holy spirit

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When prayers for healing seem to fail, part 2

In part 1, I marveled at the wisdom of God to set Spirit and flesh in opposition within us; whereby we yield our flesh life back to Him by surrendering to the cross to live instead the spirit life of His Son. And Jesus who in the garden of Gethsemane showed us the depth and breadth of surrender by yielding to the Father’s will for death by crucifixion, rather than assert His own will to be spared. So many promises of God in the Old Testament for personal health, long life, protection, prosperity – Jesus released them all back to the Father for the fulfillment of God’s will. Truly a promise made is a promise kept; the cross simply defers fulfillment to the next life.

So how is it some of us who in claiming to embrace the cross, fail to surrender our will where it pertains to receiving the promises of God in this life? Can we take time to consider the glaring contradiction of being crucified in the flesh while at the same time demanding God heal our flesh? Or insisting on our will over God’s will where healing is concerned? Surrendered hands that should be nailed to the cross instead grabbing at the hem of Christ or clenching fists to shake at God while demanding “you HAVE to heal me because YOUR word says so”. Whose will is on display in that scenario? Surrender means surrender including your will for the fulfillment of God’s promises in your flesh life. Oh, He may heal your flesh, of course, but it’s out of love for you when He does, not because He promised healing in this life, apart from healing your SPIRIT (Ezekiel 36:26-27).

In taking up my cross to follow Jesus like He asked, it’s been my experience that it’s the unfulfilled promises of God that are the nails in my hands and feet (metaphorically speaking). The simple recognition that while God promises to heal me, His word doesn’t say when. The problem comes when we demand His healing on our time table because with death approaching, we think we’re running out of time. But from God’s timeless viewpoint, our physical death is just the beginning of the fullness of life in the Spirit, whereby here in this life the Spirit may be better served if my infirmity remains. God has simplified my view of His word through the over-arching truth that rules over every other scripture – God owns everything including me (Ps 24:1) and His will prevails over mine (Luke 22:42). Thus this life is designed to provoke our unconditional surrender to Christ, where we, too, can say in the face of the cross “Father, not my will, but thine be done”.

Last autumn, my tinnitus turned 50; it’s an annoying condition that’s been squatting in my head ever since my band played for a basement party in cramped quarters. Standing for hours directly in front of a loud guitar amp was more than my young ears could handle without permanent damage. Where Paul prayed 3 times to remove his thorn in the flesh – I’ve prayed for healing from tinnitus since the day it started. Nothing. Oh I still ask once in awhile just to see if God has changed His mind but still, it’s “nope”. It took a while to see it but tinnitus has served a Godly purpose in my life wherein I’m mostly at peace with the condition. As a deep seated introvert, who loves to write after hours spent with the Spirit and the Word, rejoicing with the Lord whenever we unearth a treasure, the tinnitus is reason for me to go deep into the garden of His planting within me – as a place of peace and quiet from the constant squeal in my ears and the obnoxious noise of the world that triggers it. Quiet? I haven’t heard that since I was a teen, except when I’m tending my garden with Jesus, where I hardly notice the incessant noise beyond the walls.

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my Coming Out story

Have you ever heard a brother claim that God called them out of man’s institutional church to follow Jesus alone? If you’re like most believers, you probably thought they lost their mind or shipwrecked their faith. It’s not an unreasonable conclusion for someone who thinks Jesus Church and man’s institutional church are one in the same.

But what if they’re not?

Then I heard another voice from heaven say: “COME OUT of her (religious Babylon), My people, so that you will not share in her sins or contract any of her plagues.” (Rev. 18:4 BSB)

Wait a
minute …
that’s not
the Son …

Throughout the years I’ve asked many questions about things I noticed in man’s institutional church that left me disconcerted. I can’t recall any of them being answered to my satisfaction, rather I was encouraged to focus my attention on all the “good things” churches claim to do. It’s an experience not unlike The Truman Show, when after witnessing an on-set blunder, Truman obediently accepted the frantic explanation and remained trapped in a role he didn’t know he was playing while hemmed in by a cast of handlers and pretenders.

