Jun 9, 2010
How Diversity Changed my Beliefs: Does Healing Happen?
To read the Gospels and Acts without any preconceptions, you’d think that healings and miracles are an integral, if not essential part of Christianity. If there are miracles and healings, then God is at work.
At some point along the way someone decided that miracles were not all that important for Christianity and that the hey day of miracles was long past in the apostolic age. Some have argued that these special manifestations of God’s power are now gone.
I used to think that too. Show me someone who claimed the ability to heal or to have been healed, and I’d show you someone a few fruits short of a loop.
And then one day a missionary spoke in our college about a man who was healed of a crippling condition. He tossed his crutch aside, and this missionary picked it up and keeps it in his office as a reminder.
He seemed like a pretty normal guy, and so I began to wonder…
Another missionary came to my school and told the story of several young native men in Papua New Guinea who ran out of gas in their motor boat hours away from home while picking her up. They were stranded in the wild without a back up plan.
These young men prayed, pulled the rip cord, and then motored all the way to their village without a drop of gas. I marveled at their faith, and began to wonder about my own.
Here’s the thing with miracles and healing: they’re pretty challenging for our faith. If God doesn’t come through for us, we fear the effects of doubt and disappointment. Such prayers for the miraculous must be made with sensitivity to the will of God, believing in his power, and yet, still remembering that our requests may not be answered for one reason or another.
It’s all quite difficult to sort out, and I understand why a world without a miraculous, healing God is a bit easier to stomach. And yet, there was this one time…
One time a friend of ours, who is quite gifted in the Holy Spirit and ministers in ways that were unknown to me, prayed over me and healed my leg one day. I watched it happen. I can’t deny it.
God healed me. Why? I don’t know. How? Not sure.
I am certain that I’d been reading the Gospels with a blind eye to the miracles and healings that are so important to the ministry of Jesus. I can’t say what such ministry should look like today, but we should not rule it out. God is up to a lot more than we’d expect, and it took several Christians from different cultures, denominations, and backgrounds to open my eyes to the present power of God here on earth.
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Thanks for including this topic in your diversity series, Ed. We received a worldview from the Enlightenment which precluded the supernatural, and that legacy plagues the Western Church. One reason you hear so many healing/miracles stories from the emerging world is they are not hampered by this legacy. We read the book of Acts and see “history;” they see Acts as a newspaper–filled with current events.
Let me suggest one litmus test here in North America: why does the church lack any testimonies of resurrection from the dead? I would suggest that the answer is it never even occurs to us that we should ask.
Finally, consider this prayer, offered by the earliest believers: “When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. ‘Sovereign Lord,’ they said, ‘you made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David:
Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth take their stand
and the rulers gather together
against the Lord
and against his Anointed One.
Indeed, Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen. 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.’” (Acts 4:24 -30)
Perhaps we could ask God for a similar arrangement today?
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I know I have seen miracles in my life. God has healed me and brought joy to my life. I still struggle on some days for some reason from the effects of growing up in an alcoholic family system, but most days I feel the power of God around me. Why the lapses, I’m never sure–could be just flashbacks or my mind getting stuck on grief for a while. But God’s presnece is so very real in the process of my recovery most days. Thanks for talking about the miraculous. I don’t really understand how He acts or why, but I know He is ever moving among us.
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