Good Friday morning! For some of you, have a great long weekend! For the rest of us, have a nice weekend. Yes, Monday is actually a holiday, though one that is often overlooked. You will of course have less trouble overlooking the holiday if you trudge down the street to get your mail on Monday. We took a moment last night to pray for the people in Australia, Brazil, and Sri Lanka as parts of these countries have been hit hard by floods and mud slides. A minister last night spoke of growing more specific in prayer. In this day, we have the power of the Internet. Often our prayers for far away lands can get quite specific through the knowledge we can gain on Internet news and encyclopedia sites. With just a few mouse clicks, any of us can narrow down the area to a city or town to pray for in each of the countries we prayed for last night. How specific do we need to get in prayer? As specific as you feel led by the Holy Spirit to be!
With all of this suffering in the world, does anyone have a gift to help out with this? According to the Bible verse for today, there is!
"...to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit," 1 Corinthians 12:9
Here is a bit from Paul's message on spiritual gifts. Each of us has a gift given to us by the Spirit, some might have more than one gift. The 11th verse of the same chapter says: All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as He wills. So, my question is: Who are these healers and where do we find one? I don't believe that "doctors" is necessarily the right answer. Doctors in many cases don't do a whole lot when it comes to healing, but in other cases the doctors do know some things. In the time of Jesus and the first apostles, healing was done perfectly with a touch or even just the touch of a shadow. Why has this changed for us? Or has it? Healing in a hospital is a long drawn-out affair. You don't hear about someone going in there and being touched by a doctor saying, "Be healed in the name of Jesus!" and then the person popping out that same afternoon with a shout of, "Thank you, Lord!" Peter and Paul didn't add metal parts to their patients; Jesus didn't keep one of his patients in a room until the charges broke and bankrupted the family. What gives here?
I am reminded of Nazareth, the hometown of Jesus. In Nazareth, it is recorded in Mark 6 that Jesus could do no mighty work in his hometown and marveled because of the unbelief he found there. But, there is one little phrase in that passage, "except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them." (Mark 6:5b) Jesus was not powerless to heal even in an area of unbelief. If the unbelief in our country is not the impediment to healing, where are these healers? I did hear a story on a television ministry about a time where a minister prayed over a patient in a hospital and she hucked up the tumor. Again, I don't recall any stories of Jesus or the apostles healing with grossness of that kind involved. You might point to Jesus spitting on the ground and making mud with his saliva to heal a blind man, but that was something Jesus did to the man and was easily washed off. Barfing up a tumor, I hesitate to say it, kind of makes me think the healing came from another source. Who are those with the gift of healing perfectly with a touch?
Perhaps one question does occur to you; it is nagging at me. The question: Is it me? Thinking back over many years, I cannot recall an instance in which I tried to heal someone with a prayer and a touch, not even a touch of my shadow. And I still have plenty of shadow to go around too! What about you? Not the shadow part, but have you tried to heal someone with a prayer and a touch? Perhaps one of you has the gift of healing and it is going unused? Go as the Spirit leads. In this I don't think the Spirit will let his gift go unused due to the ignorance (remember: that's don't know, not stupidity) of a person holding his gift. When I came to realize through the Spirit's leading me to understanding that I had a gift for writing, I also felt the Spirit leading me to do it. I don't feel led to healing in this way, only a sort of curiosity to see if I have this wonderful magic power. The curiosity is sort of along the same lines as trying to see if I can produce dollar bills or gold out of thin air. You know that wishful thinking kind of thing. If you feel only that wishful kind of thing that involves getting attention and fame through a gift of the Spirit, you probably don't have the gift.
Now, we do know that a person with a spiritual gift will be tempted of the devil. A person with a gift of powerful prayer will hear that whisper like: "Why don't you pray out loud in the church each week? People will love and honor you for your powerful prayers!" We also tend to think that an inability to perform with a gift of the Spirit is due to our lack of faith. However, Paul lists faith as a gift also. You may not have the gift of wisdom or of knowledge or of faith. If you can't heal a loved one with a prayer and a touch, you may not have that gift. When thinking of our spiritual gift or gifts, we may see a failure as a weakness in faith. We are reminded that not only is faith a gift apportioned as the Spirit wills, but that the key is not great faith in God, but faith in a great God. So, once more, where are these healers?
Another gift in Paul's list of spiritual gifts is prophecy. You will recall that God poured out on Israel a famine of the Word (found in Zechariah, I think... brzzt! Wrong, it's in Amos 8:11. Praise God for Blue Letter Bible on the Internet.). God's prophets stopped coming to Israel for some 400 years. We may be in a famine of healing. Yes, I have seen the thing on the telly with the shove to the forehead and someone to catch the person as they fall backwards; I don't recall any of that in the Bible. Perhaps right now prayer and doctors are all we have. Of course, I'll take the prayer first! If we have a famine of healers in the land, we don't have a famine of God's healing power. We have an abundance of expensive medical care too, but that's another story. While we cannot make God do our will, we can ask persistently and in faith. Jesus himself advised us to pray with persistence. Paul told us to fight our anxiety with prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Actually Paul told us to be anxious for nothing. How are you doing at being anxious for nothing? Yeah, me too, but the Holy Spirit is strengthening me day by day and the encouragement of Christ is precious beyond compare.
Have a great day and accept a bit of encouragement from me too!
Bucky
Oops, you had a break yesterday, looks like we're back to the dissertation-length devotionals!
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