Luke 5:12-16; Matthew 8:1–4; 26:36-39

Last week, in part four of our Summer series on Prayer, we introduced the area of petition, or ‘asking’ prayers.  This is what most people think of when we speak of prayer, but we’re hoping by now that you are understanding that there are many, many more forms of prayer than simply casting our needs on God.  On the other hand, we are invited time and time again in the Scripture to do just that – to cast our cares on God, knowing that God cares for us. 

What we’re going to talk about today (in ‘Prayers of Healing’) and next week (‘Warfare Prayers’) intentionally will be building on the foundation of the first four of these messages; particularly last week’s, as we focused on Prayers of Intercession. I can’t (obviously) repeat everything I said last week, but I’d like to put just a couple of the main ‘points’ before you to remind you of what I said last week (generally), or fill you in if you weren’t here. (And just another reminder – all of our messages can be found on our Website in both MP3 format and text. And they’re archived back a number of months, so you can always catch up if you miss a week.) 

Here are three points from last week that we’re going to continue to build on today: 

1. There is a significant link between certain forms of God’s acting in the world and the fervent prayers – or askings – of God’s people. 

Simply put, God answers prayer. We may not understand how this works, or why, but it does.  There are things that God will or will not do based on the intercession of God’s people in the world. There is a ‘link’ between our prayers and God’s actions. 

2. This is not an absolute link – i.e., we don’t tell God what to do 

We’re going to look at this a little further this morning. But suffice it for now to say this: God is God, and not us. And while that may make prayer a bit confusing, ultimately that’s a good thing! 

3.   God often answers prayers by interaction rather than by intervention. 

What that means is that God may choose to respond to our prayers in a way that is very different from the specific thing that we are actually asking for.  Again, we’re going to talk about this a little bit today, as well. 

All of these ‘points’, these teachings, become especially poignant when it comes to prayers for healing.  We have seen it – God answers prayers for healing. People are healed as – apparently – a direct response to the prayers, the askings of his children.  I believe that with all my heart. But just as clearly, there are some prayers for healing that are – depending on your semantics – not answered, or they are answered with a ‘No’.   Not everyone is healed – at least, not in this life. 

There is virtually no way for us to understand that. We don’t know enough, we don’t know the inner workings of people’s hearts, we don’t live long enough to follow the chain of cause and effect that will lead us to a completely adequate answer to the ‘why’ question here.  It is wrong, and extremely hurtful to ‘blame’ someone’s lack of faith when a healing does not occur – either the ‘pray-er’ or the ‘recipient’.  But people do that. 

In addition, clearly God often will answer our prayers in a much different way than what we are asking for. As we pointed out last week, God may ‘interact’ in a life, but not ‘intervene’ in a circumstance.  And many of you can give testimony to that. You are not healed, but you find hope… the circumstance is the same, but God’s grace becomes powerful, and there is forgiveness. And so forth. 

As I was praying and thinking about this message, I realized that we can take one of two courses, at this point. We can get very theoretical, and I can give a theological treatise on healing. But others have done that much more effectively than I can, and time is going to limit what we can talk about, anyway. Another way to approach this is to tell some stories, and allow God to make any application. Jesus, of course, worked like this. 

So I decided on the second. What I’d like to do then, is to share with you a couple of my own experiences; and I’ve chosen these four events to make a point, as I hope you’ll see. I hope that this will lead you to consider healing prayers in a broader way. Maybe stretch you a bit.

And we will close this service with the Sacrament of Communion and Anointing (for those who want to), so that we can move from theory to experience, and give God an opportunity to move among us in this service. 

These are all important ‘stories’ to me. And because they are so important, I’ve probably shared all of them with some of you over the past years. But in putting them together, I pray that they will frame a picture of the powerful but very mysterious God that we serve. 

