Prayer for our Healing

We are in the last week of our series called “The Way of Prayer.”

We have been working our way through the book of Acts stopping at every point we see the early church praying together… seeking to learn why they are praying and how they are praying and how prayer shaped their community.

And through their example, we have been learning to support one another by praying together on the path of discipleship.

We want to be a church that is marked by purposeful discipleship that is sustained through fervent prayer…

If we are going to fulfill the Great Commission and make disciples, we MUST prioritize praying TOGETHER…

One-on-one, in our Gospel Communities, in our church services…

Anywhere the church meets, prayer must be central... because prayer is how we express our dependence on God.

So as we come to the end of this series… this last prayer scene in the book of Acts, we are going to see a type of prayer that we actually find rather common when the church prays together even today: prayer for our healing… specifically physical healing.

If you’ve ever been to a church prayer meeting in your life… or you’ve ever been in a setting where you are in a group of Christians asking for prayer requests, one of the most common types of requests is prayer for physical healing.

Physical healing is very important to us because physical pain is so debilitating...

Not only that, physical healing prayer requests sometimes feel more tangible… less vulnerable… than asking God to help us over come sin or for him to use us taking the gospel to the lost

In fact, I often chuckle at the truth of this quote from James Walker that says,

“We spend more prayer energy trying to keep sick Christians out of heaven than trying to keep lost people out of hell.” (James Walker, qtd in Henderson, Transforming Prayer pg 79)

And that can be true… we can easily allow physical prayer requests to overshadow our own spiritual need by asking for healing of Aunt Bertha’s big toe.

But in the very same breath, we can wonder if praying for healing is actually something we should be doing? Is that just selfish praying? Is that praying in line with God’s will?

On the one hand, we see the hucksters who claim to have healing power from God in order to gain fame and fortune. We see the some of the false stories of healing that gain attention and notoriety.

I remember the story of Mike Guglielmucci, the writer of Hillsong’s hit “Healer” that was sung in churches around the world: you may have heard it… it goes, “I believe that you’re my healer, I believe you are more than enough for me...”

Beautiful words… I would love to affirm them…

They were made even more powerful with the visual of Guglielmucci singing them on stage on one of Hillsong’s DVDs with an oxygen tube in his nose, telling the story of how he was diagnosed with cancer and yet God was healing him.

For two years he did this, convincing everyone (even his wife, kids and parents)… that he had cancer and God was doing miraculous works... but after two years, he confessed he never had cancer… it was all a charade.

Things like that can make us skeptical of praying for healing.

On the other hand we see many people who pray for physical healing and God doesn’t heal.

They live with chronic disease or pain… or they even die… where is the Healer in that moment?

Maybe you even find yourself in that place today… and prayers for healing can feel so vulnerable because it feels like our very faith in God is on the line.

But I want you to know that God actually does heal… and he still heals today… and there are people in our church who have experienced this first hand...

I was talking to Melissa Mohler this week… and she had a number of stories to share… one in particular stood out to me...

She was working with a woman in our community who had a friend who discovered a lump on her neck.

Now this woman said to Mel, “Come with me, you have to pray for this friend and heal her.”

And Mel’s like, “Um… I’m happy to pray for her, but I’m not some healer.”

And the woman is like, “Just come and pray.” And she had this childlike faith that was really remarkable.

And so Mel came and the woman took Mel’s hand and put it right on her friends neck...

Now you have to understand, Mel is a nurse… she understands when something is a medical problem… and she asked a few questions and determined this was in fact very concerning… it wasn’t just a swollen lymph node...

And so she prayed, and left, and she said she honestly didn’t think much of it after that moment.

Two weeks later, the woman came up to Mel and said, “My friend who you prayed for was healed… the lump went away like the next day.”

God heals people. He’s done it right in our own midst. And yet he doesn’t ALWAYS heal people right away. And there ARE ways that this idea of healing has been abused.

And so how are we to pray when all of this confusion about healing is in the back of our minds?

How are we to pray in a way that doesn’t make temporary physical healing our only goal or our ultimate goal?

That’s what we want to explore today, starting in the book of Acts, but drawing upon a lot of other scriptures today.

If I had to give you this whole sermon in one sentence, here’s what it would be:

Big Idea: Pray for healing of body and soul with your hope set on God, not the healing.

Your Bibles are open to Acts 28… like I said, we will draw in a number of other passages… I want to build a bit of a biblical theology of healing for us today… tracing the idea of health and healing through the storyline of the Bible… but we are going to use Acts 28 as our anchor point.

Just to give you some context… we last left Paul on his way back to Jerusalem...

