12/07/2018
When you are sick with a cold and you pray for healing, then go to the pharmacy to get medicines to treat your runny nose, cough and fever, where do you then place the trust for your healing? We are meant to do what we can to take good care of our bodies, but when we call on both physical and spiritual remedies, do we allow the physical ones to overshadow the spiritual ones? Does your faith supplement the cough syrup, or does the cough syrup supplement your faith?
“And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.”
James 5:15 ESV
This primary reading today comes from one of my favorites passages; it is from a portion of scripture in James that speaks of intercessory prayer. but it also speaks of faith. In this we are told to call on the spiritual to heal the physical. When we believe that this is not just a miracle, but an everyday occurrence then wonderful things happen in our lives. Listen to this discussion of Abraham’s faith from the book of Romans...
“He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was "counted to him as righteousness."”
Romans 4:19-22 ESV
Abraham knew the reality of nature and life... old men of 100 do not father children, old women who have gone through menopause do not get pregnant and give birth. So when he was told by God that this would happen he laughed, yet his faith grew to overcome his confidence in the world, and his faith in the spiritual became real to him and Sarah. This is not a story of immaculate conception, but one in which sexual reproduction produced a miraculous child by faith. For this couple it was easy to see this to be the result of faith because this child flew in the face of all conventional worldly knowledge. There was no doubt that God had made this happen because otherwise it was impossible. Yet most of the time when we pray for healing, or some other thing, there is a choice to be made.
Life is not a dream. When we are facing a challenge in our lives and pray, we are asking for God to reach from His spiritual world into our real one, and make something happen. For this to happen we must believe, have faith, pray, and if necessary to have the confidence to wait. This coming together of the spiritual and the physical is not like dreaming in which the outcome shifts in an instant depending on our own desires and wishes. We cannot alter the result based on our nearly awaking, and then imposing our will on it. No... God is going to intercede, but we have to audibly say ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,” our part is physical, but we must continue to do it as He applies His spirit.
“And Jesus answered them, "Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, 'Be taken up and thrown into the sea,' it will happen. And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith."”
Matthew 21:21-22 ESV
So, we wake up every morning and go about our life in a very real world. If I have a cold, I can’t will it to go away in dreamlike fashion, but I can go to the doctor or to the pharmacy, and secure medicine to treat it... and I can pray faithfully for healing. Jesus used physical remedies to enhance some of the spiritual miracles that He performed... listen:
“Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud and said to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing.”
John 9:6-7 ESV
Abraham knew that his child was from God, it was impossible otherwise, but where do we attribute the healing of our common cold? Our change of circumstances might not be so obvious; perhaps it was the medicine... or was it God? Perhaps it was divine intervention in the health of my crops, or maybe it was the chemical I sprayed on them last week. Maybe my business turned around because I worked harder at it, or was it the extra time I spent in prayer? The ultimate question is this... do I place my ultimate faith in God, or do I trust in the everyday remedies that we know to apply?
Recently my intercessory prayer partner and I prayed in the spirit with a man who had a mass (a growth) in his body. He had seen one doctor who had identified it in images, and referred him to a specialist/surgeon for treatment... so we prayed with him. The next week when he went to the specialist additional images were taken of the mass so that a detailed plan could be developed to remove it... but the mass was gone! In the image taken last week it was right there, the doctors could see it, but now it was gone! This man continued to go about the process of using conventional wisdom, he sought treatment, but he also came to us for prayer. In this case there was no active treatment in the physical world, but in many there is. In this case we knew absolutely that God had intervened, but if he had been given a medicine by the first doctor to reduce the size of the growth then a choice would have been necessary... was the mass gone because of the medicine, or the prayers.
“The purpose of God [in this] is to lead His children into a more intimate communion with Christ, and this is just what happens when by faith we commit ourselves to Him as our sovereign healer, with or without doctors.” - Andrew Murray
Don’t get me wrong, I am not advocating that we refuse treatment in order to exhibit absolute faith in God. Abraham and Sarah didn’t abstain from sex and place the miracle of birth totally in God’s hands... No, they continued to do those things they knew would produce a child. We should do the same as we seek God’s intervention in our lives. We should go to the doctor, and take the treatments, or regarding a business problem, we should get up every morning and go to work and continue to work hard at overcoming our issue. The point here isn’t that we withdraw from the solution, but that we call on God to direct us, and to take charge of it... we put it in His hands. The point today is that we should have the strength of faith necessary to believe in His intercession in our lives, the confidence in Him to help us, and absolute trust in His provision so that when the answer comes we thank Him, and give Him the glory! Are you there? Is this how you face life, or do you trust the physical medicine first?
Prayer:
Father, I thank you for hearing my voice, even when it is weak because of illness, or distraught due to trouble. I thank you for giving me knowledge so that I can use it to navigate through life’s many challenges, but I also thank you for intervening as I go, and hearing my prayers each day as I ask you to step into my physical world to rescue, heal, or help me. My faith is in you Heavenly Father, and in your Son Jesus Christ in whose name I pray. Walk with me though my troubles Lord, and when they become too much for me, and I am unable to traverse them, lift me over them in miraculous fashion. Hear me Holy Father when I thank you for all the things you do for me. Hear my voice praising you for the smallest of provisions, as well as the most monumental healing efforts, or dramatic rescues. Help me to see you moving, even as I continue to do my best to solve my own dilemmas. Teach me to seek you in all things great and small; not just those things that are so obviously beyond me, but in the times when even a simple aspirin will suffice. Sit me in your lap Father, and hold me like a child as I pray. Tell me that you are with me always, and then comfort me as I sleep there in the warm assuredness of your constant presence and protection. Great are you my God, and Holy, Holy, Holy, is your provision, protection, and healing. Praised be your name, and in all things rests your glory forever.
Rich Forbes