2022-11-20 Hunger for Healing

Good morning, it’s good to be back! We had a mostly good trip to Belize. It was a rough start because we were still recovering from Covid, and the first four days were pretty long simply because of our fatigue and our continuing coughs. But by Sunday, we were beginning to feel healthy and get our energy back. Thank you so much for praying for us. It made a difference.

One of the blessings of visiting a place you’ve lived before is to be able to reconnect with old friends. We did a lot of visiting with people at the events of the Region 6 gathering on the weekend, and both before and after our meetings we were able to visit in people or go to restaurants with them. It was great to catch up with what is happening in their lives. We heard many good stories of joy and celebration, weddings, births, business success, holidays and ministry happenings. We also heard many stories of not so good times, relational struggles, faith setbacks, addiction, church conflict, suspicion, kids gone wayward, broken relationships, illness, accidents, parents with dementia, death, marriages coming to an end, etc. etc. Simply put, people in Belize have the same kinds of struggles and heartaches that we do. We listened, asked questions and prayed with our friends, both Belizean and Canadian, about their heartaches and struggles. In some of these conversations I heard despair and wondering if God would ever help. It’s hard to keep trusting when live gets difficult. In all of these conversations about difficulty, I heard a longing, a longing for God to move and to act. A longing for reconciliation between broken families, a longing for deliverance from addiction, a longing for children and friends to turn back to God, a longing for parents with dementia to be able to be loved and cared for and/or go home to be with Jesus, a longing for marriages to be healed, a longing for healing from physical illness and disease. Does this longing sound familiar?

Richard Dawkins, a prominent atheist wrote, “In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.” Needless to say, Dawkins viewpoint isn’t very compassionate! But if his viewpoint is right, where did our longing for things to be made right come from? Why do we long for wholeness in the midst of brokenness? (blank)

Sin & Rebellion & Hope

The Biblical viewpoint is quite different. The Biblical answer is that the brokenness we experience is caused not by a blind, pitiless universe but by our being disconnected from the source of all life and wholeness, God. Because of our disconnection from God through sin and rebellion, we experience brokenness of all kinds. Tragic brokenness. Painful brokenness. But not hopelessness. Yes, people do feel completely hopeless. Many times. Sometime overwhelmingly so. But not because there is no hope. They experience hopelessness because they have either not known the hope that is found in Jesus, or they have not continued to remain connected to this hope.

There is hope! Not in ourselves or in our world. It is to be found in Jesus. Jesus is God’s answer to all the pain and suffering that all people everywhere have experienced. The God we were disconnected from has chosen to enter into our pain and suffering and do something about it. Romans 5:8 says, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (blank)

In dying, Jesus opened up a pathway to God for us, so that we could be reconnected to the only source of real life and real wholeness. How? Through repentance and humbling ourselves before God. Through faith in Jesus. Through acceptance of him as our Lord and Saviour.

When Jesus enters into our lives, he cleanses us from all unrighteousness and gives us a new direction and a new reason to live. He forgives our sins and begins the internal healing process.

However, this healing process only continues if we stay connected to him. John 15:5 says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (blank)

This is why it is so important to stay connected to him and to continually reconnect to him. How do we do so? Let’s turn to the passage that was read by Derek earlier, James 5.

Healing Through Connection to Jesus

The book of James in the Bible is a straightforward, no-nonsense kind of book. James, the brother of Jesus was a leader in the church in Jerusalem and so the book was written from the perspective of Jewish Christianity. He deals a lot with wisdom, doing the right things, faith, submission to God and living as God calls you to live. He begins his book talking about joy as the Christian response to trials and temptations. And in v5, he says if we lack wisdom, we should ask God. “who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.” For James, faith is wrapped up in trusting God to provide what we need and following him in our actions. In other words, pray, and do what God commanded us to do through Jesus Christ, remaining connected to him. In Chapter 5 suffering again makes an appearance. V7-11 is about patience in the face of suffering waiting until God brings about final justice. Job is given as an example of perseverance in the face of suffering.

Then in v13 he speaks again of suffering and the appropriate response of believers. (Read v13) (blank)

When in trouble—pray.

Prayer is the most natural and logical response of a believer in God in the face of suffering. Talking to the only one who can actually make a difference. Underlying this command is the belief that God is sovereign, that he is powerful, and that he loves his people and wants to act on their behalf. All of these truths are amply taught in the rest of scripture. So if they are true, when in trouble, pray.

When things go well—Praise!

