fame

^"But they went off and blazed and spread His fame abroad throughout that whole district." (Matthew 9:31 Amplified)

Two private healling result in Jesus' fame spreading through out the district. How I long for his fame to spread here. I long for him to be glorified - proved mighty in the eyes of his people. The people of our church need to see him shining and glorious, to see that he really reigns and moves in their lives.

To be sure, my high feelings for Jesus and desire for his glory are mingled with baser thoughts. There are thoughts of how I need to see him move to validate my ministry and build my own faith and experience.

Lord purify my motives.

"When He saw the throngs, He was moved with pity and sympathy for them, because they were bewildered (harassed and distressed and dejected and helpless), like sheep without a shepherd" (Matthew 9:36 Amplified).

Fill me with your compassion. Give me eyes to see what you are doing and the readiness to be obediant. Increase my zeal for the glory of your name. Amen.

John Wimber and healing

Power Healing

I have to confess I had some reservations associated with Wimber’s name. I had heard of the excesses of the Toronto blessing, and some how associated Wimber with that – with crowds seeking after the manifestation of God’s glory (I have been one of those) and worse with other independent third wave charismatic churches who seemed to get such a kick out of how their bodies couldn’t handle the presence of God that those experiences became the bread and butter of a good worship time. I don’t disparage such experiences, but living for them seems to be a recipe for flakey half-baked Christianity.

Thankfully Foster’s introduction to the book stripped away these sentiments by unexpected shock. Foster to me has always been the quintessential symbol of spiritual depth. That he was all right with Wimber was incongruous with my preconceptions. (It was like the time I went into the coffeehouse of my youth, my favorite, to notice that they leave their portafilters out of the machine loosing precious heat between brew cycles –I just don’t know what to think about them any more!) So it was with Wimber. Not knowing what to think of him, I was open to the way he stumbled upon the Spirit reluctantly, (not with flakey enthusiasm) and found his story authentically refreshing.

I have always been taught that Christ was “wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities and by his stripes we are healed.” I never before struggled with whether healing is a product of the atonement or the very stuff of the atonement. Wimber presents the arguments of theologians arguing both ways with fairness. If it is in the atonement, then why is healing not guaranteed in every case like salvation? Wimber and theologians who suggest that it is a product of the atonement find, there, room for healings not to happen. I guess I don’t need that room. Even salvation isn’t a done deal at conversion. I believe that we await the consummation of our salvation just as we may wait the consummation of our healing. Am I saved from sin? Not yet. But also yes already. I love this tension.

Another thing that caught my attention was Wimber’s treatment of various kinds of healings. I was reading some of this in the midst of a fight with my wife over my irrational fear of using the phone. It got me wondering weather this fear required inner healing (I racked my brain for memories of unresolved hurt), or if I need deliverance from demonic mischief.

Is healing a part of my church tradition?

Surprised by the Power of the Spirit: A Former Dallas Seminary Professor Discovers That God Speaks and Heals Today by Jack Deere

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars

Oh yes, Divine Healing is pretty big in my tradition. It is one of four cardinal doctrines, right up there with Salvation, The Baptism in the Spirit and the Second Coming of Christ. I fondly remember extended times of prayer on Sunday nights when I was little. I’d walk around helping my dad lay hands on people kneeling at the front pews, often my little hand on a polyester clad buttock. I don’t know how many were praying for healing but I remember the desperation with which these old saints prayed.

The next big memory that comes to mind was a chapel service in college. There students crowding the altar, and I saw one big guy who had braces on both his knees. At once I felt slightly repulsed by him (he struck me as a lonely socially awkward soul like myself) and compelled to pray for him. I made my way to the altar behind him and placed a hand on the shoulder of one raised arm. I don’t remember how I prayed, only that I sensed that it was what God had wanted.

The next day at chapel this same guy stood there on the platform giving testimony to a complete healing of his knees, bouncing up and down. I started to wonder if perhaps God had given me the gift of healing…. Oh it was small infant gift to be sure, but one I could perhaps fan into flame?

Over the last few weeks I have been praying again with increased expectation, even keeping track of what happens. I have started to wonder, after I prayed nearly 20 times for healings and seeing nothing, if something is wrong with me. I wondered if I wasn’t holy enough, or if I was some how praying the wrong way, or if I was just kidding myself with this gift idea.

This is where Jack Deere’s book hit home for me, especially chapter 12, Pursuing the Gifts with Diligence. “Almost as soon as I began to ask God to give me a healing ministry,” he writes, “I began to pray for sick people. Most of the sick people I prayed for at first did not get healed…. But there is no other way to grow in anything apart from constant practice and risking” (166).

He goes on to give practical ways to practice. His cautions about motives give me appropriate soul searching to do while cutting the chi of arguments with which Satan has been plying me.

The bulk of his book was a treatise against cessationism. I bristle against any theology or system of thought that defines itself by what it isn’t and what it is against so I have little sympathy with cessationism. And as I have never been positively influenced by either dispensational or cessasionist theology, I had no great battle with his augments. Instead I followed along with his journey, with morbid fascination, cringing at his background, and watching as he was irresistibly drawn to the moving of the Spirit today.

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Easter and Resurrection Power

As part of my responsibilities for class I have been keeping track of when I pray for healing and the results. So far we are 0 for 15 in immediate healing. There haven't been any signs that the Spirit has been moving aside from some warmth in my hand. I mean someone falling down - that would be a clue, or people being filled with the Spirit, or shouting hallelujah. Some times I'd take just about any feedback. The tears in a few eyes were cool yesterday, but I guess part of me wants some more evidence that God is working, because the Enemy is quick with the suggestion that he is not. Am I too sinful? How can God use me anyway? I should have spent more time this week praying for this moment. These are the thoughts going through my mind yesterday as I prayed for people.