*** 

The first time I anointed someone with oil for healing was very shortly after I began ministry. There was a lovely couple who had recently transferred to my congregation down in Alloway. The woman’s name was Helen, she had just retired as a school nurse. Since both she and her husband were now retired, they decided to get involved in a church in their own community rather than traveling some distance to worship which they had been doing. 

Soon after coming to my church, Helen discovered that she had a brain tumor in a very delicate area. It needed to be removed, and the prognosis was not good. At best it was going to be a very complicated and long procedure – they were estimating 10 – 12 hours of surgery. Helen was a believer, and she called me, her 23 year old first- year pastor, and said, “I just read in the book of James that if you are sick, you should call for the elders of the church to come, and anoint you with oil, so that you may be healed.” 

She said, “Well, I’m calling you now.” 

Well, I never read that passage before. But I wasn’t about to say ‘No’. Amazingly, we never talked about this in Seminary. And you know, the details, I was pretty fuzzy about. Like, “What kind of oil do you use?”  “Where do you put it?”  “Who should I ask to be part of this?” 

Well I bought some olive oil from the Acme, asked  4 or 5 of the spiritual leaders of the church to come with me. It was the night before Helen’s surgery. We sat her in a chair, stood around her. Anointed her and prayed for successful surgery.  As we were praying – and this has never again happened to me since – at one point she jumped. Like she had been shocked. We all responded. We opened our eyes and looked at each other. 

Helen said, “Something just happened.”

The next morning, we were at the hospital. They took her in.  45 minutes later the surgeon came out. He said, “We’re finished.”  He looked astounded.  He said, “It turns out that this tumor – which was the size of a golf ball – was not attached to anything. He continued – we made a small incision at the base of her skull, and I just reached under and took it out.” 

That, to all of us, was clearly, a miracle. God did something. Something amazing.

The result of that was that our little church down in Alloway was energized in a way that they hadn’t seen in many years. Because everyone in town knew Bill and Helen. And seeing her sitting in church the next week was an undisputable testimony to the power of God, and to the power of prayer. 

Very shortly after that – again in my first year of ministry – we received word, just before Christmas that my sister was in the hospital with pneumonia. Now, that is always serious, but she was six months pregnant as well and everything became more complicated.  Nevertheless, she seemed to be doing OK, until suddenly we got another call that she had taken a turn for the worse, and she was now in ICU. 

Then we started praying with earnestness. Her own church prayed. Both of my churches prayed. I prayed. My family prayed.  Her name went out on prayer lists all over the country. Lots of people praying, believing prayers. And she died with the unborn child. 

The next Sunday I had to preach. I mean, I didn’t have to, but I felt I needed to put this together in my mind. I was reeling. What happened?  James says “The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.[1]”   And I had just seen it. But this result didn’t seem very wonderful to anyone. 

Were none of those prayers ‘earnest’?  I couldn’t believe that. Was there not even one righteous person praying for her?  I couldn’t believe that, either.  In the midst of this, a passage came to my mind from the Gospels. In Matthew 26: 36 – 39 we read this: 

Then Jesus went with them to the olive grove called Gethsemane, and he said, “Sit here while I go over there to pray.”  He took Peter and Zebedee’s two sons, James and John, and he became anguished and distressed.  He told them, “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”

            He went on a little farther and bowed with his face to the ground, praying, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.” 

Of course, this is Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. And notice this: Jesus’ request was for God to take away the anguish and suffering that he was facing.  To “Let this cup of suffering be taken away from me.” And God’s answer was, “No.” 

Now, in this case, the reason for the ‘no’ is considerably more obvious to us than typically. His ‘cup of suffering’ brought about the healing of the world, we can see that... but still, the father’s answer was ‘no.’ 

But those two experiences together helped build a foundation for my understanding of prayer as a fledgling pastor. I learned to ask boldly, but I also learned to ask remembering that God is Sovereign, and not me. Often, when God answers, it is to demonstrate his Glory, his presence among us in a powerful way, and for a powerful purpose. Whether that answer is ‘yes’ or ‘no’. 