He was stopping and visiting some disciples along the way, and they kept saying, “Don’t GO! Persecution awaits you!”

And Paul kept saying, “I KNOW that… but I’m willing to die for the sake of the gospel.”

And so Paul returns to Jerusalem… persecution DOES await him… but as he stands trial, he uses his rights as a Roman citizen to appeal to Caesar.

And so the next several chapters recount his voyage to Rome, which was an eventful journey which included getting shipwrecked on an island called Malta.

That’s where we find them in chapter 28.

Read Acts 28:1-10.

In this passage, we see both some common misunderstandings about health and healing, as well as God’s power TO heal… and prayer’s vital role in all of it.

I believe we can learn how to Pray for healing of body and soul with your hope set on God, not the healing.

Let’s start in verses 1-6 with this thought:

1) Hope in the Perfect Creator and Judge of Body and Soul (Acts 28:1-6)

Paul is shipwrecked on Malta and he gets bit by a snake. And the response of the unbelievers who witnessed this is very interesting:

They assume that EITHER Paul is being judged for some extra horrible sin that HE personally committed...

OR, when he does not die from the bite, that Paul is a god who healed himself.

It’s either one or the other.

And I see both of these errors in Christianity today… maybe you’ve seen them too.

On the one hand, we so closely align the spiritual and the physical that we assume that every physical challenge is a direct judgement from God.

I’ve heard people say, “I got sick on Sunday. God must be mad at me and not want me to come to church today.”

I’ve seen people assume, “That person is really facing a lot of physical challenges. They must REALLY be doing something WRONG and God REALLY wants to teach them something.”

In a lot of people’s minds, sickness or suffering is directly tied to something the sufferer is not doing right.

On the other side of that spectrum people SEPARATE the physical and the spiritual to the degree that physical challenges are ONLY solved by medicine and science… we have assumed that HUMANS are the healers and therefore we treat them as God.

Doctors take the place of God as the “real healers.”

Medicine is the REAL solution… Sometimes if I have a headache, I don’t even THINK about prayer… ibuprofen works just fine.

We treat people like they are ONLY a mixture of biological processes… not embodied souls.

Some people… even professing Christians… generally discount miracles… they assume don’t happen today… at least not very often.

Any connection between prayer and healing is seen as “just a coincidence.”

Do you ever find yourself favoring one side or the other of that spectrum?

The Bible calls us away from either of these extremes and gives us PRAYER as a way to fix our eyes on God's purposes in our healing..

Prayer keeps us from thinking our sickness is always the DIRECT result of our sin or someone else’s sin… and it keeps us from thinking that we can heal ourselves without God.

Here’s where a biblical theology of health and healing is helpful:

In prayer, we learn to hope in the Perfect Creator and Judge of Body and Soul.

Like, WHY did these Maltese people run to these two extremes? I think it’s obvious: they lacked any understanding of the biblical worldview that Paul had.

They didn’t know Paul… and even more, they didn’t know Paul’s God. That’s why they responded the way that they did.

And I think it’s important to remind ourselves of the biblical understanding of body and soul… of health and healing...

So that we can inform our praying.

So I want to take some time to do that this morning. As we pray for healing with our hope set on GOD, not the healing, here’s the first thing I want to encourage you to do:

Pray, remembering that God is Creator and we are not. (See also Gen. 2:7, 21-22)

The islanders on Malta seriously confused the creation with the Creator when they assumed that Paul was a god.

They had a view of gods that was LESS than what God truly is.

And one of the key elements of the biblical worldview is that there is a CLEAR DISTINCTION between CREATOR and CREATION.

God always existed… the Bible starts with the words: “In the Beginning God.”

And God Created all things out of nothing.

And he created a very physical world because that was what he wanted to make… he said that it was good.

God loves the physical aspects of his creation. That’s very important to understanding the world we live in.

At the pinnacle of his creation, he created mankind. In the image of God he created him. Male and female he created them.

Now here is what is interesting… in everything God created, he spoke and it was formed out of nothing.

But for mankind, we see in Genesis 2:7,

“then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” (Genesis 2:7, ESV)

Notice in that verse three distinct features:

First, the Lord God formed the man. Man did not create and cannot sustain his own physical being. God formed him.

In fact, prior to a second act of God, the physical body is mere dust.

But there IS a second act of God: he BREATHED into his nostrils the breath of life.

He infused the physical body of mankind with a soul that was the very breath of God.

We not just bodies and we are not just souls: we are embodied souls.

That is the design of GOD. And that fact MASSIVELY shapes our understanding of our personhood… and EVERYTHING related to health and healing.

