Does God heal today?

Grant Sandercock-Brown wonders:
Could prayer make me well?

G

od is a God of miracles or he is no God at all. God is a healer, or his healing Son who said “anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9) has deceived us. Yet if that is so, what do we say to those who have cried out for healing and received none? Does our miracle-working God still heal today?

Skeptics tell us that miracles are a proven nonsense. But let us be clear on this. Science works by explaining things that can be examined and proved in experiments. A scientist can’t possibly prove that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead! (Proving a negative is very hard to do.)

Nor will examination of the object help. Miracles, in the main, are when God changes something ordinary into something else ordinary. Jesus changed ordinary water into ordinary wine. Illness is ordinary, wellness is ordinary. Analysis of the new wine will not help us. Examination of the healed will not answer the world’s questions. God’s precise role in transforming one into the other is beyond our grasp.

As for Christians who don’t believe in miracles, it doesn’t matter how smart you are, if you think that the miracles in the Bible aren’t miracles, that’s an idea you bring into the Bible, not one you can get from it. The Bible pretty much expects God to do miracles from beginning to end. As Gordon Fee says: “Only among intellectuals and in a ‘scientific age’ is it thought to be too hard for God to heal the sick” (The First Epistle to the Corinthians, New International Commentary).

I have a personal stake in this issue. Just over two years ago I was diagnosed with advanced Hodgkin’s disease. Many fervent prayers were offered for healing, mine among them. After three courses of chemotherapy the cancer was, somewhat unexpectedly, completely gone (this didn’t stop the doctor prescribing three more rounds of chemo). Was this a miracle? Did God answer the prayers prayed for me? I believe he did. A sceptic will believe he didn’t. After all, treatments for Hodgkin’s are among the most successful for any type of cancer. The problem is that there is no test case that we can leave untreated except for prayer, in order to find out if it was prayer alone that healed. Miracles are by their very nature “one-offs” and hence are impervious to scientific investigation. I believe God healed me.

Why would God heal me and not him?

And yet … Dad started to feel “funny” one afternoon. He was in his 60s and fit for a man his age. He left work to drive home. After a few minutes his legs stopped working and he clambered out of the vehicle, hoping a friend would see his distress and help him. One did. But Dad has never walked since. Oh, believe me, we prayed, and not just his family. Friends and prayer warriors alike prayed for his healing. He was anointed with oil and prayed for some more. If healing comes about by the fervour and faithfulness of our prayers, Dad would be walking. But he is not. He spent nine months in a spinal unit and is now a paraplegic. What am I to do with my story and Dad’s story? Why would God heal me and not him?

God is a God of miracles today. The New Testament tells us that the Kingdom “was inaugurated by Christ in the power of the Spirit, who continues the work of the Kingdom until the consummation” (Gordon Fee, New International Commentary). That is, we cannot just say that was a different time. The Spirit and the Kingdom are present realities. Acts 3 tells us of Peter and John’s healing of the lame man in the temple. Years later, in writing to the Corinthians, Paul clearly says that in the Spirit’s power and at the Spirit’s discretion, some are given “gifts of healing.”

Healing is at God’s discretion, not ours.

As this is one of the few passages that mention such a charismatic gift, we need to hear Paul. In 1 Corinthians 12:9-10 he literally speaks of “gifts of healing” and “miraculous powers.” This indicates that these gifts are given to certain individuals and also that each healing or miracle is a special gift. The healer or miracle worker will always stand, as theologian Arnold Bittlinger has noted, in “new dependence upon the divine Giver.” And perhaps this is an indication of why God heals some and not others. Healing for all in this life has never been promised, nor is there anyone on earth who can provide it. Healing is at God’s discretion, not ours.

At a recent conference I spoke with a young person who said he wanted to have Holy Spirit power “on tap” so that he could work some miracles. Paul’s language should give my young friend and, indeed, any miracle-working televangelist, pause. No one has the Spirit’s power “on tap.” Every healing and every miracle is the Spirit’s doing and at the Spirit’s discretion. Yes, some are given “gifts of healing” but nobody has “a gift of healing” given once and for all to use at their pleasure. Each healing is a gift. People who long for, or claim, such power “on tap” are misguided at best and bring their Lord no credit at worst.

