From The Pastor’s Desk:
The God Who Heals
One of the questions that often comes up around prayer is the question of healing. Often our prayers focus on the physical illness of someone we love. Jesus performs a lot of healing miracles in the Bible; it seems like an all-powerful all-loving God would want to see the people He loves free of sickness and disease; so why don’t we see more miraculous healings? The question puts me in mind of an article I read some years ago in Christianity Today written by a man named Andrew Wilson. The title of the article was: “God Always Heals.”
For context, Wilson was a pastor at a large, charismatic church in England that prays for physical healing and sees “dozens of people healed bodily every year.” But, at the same time, he is the father of two children with regressive autism. “Both children have slowly lost the ability to sing, clap, paint, and hold spoons… So far, they haven’t been healed.” So, he writes from a perspective that regularly sees healing in church, but at the same time he regularly prays for healing in his children’s lives that has not yet come. He suggests that there are four types of divine healing, and if we recognize each of them, we’ll know that God always heals.
The first type of healing we might call the miracle of the human body. Wilson writes:
A virus attacks my body, and my white blood cells move into action, hunting down the perpetrator to kill it. Every second, tiny bits of mineral and organic material are sent to the parts of my body that need them, performing ongoing repairs, hour after hour, year after year. My body heals itself all the time. It’s the result of the grace of God, who created me, searches me, knows me, and loves me.
The second type of healing we will call the miracle of doctors and nurses.
If you are diagnosed with cancer, you go to a clinic. They use diagnostic machines to locate the tumor and map out its location in your body. Then there is a surgery, and the surgeon skillfully cuts into your body to remove the tumor, careful to sew up your body again in a way that keeps you from bleeding out. Then there is medicine, discovered and developed in labs, that is used to destroy any remaining cancer cells in your body. Wilson writes:
The ambulance, the paramedics, the skill of the surgeon, the discoveries that make operating rooms and anesthesia possible—all are gracious gifts of a loving God, whose mercy enables healings to occur all over the world that most other generations would have called miraculous.
The third type of healing we will call the miracle of divine intervention.
Sometimes, God heals directly, in a way that human scientific knowledge cannot explain. A Jewish rabbi spits on the ground, rubs the mud onto the eyes of a blind man, and suddenly sight is restored. A man with terrible back pain attends a prayer service, where people gather round and pray in Jesus’ name, and he feels a warmth come over him and the pain never returns. A young woman is
diagnosed with a tumor and her friends go on Facebook to ask for prayers. Thousands of Christians who have never met this young woman pray for her, and when she returns to the doctor for a plan of
treatment, they are shocked to find the tumor has disappeared. These kinds of healings can, and do happen; though probably not as often as we would hope, and in a way that is beyond our control.
And then, there is a fourth kind of healing. We’ll call it the miracle of the resurrection. Wilson
describes it like this:
…the trumpet sounds and the dead are raised in the twinkling of an eye, never to perish again. Corrupted bodies become incorruptible; sickness and affliction will never again befall them. The sterile smell of the operating room corridor is no more. Octogenarians formally bound to hospital rooms are given a new life and new youth that will never be stolen by the march of time. Every deaf ear is unblocked, every damaged limb is repaired, every blind eye sees.
Autism, Down syndrome, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer’s disease are swallowed up in victory. And the last enemy to be destroyed is death (1 Cor. 15:26). Nobody cries, except with joy.
Our God is the God who heals.
Does that mean our prayers for healing will always get immediate and obvious results? They might, but they don’t have to. We know for certain that God hears them. We know, for certain, that He wants to heal all brokenness and illness. And we know, for absolutely certain, that eventually He will heal all our hurts and sorrows. Wilson concludes his article like this:
God never says no to a request for healing. He either says “Yes”—as it was for two people in my church while I was writing this article—or “Not yet”—as it has been, so far, for my
children. One day, their disorders, and ultimately death, will be swallowed up in victory. I can’t wait.
February Birthdays
2 Kristen Fleshner
4 Deloris Maifeld
5 Dolores Hoodjer
11 Mark Ackerman, Addison Ulrich
16 Steve Heeren
17 Brooklyn Wix
19 Sharlene Miller, Ophelia Shafer
20 Lauren Fleshner
27 Kathy Ackerman
Greeting & Refreshments for Fellowship Time
Feb 1– Dalen & Bridget Meyer, Pastor Russell & Beth Muilenburg
Feb. 8 - Chad & Jamie Osterbuhr, Sam & Ami Cordes
Feb. 15 – Joyce Fecht, Brent & Dawn Janssen
Feb. 22 - Rex & Tracy Ackerman, Chelsea Peelen
February Anniversaries
4 Dave & Sue White
5 Al & Bev Harms
February Sound/Projector Operator Schedule
February 1- Tim Junker
February 8– TBD
February 15 - Matt Eberline
February 22 - Ryan Fleshner
Video Operator Schedule
February 1 - James Seehusen
February 8 - Michael Shafer
February 15 - Lucas Junker
February 22 - Jodi Bangasser