okay so every Thursday night at Church recently and tonight was the good old ‘Does God heal today’ evening, the one thing which I think is great about the Alpha course is that it doesn’t do it in a particually ‘one denominational way’ so it doesn’t do the C of E ‘God lets the doctors heal and that’s it’ and it doesn’t do the charasmatic ‘You will be healed and if not I’m gonna tell you you are healed anyway way’. Okay so I’m being a bit stereotypical there but I think it’s the general gist with the odd difference here and there, which leads onto the title of this blog…

Healing… my perception

I think today a lot of people are sketical and almost scared of the idea of God healing, our society has amazing medical knowledge and many a illness, disease etc can be healed through that, and yes I do believe that God has given the doctors knowledge and skill to do their jobs and discover things and also that he helps us through times in hospitals, however one thing which I absolutely do not believe is that this is the only way God heals, that is utter nonsense and I shall now proceed to share why i think this.

From my experience and from what the bible tells me I believe and to an extent know that God can heal today, I have heard loads of stories of people being healed…okay you say ‘they’re third party stories and therefore not as sound’, yes I’ll give you that, amazing as stories of people being brought back from the dead are I am still skeptical of amazing healings though (to contradict myself) I absolutely believe that God has the power to and will in some occasions.

The way I see it churches take 2 opinions (as meantioned before), the latter of these the whole ‘God will heal you if not I’m gonna say you’re healed anyway’ is ridiculous! God doesn’t heal everyone otherwise no-one would be dead! God, I believe that God does heal some people if it is his will (once again I hear you cry out, this time it’s ‘why would God want anyone to suffer’ I shall return to this later), Jesus says that we should pray for sick and pray for healing, infact it’s part of the great commissioning found at the end of Matthew & Mark so I believe that we should pray for healing for people and sometimes God will choose to heal them, I have prayed for things like headaches for people and they’ve been healed instantly so to my belief God does heal both small and large things.

Now to return to my ‘hear you cry!’ question, Why would God want anyone to suffer?
A while ago in the cinema I watched a film called ‘The Exorcism Of Emily Rose’, now in this film a young Christian girl became possessed by a demon which wouldn’t go even when prayed for, this girl was going through hell, now in a dream she met God and he said to her ‘You have 2 choices, I can take you now and you can come to heaven with me or you can stay here for a few more days and your story will change peoples lives’ in this case she chose to stay.
So how does this answer my question?
Well the bible tells me that ‘God works through all things for the good of those who love him’ so for 1 dying and going to heaven for Christians is the ultimate goal, the final healing if you like and the second thing that this quote spoke to me about was that sometimes suffering does good, for example I have heard of so many Christians who despite suffering/ not being healed have used their last time to do a great ministry which wouldn’t have been possible were they well.

So there we go, a tarkmiddy perspective on healing, make of it what you will however to conclude I shall say that regardless of success or not we should continue to pray for healing for people because if we don’t then it certainly wont happen!