Discovering the Real Jesus in Monroe

(Sterling State Park)

I grew up in a church that never talked about the power of God as it relates to things like miracles happening today. Yes, Jesus healed people 2000 years ago. We all believed that. But it’s not happening today. This began to strike me as absurd, in a certain way. If God did stuff like this a long, long time ago, but does not do such things today, why not? What kind of God is that? For me, that’s the kind of thinking that makes me begin to doubt that God ever actually healed people.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to avoid embarrassment, certain Christian theologians invented elaborate theories called “cessationism” and “dispensationalism.” “Cessationism” is from the verb “to cease.” Miraculous things like healings have ceased. They don’t happen anymore. We don’t need them, because now we have the Bible. The idea goes like this: healings and miracles were needed long ago to demonstrate that God is real and that Jesus is God’s Son. But once the Bible was put together there was no more need for the healings. “Dispensationalism” says there are different “dispensations” of God or chapters in divine history. The time for God to dispense gifts of healing are now over. On the non-blbical theory of dispensationalsim, there are no more gifts of healing. (Please note that the actual Bible never, ever says that. Read 1 Corinthians 12 for starters.)

I’ve got to tell you that, as a Christian and as a theologian, I don’t buy Cessationism or Dispensationalism. As I read the Bible it tells me that God has given spiritual gifts to the people of God (the “church”). One of those gifts is healing. In the Book of Acts the early Christians were at times used by God to demonstrate His reality through physical healing.

James 5:14-15 states: “Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well.” It doesn’t add, “But after a few hundred years you won’t need to do this any more.

Are you sick today, either physically or emotionally? I have personally seen people like you made well. I have seen cancer healed. I’ve personally seen more God-healings of people in the last few years then in all of my life. Here is what I believe. There is a God who is more than able to physically and emotionally heal people. This God is still doing these kind of things today. And this never ceases to blow me away with wonder and joy, because my academic studies immersed me in logic and analytic philosophy and the reductionistic philosophies of David Hume et. al.

Are you sick? Struggling? Find someone who believes James 5:14-15 and have them pray for you. If you don’t know someone like this, then I invite you to Redeemer Fellowship Church this Sunday. I would love to pray for you and see what God does. Or come this Sunday evening at 6 PM when we are going to teach on the restoration of the gift of healing in the 21st century. If you get healed, it won’t be us. Only God can do that. And we won’t embarrass you or get weird on you. Some of the stuff you see on TV is not how the real Jesus did it. I love it when I get to pray for a person and simply say, “In Jesus’ name, be healed.” And then, to find out they are healed! And to see them give thanks, not so much to me, but to God, who alone is able to do that kind of thing.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 25th, 2008 at 8:14 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.