Why would I say that? Kim has cerebral palsy and his intellectual development is impaired. He volunteers at our corps and is cared for most lovingly by his brothers and sisters in Christ. A few weeks ago he asked if I could “deliver him.” I asked what he meant. He said he wanted to be delivered from his cerebral palsy. A Pentecostal neighbour had told him that as a minister I would be able to do so, that I would be able to help him get rid of the “evil.” My heart went out to Kim, but not to his neighbour. Such a theology diminishes Kim and misrepresents the Gospel.

We need pain.

We in the Christian West have been seduced by the idea of power. We want to have control over our own fulfilled lives. And of course illness has no place in such an idea. There is no room for cerebral palsy here. We long for God to do “awesome” things for us. The alluring, self-serving prosperity doctrine, which is almost laughable in its disconnection with Jesus and what he said and did, fuels such “it’s all about me” theology. And yet if there is no Kim, where is my compassion? Where is the need to which I must respond for Jesus’ sake? Tenderness, kindness, weakness, patience and “you” are replaced by awesomeness, greatness, power, might and “me.”

Where is my need of God for anything other than personal empowerment? What can authentic community possibly mean in this ludicrous idea of a potent self-sufficient Christian? We need pain. If for no other reason than “illness may be the only time we have the opportunity to discover that we are part of a story we did not make up” (Stanley Hauerwas, “The Sanctified Body” in Embodied Holiness). Trust me, serious illness forces us to depend on God and others. Have we forgotten God’s word for Paul when he wanted healing? “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

How then should we pray? Shamelessly.

What is our response when we see a severely disabled or autistic child? What is our reaction to the manifest pain in these children and their families? Perhaps we say, ‘thank God my child is whole and healthy’. That’s OK. Health is indeed a gift from God. But it cannot be all we say. Surely to think, ‘there but for the grace of God go I’ can never be enough for a child of God. Surely people’s pain requires more from us.

At the end of the day we must kneel before God, recognizing that we desperately need him and that we desperately need each other. Illness always reminds us of that fact. Healing is a gift from God. But it just may be that illness is a more important gift from God. After all, which is the greater testament to God’s power? A miracle? Or genuine community where hope, faith, trust, love, gentleness and compassion are expressed by the unhealed and offered to the unhealed? Where is God best glorified? In miracles of power or in our faithful dying? Stephen’s rising, healed, from his stoning would have been a testament to God’s might. But Stephen’s pain and death honoured God even more (see Acts 7). If ever there was a people who should understand that God is glorified in hope-filled suffering and faithful dying, it is the followers of Jesus!

How then should we pray? Shamelessly. We should pour out our hearts to him and ask for healing without any cautious codicils of “if it be your will.” God is our loving Father. We do not have to remind God to act according to his will. Jesus’ parable on prayer in Luke 11 commends the petitioner’s “shamelessness” (Walter Bauer, Greek-English Lexicon). We too can ask our Father for what we really want.

If he is not God we have no reason to pray.

Some people say prayer is all about us, we pray to change us (as C. S. Lewis famously says in Shadowlands). This is not so. Prayer is about God. If he is not God we have no reason to pray. If he cannot or will not act on our behalf prayer is merely inner reflection. We pray believing that God will answer our prayers. Sometimes we are hurt by his reply because we truly believe he could do what we ask but he chooses not to. And sometimes our heavenly Father’s only explanation is “because I said so.” Perhaps God’s reasons are beyond our understanding. Nevertheless, we trust God to be God - there is no other way.

So we pray, believing that our prayers matter to God. The evidence of Scripture is that “God does not act if [we] do not play our part” (Millard Erickson, Christian Theology). Jesus healed when people acted in faith by asking him to do so. But it’s not because of how we do it! God is not more likely to say “yes” to our prayers just because we pray a particular way. God answers our prayers because he loves us, not because we offer a good prayer or have been especially clear in our request or because we believed harder than the person praying next to us.