The same is true for the woman… Genesis 2:21-22…

“So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.” (Genesis 2:21–22, ESV)

God personally fashioned this woman… a complimentary counterpart to the man… out of this physical body that he had breathed life into for the man.

Both man and woman bear the image of God in unique, complimentary, and PHYSICAL/BIOLOGICAL ways.

And when we pray for healing of any kind, we are praying to the God who created body and soul.

We are praying to the one who knows the most intricate parts of how the human body works because he designed them.

The other week, Levi made a LEGO catapult… it was his own design… he engineered it and it worked...

And at one point, Asher got a hold of it and took some of it apart...

And I looked at it THINKING that I knew how it went back together… but when I tried it out, it didn’t work as well as it did before.

And so I had to go to Levi, the Designer, and of course he knew exactly how it needed to be fixed.

When we pray, we are going to the designer of our bodies and souls.

He knows how they work. He loves our body and soul more than we do!

He knows how our body and soul works together for his eternal purposes.

And when we pray, we remember that HE is the Creator God… WE AREN’T. DOCTORS AREN’T. Only God.

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t USE medicine or doctors or good health practices or good hygiene...

But PRAYER for healing reminds us that those things are created tools… and GOD is the Creator.

It sets our hope on GOD who is the Creator.

This also reminds us that we don’t get to DEMAND healing from God.

Our prayers do not obligate God to us.

HE is the Creator… we inquire of him.

HE can choose to heal us physically or not… depending on his wisdom and understanding about how our bodies and souls work together.

And yet, we can wonder… if God is such a great Creator and Healer, why doesn’t he heal everyone? Why do we experience pain and sickness and death???

That’s where we need to...

Pray, remembering that we live in a Judged and Fallen world. (See also Gen 3:19; Ex. 15:26; James 5:14-16)

This is the next step in biblical theology… the Fall.

The islanders on Malta had assumed Paul’s SIN was the direct cause of his suffering… this snake-bite.

They had some innate sense that sin and suffering were connected…

They had some innate sense that a serpent was bad news.

But they misunderstood what was happening here because they didn’t know God.

You see, the biblical worldview is that sickness, suffering and death are in the world because of sin that we ALL participate in… not just murderers and thieves.

After Adam and Eve rebelled against God by eating the fruit they were commanded not to eat, God said in Genesis 3:19...

“By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”” (Genesis 3:19, ESV)

In other words, death was coming… and life on earth would be filled with reminders of that impending death.

Soul death led to physical death, and all the suffering that goes with it.

Instead of life being filled with the joy of God’s sustaining presence, it will be filled with the toil of trying to sustain yourself.

Through the Fall into sin, sickness, suffering and death entered the world.

Romans says that the whole created order was subjected to futility.

So the islanders were RIGHT in one sense: there is a STRONG connection between sin and suffering.

We live in a judged and fallen world.

And yet, we are not the final judges. We don’t see that relationship between sin and suffering as clearly as we ought.

Their judgement was based upon a false notion that really bad sins are judged by the gods with really bad suffering.

But the Bible says that ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God… ALL deserve immediate death and separation from God because of our sin.

They were right… Paul WAS a murderer… he had murdered Christians even… but that wasn’t why he was bit by a snake.

Ultimately, God was the judge of Paul’s sin. And this snake-bite was not the direct result of Paul’s sin.

Even still, sometimes God DOES judge sin directly with sickness or death.

I think of Ananias and Sapphira… I think of the Christians in Corinth who were getting sick and even dying because they dishonored the Lord’s Supper.

I also think of the Egyptians who suffered the plagues in the Old Testament...

As God brought Israel out of Egypt, he said to them,

“If you will diligently listen to the voice of the LORD your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD, your healer.”” (Exodus 15:26, ESV)

I the Lord am your Healer. That’s an attribute or identity of God: Healer.

And how does he do it: by delivering his people and giving them his commandments and statutes.

By telling them how to live.

There is a deep connection between our souls and our physical bodies: between our obedience to God and our physical well-being.

And yet because we all sin and do NOT keep all his statutes perfectly, we all DESERVE suffering and death.

And so how does this help us pray?

We understand that we pray to the God who judges body and soul.

He has already judged our sin, in part, through the Fallenness of this world… and some of our sickness is just the result of living in that fallen world.

At the same time, we use sickness as an opportunity to reveal and root out sin.

Sickness should make us pause and check our hearts because SOMETIMES sin IS the direct cause of our sickness and we need to be humble enough to admit it.

