I have yet to address healing.
These are some preliminary thoughts and questions, perhaps serving to challenge our contemporary mindsets on healing.
Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years
Luke 8.43, NRSV
Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralysed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.
John 5.2-5
What if God wants to eradicate the very thing we have come to tolerate?
12 years…
38 years…
hemorraging…
paralysis…
What if God wants to take it out of the picture?
Let me back up. Can God take it away?
There is certainly precedent in Scripture with the 2 miracles I have alluded to, and many more. Sometimes people were born with conditions and Jesus Christ healed them. Certainly, He is the same God today. He changes not. He is more than capable of healing anything. So the answer is yes! God can take it away!
What if God wants to take it out of the picture?
Healing is an almost forgotten facet of our multi-faceted faith.
‘Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.’ He stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’
Matthew 8.2-3
He chooses to heal. Christ wants to heal. He is willing to heal. Sometimes we need to be reminded of Christ’s willingness to heal.
Don’t fall back on Paul’s thorn in the flesh to make excuses why God doesn’t always heal (2 Corinthians 12.7-10). We take the exception to the rule and make it the rule. In this case we deprive ourselves of being witnesses to the power of God. No, God wants to heal. We don’t even know if Paul’s thorn in the flesh was physical. He uses the term flesh consistently to refer to our lower nature, so the thorn was probably more likely a besetting sin, not illness. God is willing to heal.
What if God wants to eradicate the very thing we have come to tolerate?
There are a couple factors that inhibit us from even approaching this question.
First, if we’re not careful we exalt human suffering. Is there a divine reason for it? Do we look at the suffering as merely our cross to bear? Do we idolize Biblical characters like Job, characters who are nowhere near the norm in the Holy Writ? These lines of reasoning prevent us from answering the question at hand. We have come to idolize human suffering as if our physical condition were a badge of holy approval.
Second, have we vested all trust in modern medicine and the countless holistic modalities of healing? This is easy to do. It is also easy to justify modern medicine as a divinely sanctioned means of healing. With all of the various medical/holistic modalities available we may easily feel like there is no need for divine healing.
With these 2 lines of thinking, and others like them, we develop a tolerance for suffering that God may not want us to endure.
a suggested mindset for healing
It does not take a lot of wisdom to seek medical attention, remain under doctoral care, and yet all the while keep seeking God for divine healing. We certainly see this very thing in the story of the woman with the issue of blood, alluded to above.
Seeking treatment by no means negates the fact that God is still able and willing to heal. We should never tolerate sickness to the point where we lose sight of this.
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