Our prayers matter to God. He is not a distant clockmaker who wound up the timepiece of history and is now letting it run its course. God is not merely a detached observer who has foreordained our whole life. God sustains and governs all things. He keeps the world going now. Our world is a dynamic work in progress and God writes our prayers into history as we speak them. He is not the remote God who occasionally intervenes with a miracle for the really good prayer. Our Father hears our prayers and weaves his “yes” and “no” into our present and our future, working all things together for our good. It appears that sometimes our good is served by miracles of healing and sometimes it is not.

The author and the authentication of healings are beyond our comprehension. That’s OK. If we could fully understand God he wouldn’t be God. Sometimes God changes our illness into wellness and sometimes he does not. In either case we pray, trusting that the God of miracles is glorified in both, for that is how we play our part.

Writer: Captain Grant Sandercock-Brown is the corps officer at Chatswood Corps in Sydney as well as a part-time lecturer at the College of Further Education in Australia Eastern Territory. He was a secondary school music teacher for 10 years and loves theology, rugby and golf. He and his wife, Sharon, have three children.

This article first appeared in Salvationist, a publication of the Canada & Bermuda Territory.

5 Comments to Does God heal today?

1. Dont pray for patience, lest you want to go through some trying times. I prayed for patience ..a couple of times…a while ago. Then…things started happening…things got ugly. Experiences in my life where a bit of patience would have really done some good. However, I hadnt achieved that virtue yet. So tears were shed. Panic happened along with anger, distress, hardship, depression,and about anything else you can name. I would be lying to say though that after each and every “bad experience” I didnt learn anything. I have,I slowly have, increased my level of patience and my level of acceptance of things out of my control, which for anyonewho knows me is a hard thing to do. There have been times in my life where I have thrown my hands in the air and wondered why a prayer of mine wasn’t answered. What have I done to make me not worthy? I believe we all have questioned that at some point no matter who we are or how “religious” we claim to be. Yet, over the years I have started to believe that in Gods plan for each one of us (whatever that may be) unanswered prayers are necessary. Sometimes an unanswered prayer is worth thanking God over. Maybe at the time we were upset over not being granted our request….but an amzing thing came out of it. A relationship was formed where once there was not…an inner peace was found where once lie turmoil. Perhaps we were made to go through even more intense trial and tribulation to achieve our goal or be granted our prayer…and in doing so we also earned the compassion and acceptance for others who are going through the tough times we just dug ourselves out from.
   The phrase “turn it all over to God” has been said to me a countless number of times when it comes to any issue or concern I have had in my life. For some that is the way they deal with problems..for me its just not so. I do believe that He know what i want..he knows what I wish for..he knows what I need. He knows that I will stress myself out trying to solve a problem…and will question every aspect of it. I just have to trust that he will somehow relay to me, whether through another person or acts, tools to help me. I believe those who look at their faith and God as the surefire way to avoid or be saved from illness, turmoil, suffering and hurt are in for a letdown. Hurt makes us love more, pain makes us compassionate, Suffering makes us strong….so in a way…if I have had to suffer and struggle to be strong for my children ..if I have had to hurt in order for another to not question my live…if my pain has led me to make another feel joy…Thanks God.
Jennifer on November 8th, 2007

2. Grant and Jennifer:

   This column and commentary have been instructive for me.

   Here’s what I have to add:

   Healing and having a sickness cured or go into remission are related things but they are not synonymous. Prayers are always answered, but not always in the ways we’d like.

   What interests me about pain and suffering is that the objectively same circumstances can be visited on different individuals and can be experienced so differently.

   The love of my life lost the use of his legs in his last few months. What I learned is that the objective reality of not being able to walk is somewhat less unsettling to the thoughtlessness, easily remediated aspects of our society, that cuts off and isolates people who are in this position. But what I wasn’t grateful enough for when he was still alive was his graciousness around individuals who made evident that they thought he was less than the man than he continued to be.

   The suffering was primarily his and I don’t wish to take it on vicariously but what I learned and am still learning through that trial is that being humbled can be a beautiful experience. But it’s something that’s between us and God and cannot properly be imposed on us by anyone else.

   Sick, vulnerable, dependent people are not terribly convenient and while it’s our obligation to continue to pray for deliverance, it’s even more important to pray that they will be allowed to live as whole people unfettered by pity. This latter prayer it I believe always answered because it can’t help but align our will with God’s.