James instructs the churches in this way,

“Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” (James 5:14–16, ESV)

Do we believe that verse? As a church you better believe we do! The oil jar sits on my desk at the ready… but I don’t see this practiced very often.

James says, “If you are sick, CALL for the elders…”… we take that seriously... we WILL come pray over you.

In fact, we want you to know that’s an opportunity after the service TODAY.

And not just today… ANY DAY.

But James tells the sick person to initiate. They are to CALL.

Why? Because there is a humility in that. There’s an acknowledgement of need and brokenness before the Lord.

One of the things we will ask as we anoint with oil is, “Is there any known sin or pattern of sin that you need to confess?

We aren’t going on a witch hunt there… but we want to recognize that sickness and sin are connected.

Sometimes generally. Sometimes more specifically.

These are things the guys on Malta just didn’t understand. They thought Paul was either a murderer or a god.

And so, as they thought he was a god, they showed him GREAT hospitality...

Read Acts 28:7-10 again with me.

So here is this Roman prisoner… and they are treating him like a god.

I love God’s sense of humor in that.

And in the midst of their stay, another opportunity for healing arises.

The chief of the island’s dad is sick and dying.

They’ve seen Paul escape physical death already… now he is going to extend that gift to someone else...

And the means God is going to use is prayer.

The second way we must pray for healing is by placing our...

2) Hope in the Compassionate Savior and Restorer of Body and Soul (Acts 28:7-10)

When Luke recounts healings in the book of Acts, he almost ALWAYS words them in a way that reminds us of the healing ministry of Jesus.

The Apostles carried on the healing ministry of Jesus as a sign and mark of his Kingdom breaking through on earth.

Their ability to heal was not based on some power that was intrinsic to them…

They were not “Faith healers” like some people talk about today… they were simply men to represented the Messiah.

And in Luke’s wording of this healing, he reminds us of Jesus.

Paul draws near Publius’ dying Father… he prays… he reaches out his hand… and heals him.

That’s exactly what Jesus did for so many people. He visited. He prayed. He reached out his hand. And he healed.

I loved this quote that I read this week in the New Dictionary of Biblical Theology edited by JB Green. It says,

Jesus often healed merely by pronouncement, but the Gospel writers also mention his laying on of hands or touching the sick in the context of his healing. This was a boundary-crossing gesture of compassion which reflects the extension of God’s own ‘hand’ which acted in creation and deliverance in the OT, and so signifies the power of God at work in and through Jesus. That this practice is continued by Jesus’ emissaries in Acts identifies them also as instruments of divine power.

The act of laying hands on a sick person was a gesture that demonstrated the power and compassion of Jesus.

Do we have that same kind of compassion that Jesus showed… and Paul showed… when they prayed? We must...

Pray remembering that God our Savior visited us with compassion. (see also Luke 4:18-19, 40; Matt. 14:14; Acts 10:38-39)

A lot of times, I hear about people talk about Jesus’ healing ministry saying something like, “Jesus and the Apostles ONLY healed people to PROVE that the gospel was true.”

I’ve even said similar things… and depending on the context, I might agree.

But I find it interesting here in Acts 28 - Luke does not mention that Paul shared the gospel with Publius or his Father or with anyone on Malta.

We could assume that he did… but Luke’s main point seems to be the compassion Paul showed through “visiting him” and the act of physical touch.

It reminds me of Matthew 14:14 when we read this about Jesus:

“When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick.” (Matthew 14:14, ESV)

Jesus healed not just to prove the gospel… but as an act of compassion that the gospel embodies.

He wasn’t just proving that he IS the Messiah, he was proving WHO the MESSIAH is.

God… the Creator of body and soul… who JUDGED body and soul in the Fall which brought about sickness and death… wants to SAVE us, body and soul through the life, death and resurrection of his Son Jesus Christ.

Jesus healed… not just because he had a point to prove… but because he had compassion.

HEALING was central to Jesus’ ministry as the Messiah because of the connection between our body and soul.

The Apostles shared the gospel in this way:

“God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. [Notice the connection between his GOODNESS and his HEALING… Peter Continues...] And we are witnesses of all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on the third day and made him to appear, not to all the people but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead [In other words, this was a PHYSICAL resurrection]. And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”” (Acts 10:38–43, ESV)

HEALING was central to Jesus’ ministry as the Messiah because he came to save us, body and soul.

Sin affects both our material and immaterial being.

The Bible does not separate those two things like we do.

