutes and if it doesn’t work then… O well,… sigh,… I guess It’s not God’s will….., back to the doctor with me…. (Does anything else in our spiritual walk work that way??) Whatif… while waiting in prayer, the Spirit requested a lifestyle change? A thought pattern change? A letting go of long held… - whatever….?

Black & White

I read my own writing and hear the accusation that it's all too black and white, it's too bold, but believe me when I tell you that I wrestle continuously with the miriad shades of grey in my questions. Thing is, my posts are already too long, to address all the greys, all the doubts, all the fears, all the arguments, all the subtleties would take volumes. Know that if you spoke to me face to face you would see the greys, the insecurities, the frustrations, and sometimes the tears. You would find a girl searching......

Don't Get Me Wrong...

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve used the medical profession in the past. Medical assistance was used in the delivery of both my babies. There have been (uncommonly few) trips to the doctor for pneumonia, bronchitis, etc. My man had his appendix out. I had my adenoids out as a child. I’ve been to a chiropractor. My dad had angioplasty a few years ago. My niece had a tumor removed. I have countless friends who’ve had surgeries, and/or who rely on meds for their daily health.

Whatif…none of these people had used the medical profession? Would they be here today? Would they be alive? Would they be in pain? Would they be strong? I don’t know about you, but these questions have the potential to stab fear into the very core of my being. But, then I ask myself… why the fear? I don’t like the answer. It’s because I fear that if I throw myself wholly (with a stubborn refusal to use plan B,) onto the will of God, that he will have me writhing in pain, or weak, or dying, all the while looking the fool for trusting in an unseen God when there were other, albeit less desirable, options. It's ugly, but it's honest.

I read something interesting a few months back that went something like this; that fear and faith are two sides of the same coin, that fear is the constant expectation of something bad and faith is the constant expectation of something good.

Why is it that we fear to throw ourselves fully (with no plan B) on the will of God? Is it because we expect something bad? We expect him to 'allow' something bad? We expect a good God to give us something bad, or, at least, to not deliver us from something bad. We expect him NOT to deliver us so we need a plan B. We need the help of man. Is this true? Ask yourself why this subject gives you fear. Really ask yourself. For me the answer is obvious. It’s because I don’t trust him. I don’t trust HIM, his name, his heart, his nature, his character, his will, his intentions toward me, his promises, his suffering, his finished work, his WORD.

Have you ever done a search on how many times in the Bible God says "Fear not"? Lots and lots and lots of times. Why do you think? Because fear is the opposite of faith. Because fear is an attack on God’s character. It’s a slap in the face. It’s a bold statement that God is NOT big enough for this problem and we must enlist the help of man. Or, could it be that I believe God’s intentions toward me are cruel and difficult, and man is more merciful than God. (Man would ‘never’ allow you to suffer if there was anything he could do about it…) Is this not also an affront to his character?

At this point in the discussion some will no doubt quote the ‘thorn in the side’ precedent and say "My grace is sufficient for you." (Along with many other arguments I've heard and wrestled with) Do you know anyone who quotes the verse "My grace is sufficient for you" with regard to a health issue that doesn’t ALSO take pills, or see the doctor, or have a surgery…? Are they truly throwing themselves on God alone, on grace alone?? Is God’s grace really sufficient? Or are we also enlisting the help of man?

These are hard questions. They work at the core of our beliefs about the character and nature of our God. They expose our unbelief, at least they sure expose mine. They have me falling on my knees appalled that I could think so little of such an awesome God.