Medicial, Dental, and Laying On Of Hands

Please Read this story b4 continuing…

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/06/19/faith.healer.deaths.ap/index.html

in case you choose to be disobedient (lol) and not read it, the story talks about a boy that died because he refused medical treatment.  he and his family believed in “faith healing.”

Now, as someone that’s been trained in praying for the sick and otherwise afflicted, AND as a person that’s called to demonstrate the power of God, AND as a person that’s seen results in that area…here’s my 3 cents on the article.

god’s a healer.  gifts of healing are real.  they are for today.  old school healing revivalists would say if you took medicine that you weren’t believing god for your total healing.  i disagree, and a lot of prominent “faith healers” as we would call them today would as well.  john wimber, a modern day father of power evangelism, was quoted as saying “If I have a headache, I pray and I take an aspirin, and which ever one works first is fine with me!”

god doesn’t want you to live in pain.  jesus took the pain of sickness so you wouldn’t have to.  believe god for your healing…better yet for your health.  the israelites walked in divine health during their time in the wilderness.  however, god has no problem with you seeking professional help.  there are godly doctors, you know.  luke was a physican.  some of the most dramatic demonstrations of god’s healing power are recorded in the two books accredited to him, the gospel according to luke and acts.

it’s funny because yet again it’s one of those situations that believers pick either one extreme or the other.  either we forsake all medical treatment (clear your bathroom of those band-aids and that toothpaste, you heathens!), or we say that healing isn’t the will of god…but go to the doctor to be treated.  why go to the doctor to be healed if it isn’t god’s will for you to be healed?  that’s called disobedience, right? 

i’ll say this thought.  we as a body need to begin to understand the value of sacrifice.  i honestly don’t know if foul play or anything was involved in the aforementioned story, but let’s just assume that everything was on the up and up.  he died for what he believed in.  when someone does that, their life becomes a seed that a harvest can be reaped from. 

“Truly, Truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it reminas alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” John 12:24

“All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.” Hebrews 11:13

our sacrifice can be the foundation that a mighty house is built upon.  i know what it is to pray for someone and see them restored in front of my eyes.  i know how it is to pray for someone and see them recover gradually.  i know what it is to pray for someone and have them get worse and die.  how will i steward this moment?  how you handle it determines what god can do with it, but that’s a topic for another blog.