So when Jesus initiated his ministry as the Messiah in Luke 4, he applied Isaiah’s prophecy about the Messiah to himself saying,

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”” (Luke 4:18–19, ESV)

There are both PHYSICAL and SPIRITUAL realities at play here… because the Kingdom of GOD is at hand… the Kingdom is breaking through.

In Luke 4:40, we see him making good on that promise…

“Now when the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to him, and he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them.” (Luke 4:40, ESV)

Jesus was not just proving who the Messiah is, he was SHOWING who the Messiah is… a compassionate God who visits their people in the midst of their Fallen state in order to save them from the judgement of their sin.

Jesus was not just proving who the Messiah was, he was SHOWING who the Messiah is.

In his compassion, he visited us and experienced our pain and suffering. He touched our diseases.

He took on PHYSICAL flesh and blood… he physically suffered and physically died on a cross.

And he rose again with a PHYSICAL, GLORIFIED Body.

And he did it so that we could be healed: physically and spiritually...

Because God has compassion on his people: Body and Soul.

Healing was central to Jesus’ ministry as Messiah.

It was the demonstration of his power and compassion…

It was the demonstration of his redemption and the essence of his kingdom.

It proved the better way of following him rather than our sin.

And we should pray for healing because God our Savior visited us with compassion through Jesus Christ.

God has compassion on his people.

He hates to see suffering that our sin… and the sin of this fallen world brings.

And he wants to save you from your sin and give you forgiveness as you put your trust in Jesus.

He is COMPASSIONATE to SAVE YOU.

And when we visit someone who is sick… and we lay our hands on them… and we pray for healing… we are expressing our understanding that we serve a compassionate God.

We are drawing near to them like Jesus did.

We are praying to the one who healed person after person in the crowd… even when physicians could do nothing.

We are making sure the sick and suffering don’t feel ostracized or isolated in their pain… but instead feel the love of Jesus who draws them in.

Will you get near to someone who is sick and pray for them like Paul did in order to show them Christ’s love and compassion for them?

Now some of you are squirming inside with how strongly I’ve stated some of these things… that healing was CENTRAL to Jesus’ ministry as Messiah… that God wants to save us body and soul.

And you are squirming because the Bible does not promise physical health and prosperity as a result of faith in this life.

Jesus did not heal everyone.

Even here in Acts 28, Paul is experiencing PHYSICAL harm as he is imprisoned and carried off to Rome.

And some of you know this all too closely… you’ve prayed for physical healing, and it did not come.

And you wonder why?

Even the father of Publius may have been healed of this round with fever and dysentery… but he wasn’t healed permanently… he would eventually die.

Why would God heal him only to let him die again?

And here’s where prayer comes in again:

Pray remembering that God our Restorer has a greater eternal healing. (see also John 11:25-26; Rev. 21:3-4)

Jesus taught us to pray, “Your Kingdom Come, your will be done.”

Our prayers remember that there is a bigger Kingdom… and eternal kingdom… that will outlast this Fallen world.

And that eternal kingdom will be in the new Heavens and the New Earth.

It will be a physical space where the realm of heaven and the realm of earth become one… where our body and souls are made whole.

The Apostle John saw this place in his Revelation… he writes,

“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”” (Revelation 21:3–4, ESV)

Can’t you wait for that? When we pray for physical healing, it doesn’t come close to the experience of healing we will have in the New Heavens and the New Earth.

And we need to allow that perspective of eternity to inform our expectation in prayer.

God WILL answer every prayer for the believers’ healing… in this life or in the life to come.

Just like Jesus rose with a glorified body, so too our bodies will rise and will be glorified to live with him forever.

We won’t just be Spirit’s hovering around for all eternity… we will be embodied souls, untouched by the fallenness of this present age because death shall be no more.

THAT is our ultimate prayer… THAT Kingdom that is to come...

And if God brings healing now… AWESOME! How compassionate!

But it is just a foretaste of what’s to come.

And if not… we can trust that he is working out something greater.

He is working the physical and the spiritual together in such a way that benefits us for eternity.

Paul says it this way in 2 Cor. 4 -

“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:16–18, ESV)

Pray remembering that God our restorer has a greater eternal healing.

Praying together for healing requires much more thought than saying, “Pray for my sick uncle” at a prayer meeting.

We must pray for that uncle remembering...

That God is our Creator and we are not. God is able to heal.

Remember that we live in a judged and fallen world. That uncle does not deserve healing… NONE of us do!

And yet we are praying to God our Savior who visited us with compassion through Jesus Christ.

And through faith we are headed toward an eternity in which God will provide eternal healing for body and soul.

The next time you pray for healing, will you pray for healing of body AND soul with your hope set on God, not the healing?