Matthew 17:20 (New Living Translation)
20 “You don’t have enough faith,” Jesus told them. “I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible.[a]”
You see... sometimes we look at God and ask Him to do something not completely believing He will do it....and because we have such weak faith I believe He doesn't answer. Oh we of little faith. He wants us to use the power He's delegated to us to do such things. So....the rest of the story goes like this. The next morning the doctors brought the lady in to fit her for her neck brace that she would be wearing for some time. They did another x-ray and whatta ya know...HER NECK WAS COMPLETELY HEALED! The doctor had the two x-rays side by side...one broken neck and one perfectly healthy...God had healed her neck. The pastor still has the x-rays and the lady sang in the choir that night....amazing.
Here's the kicker for all this....when he prayed and told that neck to heal itself he was using the power of the Holy Spirit that was living deep within him. When he got done praying those words he didn't think twice about it. He went home and when his wife asked what happened he said "she's got a broken neck but she'll be okay." He didn't stay up all night wondering if God would heal her...he knew that God had already answered his prayers. Moral of the story....when we pray...pray expecting and knowing that God will deliver.....that's faith.
waino
5 comments:
That's a cool story...I love hearing about how God still shows up and heals.
There is something I want to call to attention...Paul, in 1 Corinthians 12 & 13, talks about spiritual gifts. He explains how God gives gifts for the good of his people (the Church). He says there are many different gifts, however, they come from the same Spirit.
He is claer to state that some have the gift of miraculous powers (healing), some have the gift of prophesy, some distinguishing between spirits, and to some the gift of tongues (12:10). But we do not have them all...I know this to be true because I've been a Christ follower for 10 years and I can't speak in tonuges or heal, but I do feel like I have the gift of discernment and of teaching.
Now I MOST DEFINITLEY believe that some have the gift of healing...but not all. We all work together for the good of the body (12:11-20). Many parts one body.
This pastor obviously has the gift of healing...he and others can testify to it. But for him to say that we all can pray and have this happen is just not true. I believe that you should pray with confidence and scripture, in context, speaks that if you seek first the kingdom of God all these things will be added and the mustard seed verse...however, these verses are NOT talking about everyone being able to heal if they have enough faith in their prayers.
It isn't heresy or anything like that that he or anyone else would say something like this. It is human nature to think that if we can do it...everyone should be able to do it. This happens all the time...anyone ever tried to take calculus?? I did...and failed miserably. The teacher, however, could wiz right through the book and thought that because he could do it that everyone else could too and he got frustrated when I couldn't get it. Its easy to see how the pastor could think that this should be possible for everyone to do...because he had the gift of healing maybe even getting frustrated when others don't have enough faith.
All this to say...don't get frustrated when you pray and people don't get healed. You can have tons of faith and people don't get healed. Keep praying with tons of faith...God is still just as powerful and soverign even if you pray and your grandma's cancer doesn't go away.
good points. I should've put the 1 cor 12 and 13 in there though to make it a complete article. But I'll say this...just because you haven't healed or spoken in tongues or tonuges like you wrote, doesn't mean that it wont happen in the future. another thing he told us was that you are what God says you are not what you say you are....meaning just because i missed a few putts doesn't mean im the worst putter in the world and that i should throw my putter into a lake full of lava ...like i have said before. If you tell yourself you aren't something you wont be it...
True...God is still at work. That may be a part of His plan for me...speaking in tongues and healing.
It would be awesome if He gave me the gift of healing. First thing I'd do would be to heal Terry's broke jump shot...
Good story and message like I said on the reply email, I like a couple points here. True that not everybody is blessed with all gifts and true that we are what God says we are. I have felt the Spirit move me to pray over a teamates injury but to my knowledge I don't have the gift of healing. However it could happen and the bottom line is that it wouldn't be anything that I did, it would be all God. Good talk.
Wow, where have I been. I haven't even looked at this until today. Great convo going on here. A lot of respect going on in this discussion. View points are read, thought over and replied to. I wish all conversations I have with people could go this well.
One point I will add to bring this back to basics is to view this in other aspects of life. I remember being a teammate of Mark Texeira in college (name drop!) and he would get frustrated with me for continually chasing sliders in the dirt. He would say things like "can't you see that up?". Obviously, I could not. Every pitch I saw in college for some reason I thought was a fastball and I was going to hit it 500 feet. Didn't work out most times. That is also why Ted Williams was about the worst manager in pro baseball history. He could just not relate to the struggles of normal players. I see this in the sales world as well. I hear people's talk track to customers and just do not get what they were trying to convey to the customer.
Point is, we all have different gifts like Nolan said. But, also we need to keep striving to get more weapons in our arsenal like Adam said.
I love this post and follow up
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