Just as prayer is the most natural response of a believer in God when in trouble, praise is the most natural response of a believer in God when things go well. Scripture sees God as the giver of all good gifts. In fact, in 1:17, James says; “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” So it is only natural to give God all the glory when things are going well. If it’s a good gift, it by definition, has its origin in God. Did you notice that James says, “sing songs of praise”? Obviously, we can praise God many different ways. I can do so in prayer. Here we have evidence that worship and praise in song form was a practice of the early church. The Psalms would have likely been a big part of their worship.

Then we come to v 14 (Read). (blank) Again, it’s straightforward.

When you are sick—call the elders for anointing and prayer in the name of the Lord

Here we again have a time of trouble, but this time it’s specifically a health issue. According to James, the first inclination of a believer when health issues arise is to call on the name of the Lord. Why? Because they didn’t have a medical system back then and that was their only option? NO!! They did have a medical system back then. It involved herbal remedies and folk wisdom. Some of it valid and helpful, and a lot of it pure quackery. The ancient Egyptian remedy for embedded splinters involved plastering it with worms’ blood and donkey dung. Considering dung is loaded with tetanus spores, a lot of people would have died from the remedy. Added to that you had the basic assumption in the ancient world that demons were the cause of diseases. So you had many people going around and charging great sums of money to drive out demons. In Acts 19 we have a Jewish priest and his seven sons doing exactly that. James has the assumption that since God made each one of us and he is all powerful, and since Jesus healed the sick again and again, the most logical first step when you are sick is praying to God in the name of Jesus. And to make sure to not be taken advantage of by unscrupulous ‘faith’ healers, call the elders of the local church you are part of, the ones you know, to do the praying. There is no need to go elsewhere. They have complete access to God the Father through Jesus Christ. Oil in those days was seen as having medicinal value, but it was also something that was used in the OT as a symbolic outpouring of God’s blessing. E.g. David was anointed with oil by Samuel to signify God’s blessing on him as the next King.

The results? (Read V15) (blank)

God will make the sick person well, and he will also be forgiven.

Sickness was often seen to be caused by sin. However, Jesus made it clear that it certainly wasn’t always the case. Even today, we know that certain sin can lead to illness, such as sexually transmitted disease. If you only ever have sex with your spouse, you won’t get sexually transmitted disease. All sin does not cause disease, but certainly, unconfessed sin will keep God from working in your life. (Read v 16a). (blank) As I said earlier, to see God work in our lives and for us to bear fruit, we need to remain connected to Jesus. We can’t do so with unconfessed sin. Deliberately sinning and not confessing it to God is an act of moving away from Jesus and disconnection from the source of life. When we humble ourselves and confess our sins to each other, God’s power is released in again.

What about the seemingly clear assumption that God will always heal? This question could easily fill a few days’ worth of teaching and discussion. On the one hand, it’s fairly self-evident that even in the early church in Jerusalem, everybody eventually died. Another point that I think is true is that since James brought in forgiveness of sin, he has in mind both physical and spiritual healing. He definitely sees them connected. It is true that during the ministry of Jesus, he healed all those who had enough faith and the required amount of faith wasn’t a lot, as small as a mustard seed. The disciples continued this ministry of healing based on the authority that Jesus had given them over all demons and all diseases. James had such great confidence in the power of God to heal because he will have personally seen many miracles of healing through the name of Jesus. Our job is to simply pray in faith for healing.

How does it work? (Read vv16b-18) (blank)

Prayers of righteous men and women are powerful

The key idea here is that Elijah, even though we tend to see him as an extraordinary prophet, was actually just an ordinary man. But he was a man in tune with God. He served God wholeheartedly and God heard him. When we humble ourselves before God, through Jesus Christ, we become righteous. And then we can pray with great power.

To me the emphasis in this section on praying for healing is faith. If you have faith, pray. I like to focus much less on the results and more on the command to anoint and pray. Telling God what I want because he is the only one who can possibly answer my request.

Physical Healing and Communion

So why would I couple communion with prayer for healing (Read Isaiah 53:1-5). (blank) I would love to continue reading because the rest of the passage continues the prediction of how the Messiah would one day, through his death, bear, and do away with our sin. Verse 5 clearly connects our being healed both physically and spiritually with the suffering and death of Christ on the cross. According to John 1, Jesus is the author of life in the first place. He is the one that created us. When sin came into this world, we separated ourselves from the life of God, which lead to all kinds of sorrow, heartache, sickness and death. It is through Christ, through his death on the cross, that we are once again reunited with him, the source of all life. So physical healing also comes through this sacrifice. Our longing for wholeness meets its fulfillment in Jesus. Our hunger for healing, physical, mental, emotional, etc. can only be satisfied in Jesus. This commemoration of Jesus death on the cross reminds us of the wholeness that he brings us through his brokenness.

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