One day Isaiah comes to King Hezekiah (2 Kings 20:1-11) and tells him that he needed to get his house in order because he is going to die. As Isaiah is leaving, Hezekiah is praying. God changes his mind! He comes to Isaiah in the courtyard and tell Hezekiah that his prayer is heard and he will have another 15 years. You'd think that the word from the prophet would be convincing for Hezekiah, but he needs more proof. So Isaiah says OK, what should the Lord do? Make the shadow from the sun go forward or backward? Just to be sure Hezekiah asks for it to go back.

It strikes me that God would not only offer a sign but be pleased to do the harder of the two. Talk about putting the Lord your God to the test! Hezekiah got his sign that God was moving.

God I confess that I look for signs too, and that I feel the pressure from the enemy not to believe what you are doing, or in your resurrection power that lives within me, or the authority you have given me over sickness and the enemy. I'll take what you give me, and keep praying. Teach me, show me what you want to do like you told Isaiah. Like Jesus I only want to do what I see you doing, help me to see.

Where were the gifts of the Spirit between the New Testament and 1900?

The Healing Reawakening: Reclaiming Our Lost Inheritance by Francis MacNutt

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars

I had the opportunity to speak with Beth on the phone last night (she was making sure that I wasn’t stranded in London as the hijacked email purported. Thanks). I realized that while she said she was struggling to square MacNutt’s use of scripture, I had glossed over it. Perhaps it was because I have heard similar arguments all my life, but I found when I came to a block quote of scripture I said to myself, “ah that one” and skimmed through it.

Nothing jumped out at me as being way off. There may have been some isogesis evident in his insistence that the open-endedness of Acts made implicit that early church ministry was expected to continue (73). Was that Luke’s intention, or was it simply that he could not yet comment on Paul’s death.

Also the case he built that healing on the Sabbath was specifically a cause of his death seemed a bit of a stretch (43). Surely it was part of it, but Jesus’ conflict with the religious authorities stretched well beyond that. Still the one-sidedness of this argument doesn’t detract from the conclusion that Jesus really valued healing. That is evident in every gospel.

Overall his use of scripture seemed fair, obviously used in service of his point, but not out of context, if without the benefit of higher biblical criticism.

For me, the greatest value in MacNutt’s book is answering the question I have always had, “what happened to the Baptism in the Spirit from the time of the New testament to 1900?” It is, I think, easy for classical Pentecostals to think that they disappeared from the church completely until we came along. That has always been a sad thought to me, and indeed, if it were true, it would lead me to question the validity of our Pentecostal experience.

I appreciate how MacNutt traces both the factors that lead to minimizing the charisms, particularly healing, as well as the remnant of the saints of God who kept the memory alive.

I think he made his case powerfully with me. I fell at times, into reverie, imagining myself praying for the healing of people in my church. I saw myself setting people free from demonic oppression and addictions. It seemed just the thing our village needs.

Repeatedly in the Masters in Spiritual Formation program, I have been faced with the irony that as we study the richness of the various streams of Christianity, God is, at the same time, drawing me deeper into my own.

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Healing

I watched a healing service conducted by Kenneth Haggin at a church in Sterling Heights, MI. He spent perhaps a half hour preaching about the woman with the issue of blood. Many of his phrases sounded like he had just read MacNutt (The Healing Reawakening: Reclaiming Our Lost Inheritance). The second half hour showed him praying for the people in need of healing in rapid fire. He explained that it worked better for him that way, when he felt he had the anointing, which presented itself as a burning in his hands, he had to use it quickly. I also found I interesting that he distinguished between the gift of healing (restoring what is already there, like bringing hearing to a damaged ear drum) and miracles (creating something that wasn’t there to begin with, like bringing hearing to someone born with out an ear drum). He had the gift of healing, he said, but he would believe with people for a miracle as well.

Many fell under the power of God as he prayed for them. I have been in these kinds of services and have no problem with people falling. I watched the people who didn’t fall when he prayed with some amusement. I watched their faces as they tried to figure out what to do next. I noticed that Hagin laid his hand on the top of their head with the heel of his palm resting on their forehead. He would push back as he proclaimed, “Receive!” I have had strong physical reactions to the Spirit as people have prayed for me, and I also know what it is like to loose your balance as a minister pushes on your head. I found myself trying to identify which ones just lost their balance and which were overcome by the power of the Holy Spirit (like the lady with the cane who started quaking before she fell.)

Even in the midst of my amusement and critical ogling, a curious thing happened. Toward the end of the video, the Spirit was working on me too! At times when he said, “Receive” my arm would have a strong reflexive twitch. It is weird I know, but that is a way my body has routinely reacted to being overcome by the Spirit. I wanted to find someone to pray for when I was done watching to see if I could share some of that “anointing.”

I have continued to experience this as well. As I read scholarly treatments of healing, the Spirit overtakes me and my shoulders quake. Tonight as Cliff was playing the part of the man born blind at our lenten service, I felt that same electric shock move through me when we described how he was healed.

That's what it is like too... just now I remembered the time that I leaned one hand on a cooler in the coffeehouse and the other hand on a display case with faulty wiring and had a nice jolt of 220 run through my arms. That same jerk reaction is what happens to me still when the Spirit is on me. Tears come to my eyes after it happens and a tenderness rests on me.

As I said this has happened several times now as I have been reading about reading, especially when I start daydreaming about God using me in that gift, strengthening the latent gift of healing I have identified might be in me. Perhaps it is the Holy Spirit dreaming along with me and encouraging me to go for it.