Some thoughts on healing

I’ve been ill for a few years now. (Don’t worry: it’s not super serious or debilitating, it’s just also not going anywhere). And creating twenty video lessons for Sunday School kids about healing made me consider what I should learn about healing. So…

• It’s good to ask for healing.
  There is definitely a part of me that doesn’t want to. Partly because I’m inspired by my friends with chronic illnesses or disabilities visibly grow closer to God through their experiences but also serve others in a way that is because of rather than instead of. Partly because miraculous healing has been concentrated in specific times in the Bible (Elijah and Elisha, Jesus, and the early church) and we’re not living in one of those times and I don’t want to ask and have God say ‘No’. But narrowing down all the healings in the Bible to just twenty took was a hard job that left me in no doubt that God, who understands and experienced suffering and pain, wants to heal us.

• Healing is not the most important thing.
  Most of the healings recorded in detail in the Bible are there to make a point, about God’s power, his character, his faithfulness. Or that Jesus is the very same God, and that the Spirit is God still at work through other people. If all I want is healing my focus is too narrow and I’ll miss him.

• Healing is for more than just our bodies.
  The most obvious example is the paralysed man who is lowered through a roof to recieve both healing and forgiveness. But I loved the chance to look at Psalm 22 and see the emotional and mental healing that David reaches out to God for. I picked Psalm 147:3 for a memory verse because God doesn’t merely bind up their wounds but he heals the broken hearted. My sorrow and suffering and mental health matter just as much to God any other parts of my body that don’t work as they should.

• One day I will be healed.
  At the moment my healing is in a ‘maybe’ state: Maybe the medicine will actually be effective all the time. Maybe we’ll recognise a trigger that I can just avoid. Maybe God will answer my prayers miraculously. Maybe I’ll have the surgery and it’ll be the rare occasion where it doesn’t need to be repeated every few years. Maybe… just maybe. DEFINATELY God is preparing a new heaven and a new earth that will be perfect in every way with no death or pain! DEFINATELY I will be made like Jesus in all ways including a resurrection body that won’t suffer decay. DEFINATELY I will live for all eternity with the God who designed and made me, the God who has healed far bigger and far worse, the perfect God who will have made all things perfect and DEFINATELY the fact that my body works again won’t even be top of the list of wonderful things in that place!

I hope that if you’ve watched the videos that your family will have been encouraged by much more than God’s ability and willingness to heal but that what I’ve learnt will help you talk about the healing side of things. I hope that if you’re disabled, chronically ill, suffering at the moment or wandering what to make of healing in the middle of the Coronavirus pandemic that this will help to remind you of a few helpful truths. And for me on days when it’s particularly painful, hard to be ill or I’m feeling sorry for myself I’ve got somewhere to come and remind myself to take it all to God and leave it in his very capable hands.

Telling your testimony

People have, correctly, been saying for years that social media is no substitute for meaningful connection with people, and now due to a global pandemic and various degrees of quarentine the internet is the only connection we have.

One way in which we as Christians can use the phone or the internet to build relationships within our churches, Bible studies and youth groups is by sharing our testimonies - what has God been doing in our lives? This is always useful but might be especially encouraging at a time like this where getting to know someone better by casual chit-chat has been sunk by the nature and awkwardness of conference calls.

There is real power in hearing what God has been and is doing in people’s lives. When carefully told our stories counter a tendency to explain theology without being relatable; put paid to the idea that we’re somehow better than others and diminish the image of being ‘sorted’ when we still struggle. It emphasises and gives rise to questions about the gospel – forgiveness, adoption, salvation, sanctification, revelation. We can say why we believe what we believe, and shake people out of their current worldview. We can encourage, instruct and edify each other. There is power in our stories because God is powerful.

On this how to… page are some articles I found useful as well as some tips for sharing your testimony either with anyone or for getting your youth group or Bible study to think about sharing theirs.