YOUR FAITH HAS HEALED YOU!

Mt 9:18 While he was saying this, a synagogue leader came and knelt before him and said, “My daughter has just died. But come and put your hand on her, and she will live.” 19 Jesus got up and went with him, and so did his disciples.

Mt 9:20 Just then a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak. 21 She said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed.”

Mt 9:22 Jesus turned and saw her. “Take heart, daughter,” he said, “your faith has healed you.” And the woman was healed from that moment.

Mt 9:23 When Jesus entered the synagogue leader’s house and saw the noisy crowd and people playing pipes, 24 he said, “Go away. The girl is not dead but asleep.” But they laughed at him. 25 After the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took the girl by the hand, and she got up. 26 News of this spread through all that region.

I often ask myself “How much do I really believe in what Jesus can accomplish?”

I had a conversation with someone at the gym a few months back who told me that she was having trouble getting past some difficult issues in her life. Her life had been on a collision course with alchohol addiction and in finding healing through AA meetings she was still experiencing some lingering bitterness over some of the things that had happened during and since her addiction.

During the conversation (I was on one exercise bicycle and she was on the other) I suggested that she ask Jesus to heal her heart of the pain she was going through. My thought at the time was that believing in God as one’s “higher power” is a good first start, but that like the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’s garment that there is power to be released when “press through the crowds” and go after Jesus with all of our heart.

Her reply has stuck with me and it has challenged me to think – and pray – about how much we can expect from Jesus today in our own lives. She said, “Jay, those are nice stories from the Bible, but I’m looking for real healing in my life today.”

Her words struck me to the core. Are the stories of healing just children’s stories to make us feel good and create in us a very general (and inchoate) hope of restoration and healing? Or is it possible that the work of Jesus never ended with his death nor with the death of the last apostle. Rather, are we right in believing that Jesus’ ministry to our bodies, souls, AND spirits continues to the present time?

I’ve been amazed by some of the stories coming out of Lakeland, Florida of the healing revival taking place under the ministry and leadership of Todd Bentley. In fact, one night Susan and I and some others put the revival (that is broadcast on God.tv) on the projection screen at church and simply watched in awe as people came forward to be healed of blindness, severe illness, deafness and other physical ailments. A tangible presence of God filled our worship center. I began to weep as I saw people press through crowds to be prayed over and touched and given encouragement and then healed.

There was a season of my life that I would have been the worst skeptic about this sort of thing. I simply had been taught some wrong things about God and at the time didn’t know better than to believe them. Our challenge today is to accept the grace of God to have our eyes and ears renewed so that we can see and hear the places where God is moving today. Deep down, we believe in the possibility of the miraculous – of the transformation of individuals, communities, and even nations! We believe in the possibility. Now is the time perhaps for us to believe in the actuality of God’s will and purposes being accomplished in this world that He has created. And as we see them – let’s celebrate them together.