In the real world, how often did I pretend not to see on-set blunders in order to get along in a sick church with serious problems? Where being lumped was my reward for pointing them out? In Truman’s case, it wasn’t until he met the lover of his soul who dared crash the scene that He wanted to escape his prison to find her. As unwitting players in man’s institutional church theater, can we imagine that the Holy Spirit might crash the scene of our phony idyllic Christian production and upend everything we think we know?

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Questions that might get you lumped

When I noticed the pastor read just 10 verses of scripture before the sermon, I began to question whether us pew warmers were getting the whole story? So I counted up all the scriptures in the Bible, divided by 10 per week and 52 weeks per year and discovered it would take nearly 60 years to read the Bible at that rate. Clearly if I wanted to know what was in the Bible, I’d have to read it for myself. Focusing in on Proverbs, it would take 1 year and 9 months at the 10 verse per week rate; however if we took it one proverb at a time which seems logical since each one is sermon worthy, Proverbs would take 17 and 1/2 years! Similarly, instead of 5 months on Ecclesiastes, it would take 4 years and 3 months. So, if we’re honest about the 10 verse per week approach, most of us would die of old age before we finished the Bible at plodding sermon speed. We might be able to bring it in under 80 years if we droned through all the begats in a single Sunday. That sounds like a good mid-summer sermon when half the congregation is out on vacation.

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In memory of Betsy

When the Father directed my wife and I to Illinois the summer of 1999, we met 3 older women who were real spit-fires; they frequented half the churches in town where they were always praying for revival. They led Bible studies and prayer groups, and discipled new believers all in service to the Father.

They were intrigued by our introduction to the congregation, specifically a couple so crazy as to move 2400 miles cross country, sight unseen, at the Father’s direction. Since I wasn’t yet working, the old gals invited me to one of their weekly morning prayer meetings. Just 43 years old at the time, I wasn’t particularly inclined to hang out with women in their 70s, but the host said there would be carrot cake for dessert. So I went. We had a nice time getting to know each other, sharing our testimonies and praying as the Spirit led us. As lunchtime approached and I began gathering my things to leave, one of the ladies said they were going to the home of a young woman who was bed-ridden with cancer. In that instant, the Spirit gave me the brief vision of 4 men who removed a section of Peter’s roof and lowered a paralytic by the 4 corners of a bed sheet to the front of Jesus for healing. Looking once again at the 3 ladies, I blurted out “YOU NEED A FOURTH!” Inwardly, I groaned but it was too late, they’d heard me.

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School of the Holy Spirit

I’ve attended more than a dozen churches in my lifetime. Some of the ministers I met encouraged me to seek God for myself and obey Him without hesitation. Such were the men who led me to Jesus and who married me and my wife. Both remained genuine and loving brothers in Christ who would never come between me and the Lord, except perhaps to stop me from doing something that would harm my relationship with Him. The former was like a 2nd father to me during my teen years, the latter a sweet friend and counselor, who could always be found on Saturday evening standing in the pulpit delivering his Sunday sermon before God and an empty sanctuary. Sadly, some others questioned whether I could really hear God’s voice for myself and insisted I obey them instead. Through them God taught me to stand up for my freedom and to respond like Peter who said: “judge for yourself whether it is right to obey you, or God”.

Examining what it means to be a Free Son takes several forms: identifying ways in which we’re free, and the things that hold us back. Often that means coming to terms with falsehoods we’ve embraced and the people who taught and reinforced them. No one ever said rising from the dead was going to be easy (Luke 9:60, Ephesians 5:14). Imagine Lazarus, passing peacefully in his sleep, only to awaken days later on a cold slab in a dark tomb, tightly bound in linen cloth with 75 pounds of burial spices wrapped up with him (John 19:39-40). However did Lazarus manage to get to his feet and stagger out of the tomb? Likewise, when we awaken from our slumber, how do we come out from under the heavy burdens placed on our shoulders by false teachers and teachings (Matthew 23:4)?

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