   Thanks,

   Andrea
Andrea614Regent on November 9th, 2007

3. Thank you, Grant, for another thoughtful and pastorally guided article.

   For me the question of “Does God heal today?” emphasises the mysterious nature of who God is. The simple answer to that question is “Yes! God does heal.” But, as Grant’s examples have pointed out, it’s not a healing that we can place within our scientific and modern frame of reference - sickness + medicine (in this case prayer) = healing. It just doesn’t work that way. Sometimes God heals completely, sometimes he does not. But sometimes God’s healing comes in other ways.

   My own life is an example of this. Seven and a half years ago I was diagnosed with Type one diabetes. I was on my honeymoon in Bali and became extremely ill very quickly. This was my first trip to Bali and my new wife’s third. But here is the example of God’s working and presence through this very difficult time. Salvationists from the Denpasar Corps, who I met on the Sunday, were at my bedside literally 24/7 from the moment I entered hospital on Monday through to when I was transported back to Australia on an emergency flight at midnight on Wednesday. I’ll never forget those last moments in Bali (even though I was close to comatose) when my new found friends and brothers and sisters in Christ joined hands around my bed and sang, in Indonesian, “I surrender all”. Just recalling that moment brings tears to my eyes.

   God did not heal me, but he taught me a lot about sharing times of pain with another and journeying through life, with all its sickness and sadness, together.

   Just another thought. I have had much prayer for healing from my diabetes over the years. Yet, I have often considered the question of Jesus to the blind man “What do you want me to do for you?” (Luke 18:41). If that was me, I don’t know that my first response would be “Lord, I want healing from diabetes.” I think there are several other things that would top my list of requests from the Lord.

   Here’s why. Very early on in my illness God reminded me of two things. Firstly, on the cross where Jesus died a spear was thrust into his side and blood and water spilled out (John 19:34). Secondly, Paul’s “thorn in the side” (2 Cor 12:7-10). Whilst my regular needles (4 times a day) could not be quite considered a “spear” or a “thorn,” they do remind me of the sacrifice that Jesus made for me, and that God’s “grace is sufficient for me” (2 Cor 12:9). At last count I’ve been reminded of that close to 11,000 times over the last 7 and 1/2 years. It may sound strange to ask but, why would I want to lose that? Why would I want God to take that away? Diabetes, whilst at times a pain, and can be scary (especially in the midst of a “hypo”), has actually become a blessing to me.

   So, we need to be careful of our definition of “healing.” For whilst I still have diabetes, God has definitely “healed” me, and he continues to do so every day.

   “Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!” (2 Cor 9:15)
Adam Couchman on November 11th, 2007

4. 2 quotes I have always loved…relative I guess to why some suffer through illness and hardship and others do not:
   “God hangs his heaviest weights on his smallest branches”
   “Nature is upheld by antagonism. Passions, resistence, danger are educators. We acquire the strength we overcome.”
Jennifer on November 12th, 2007

5. Grant and contributers,
   I was feeling down and desparate with having a poor nights sleep (diabetes -bladder control problems. Then there are the swollen feet. I stopped from attending church today because I did not feel in a worshipful mood. I needed to be alone with the Lord for understanding and to be able to get up again.
   I have had prayer and anointing many times. I normally follow this up with more attention to medication, diet and gym. In the past it has always worked. But as soon as the discipline lapses I revert to where I am now.
   The reflections in the article have encouraged me to persevere in faith and trust in God.
   Also I am reminded that our joy must not depend on our circumstances but in what Christ has done at Calvary.

   The Scriptures have the final say, “Our outward man perishes but our inward man is renewed day by day”.

   I see the palsied, Downs syndrome folk at a home near our church and we minister to them. Mostly they cannot respond, but I know that they can hear and believe and be saved. Their physical condition continues, but it will not be permanent because, in the ressurection they will be perfect and be made like Christ.
   Being encouraged by your insights and balance of truth, I will be back at church tonight and ready to minister as the Lord enables.
   One more thing, it is a joy to know that Christ lives in me (us) by faith and I(we) can show Him to others
   Ron
Ron Smith on August 10th, 2008

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