Just before Christmas of 2006 I received a phone call on a Thursday night during the dress rehearsal for “Born is the King.”  [Some of you may remember that I shared this story at the Christmas Eve service that year.] My phone was on the piano, and I saw it light up, and the name HeyYoung was on the screen.  At 9:15 pm on a Thursday night, I knew this couldn’t be good… 

“There is a family over at Jefferson hospital”, she said, “a woman is dying”.  They need a pastor. She couldn’t go because Gary wasn’t home… “Sure, I’ll go.” I called them back, and said I’d be there as soon as I could. 

I walked into the Intensive Care room about 10 PM, and came upon a sad scene. A woman named Ginny was in the hospital bed, and her husband Paul and two family members were with her. Ginny had suffered a massive stroke earlier that day, and her prospects were very grim.  She was on life support, including a ventilator.  I’ll not go into detail here, just to convey the point that due to severe pressure on her brain, she was ‘gone’.  There was virtually no brain functioning.  The family was simply waiting for that to end.  It was a very sad scene. 

We prayed together, and talked a little bit. And I put my hand in my jacket pocket, and realized that I actually had brought a vial of anointing oil with me –purely by ‘chance’. So, I explained a little bit about the meaning of anointing from James 5, and asked if they would like for Ginny to be anointed. “Of course”, they said.  So, we gathered around her bedside, laid hands on her, and anointed her. 

What we thought we were doing – let me be totally honest with you – was committing her spirit to the Lord.  Everything they had heard from every doctor indicated that her physical life was over.  When we finished praying, we left together. 

The next morning, we wrote on the church calendar a date for her memorial service.  December 23^rd.   When I shared this on that Christmas Eve, I actually held up the calendar. We had to cross it out… because Ginny began moving her arms and legs on Friday… again they took her to surgery.  And she woke up!  She began writing notes, asking questions.  “What happened to my head?”   (She still had the ventilator in, and couldn’t speak.) 

Later, I stopped in again… she was alone, it was evening.  She had been asleep.  I stood by her bedside, and she opened her eyes.  I said, “Do you recognize me?”  (She hadn’t actually seen me in over two years!)  “Pastor Steve” she said… 

I am not one to use the word ‘miracle’ lightly.  But her neurologist called this a ‘one in a million’ circumstance.  Which sounds like a pretty good definition of a miracle, I think.  It was truly an amazing thing, and humbling. 

But let me tell you the other side of this story… the reason the oil was in my jacket pocket was because exactly one week prior to that night, I took the oil to the bedside of my friend Tom Langshaw. I prayed for Tom, too, and anointed him. 

Many of you knew Tom. He was a piller of this church. Tom was our Lay Leader for three years, a teacher, one whom God used in many ways to build this ministry. We heard his daughter Anne sing last week, and I just thought of how proud he would have been. Tom believed in prayer, he believed in anointing, he believed in healing… and he died that very night. 

Virginia Sobeleski also died some weeks later… but I believe that God was glorified in both of these events. I don’t understand them, but I know that in some way, our prayers were powerful. They were heard. God intervened in some, and interacted in others. But none of those prayers were wasted. 

It reminds me of a number of scenes in the wonderful Chronicles of Narnia series, where Lucy, or Peter, or one of the other children would have to explain to some slow witted person about Aslan, the great Lion who ruled Narnia. Aslan, of course is a symbol of Christ in these books. And they would say, “He isn’t a tame lion, after all.” 

Prayers for healing are something like approaching Aslan. You don’t know how they will be answered. But as we see again and again, God has a plan, and our prayers are part of it. 

So, let us come boldly before our God, knowing his love for us, his desire to make us whole… knowing that healing takes many forms – physical healing is just one them. Emotional healing, spiritual healing, giving us endurance in a hopeless circumstance… nothing is too difficult for our God.  And his love never, never ends.