WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:12.780 Let me just open us in prayer. Lord Jesus, I say you come and be among us, come be free among us, 00:00:13.280 --> 00:00:19.620 even as we sought you in worship. Come respond to us, pour your spirit out on us, and we thank you. 00:00:20.440 --> 00:00:21.039 Amen. 00:00:21.039 --> 00:00:30.679 So this is the third sermon in this summer mini-series on the Holy Spirit and what would 00:00:30.679 --> 00:00:37.140 happen if we had more of the Holy Spirit. The first sermon was on the Holy Spirit himself and 00:00:37.140 --> 00:00:43.320 looked at the ways that you can know the Spirit by understanding the close connection between 00:00:43.320 --> 00:00:49.000 Jesus and the Holy Spirit and also the close connection between Scripture and the Holy Spirit. 00:00:49.000 --> 00:00:56.240 And the second sermon last Sunday was on inner or emotional healing and pointed to the way Jesus 00:00:56.240 --> 00:01:03.120 is tender and compassionate towards those of us who are wounded inside, and I gave some examples 00:01:03.120 --> 00:01:08.980 of what inner healing can look like. In today's sermon, I'll want to talk about physical healing. 00:01:09.420 --> 00:01:14.379 I'm going to look at some of what the Scripture says on it, Jesus's ministry in the early church, 00:01:14.379 --> 00:01:21.219 and then talk about physical healing itself. So to start with in the Old Testament, I want to say a 00:01:21.219 --> 00:01:28.899 few things about physical healing in the Old Testament. Physical healing is talked about in two 00:01:28.899 --> 00:01:35.379 different ways in the Old Testament in a very factual way. It's just simply something that God does for 00:01:35.379 --> 00:01:44.060 people, for His people, because of who God is and as part of how He acts in and for Israel to rescue 00:01:44.060 --> 00:01:50.320 them from evil and oppression. The first way that we see physical healing talked about in the Old 00:01:50.320 --> 00:01:57.180 Testament is in individual stories of people being healed. One of my favorites is Naaman the Syrian, 00:01:57.500 --> 00:02:06.159 the senior military figure who was advised by the girl he had abducted in a raid to go back to Israel 00:02:06.159 --> 00:02:12.780 and get healing. It's an amazing story. And actually, my favorite version of it is in my kid's Jesus 00:02:12.780 --> 00:02:18.439 calling Bible. So if you can get your hands on one of them, it's a great, great telling of it. 00:02:19.140 --> 00:02:23.879 The second way that the Scripture talks about physical healing in the Old Testament is in the 00:02:23.879 --> 00:02:30.860 way that it's just simply celebrated as a part of what it means to live life with God. Psalms 103 and 00:02:30.860 --> 00:02:38.860 107 are great examples of that. When we fast forward to the Gospels, the Old Testament Scriptures are 00:02:38.860 --> 00:02:44.540 important for us to keep in mind, and they're important for the people in Jesus' day because 00:02:44.540 --> 00:02:51.320 they set the conceptual and experiential foundation for Jesus and His ministry. It was understood in 00:02:51.320 --> 00:02:56.700 the Old Testament for Israel that God heals. And so when Jesus came on the scene and also started 00:02:56.700 --> 00:03:03.140 healing, it would have been an important signal, a clear connection between Jesus and God of the Old 00:03:03.139 --> 00:03:10.019 Testament and a sign that He is the Messiah. And in fact, physical healing was hardwired into Jesus' 00:03:10.239 --> 00:03:16.619 ministry. It was part of His mandate. It was part of His practice. So Jesus announced His mandate for 00:03:16.619 --> 00:03:20.839 His ministry in Luke 4. He quoted Isaiah 61, and He said, 00:03:20.939 --> 00:03:25.919 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. 00:03:26.399 --> 00:03:31.079 He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, 00:03:31.080 --> 00:03:38.880 to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. And healings, Jesus' 00:03:39.140 --> 00:03:44.040 healings in the Gospels are described in ways that are similar to the way they're described in the 00:03:44.040 --> 00:03:50.140 Old Testament, both in stories of individuals receiving healing and in these broader summative 00:03:50.140 --> 00:03:57.180 statements about how Jesus healed. And there are frankly too many examples of individual stories of 00:03:57.180 --> 00:04:03.020 people being healed in the Gospels to try and pick out a couple. So I want to give you a couple 00:04:03.020 --> 00:04:10.140 phrasings of the broad summative descriptions. This one's from Matthew 4. It says, Jesus went throughout 00:04:10.140 --> 00:04:16.480 Galilee teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease 00:04:16.480 --> 00:04:22.980 and every sickness among the people. So His fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought to Him all 00:04:22.980 --> 00:04:29.300 the sick and those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and 00:04:29.300 --> 00:04:37.300 paralytics, and He cured them. And this one from Mark 6. And whenever, and this is echoed in Matthew as 00:04:37.300 --> 00:04:45.180 well, and wherever He went into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and 00:04:45.180 --> 00:04:50.460 begged Him that they might touch even the fringe of His cloak, and all who touched it were healed. 00:04:50.459 --> 00:04:59.439 In Jesus's time, He was well known as someone who healed. But even more than that, it was a well-known 00:04:59.439 --> 00:05:05.479 fact that you could touch the edges of Jesus's clothes and get healed. We read about the woman who 00:05:05.479 --> 00:05:12.339 suffered from hemorrhages for 12 years. She'd spent all she had on doctors with no effect, and her story 00:05:12.339 --> 00:05:18.099 is told in all three synoptic Gospels. And when she comes up to Jesus, she elbows her way through the 00:05:18.100 --> 00:05:23.040 crowd, and she says, if I but touch the hem of His garment, I'll be healed. If you read the story in 00:05:23.040 --> 00:05:28.500 isolation, you think, wow, that's amazing faith. And it is. But part of the reason why she did this is 00:05:28.500 --> 00:05:33.439 because she knew, like lots of people, that this is something you could do. This happened with Jesus 00:05:33.439 --> 00:05:41.120 all the time. Physical healing was a constant, consistent, standard feature of Jesus's life and 00:05:41.120 --> 00:05:46.920 ministry. So it's important to ask ourselves, why did Jesus heal? Why did He do this? There were lots of 00:05:46.920 --> 00:05:53.660 reasons. And the first reason, frankly, is love. Like I mentioned in, I think, last week's sermon, 00:05:54.720 --> 00:06:00.620 Jesus was always compelled by an overwhelming emotional love or compassion for those who are 00:06:00.620 --> 00:06:08.259 around Him in pain. He was compelled by that love to stop and do something. Jesus healed as part of 00:06:08.259 --> 00:06:14.460 bringing the kingdom. Jesus was aware that He was in a battle against a kingdom of darkness, and this 00:06:14.459 --> 00:06:21.699 action that He took in healing people was a direct opposition to the kingdom of darkness. Jesus is the 00:06:21.699 --> 00:06:28.979 king, and wherever He is, His kingdom is too. And whenever people saw healings and miracles, they 00:06:28.979 --> 00:06:36.799 recognized that Jesus was the king and the Messiah. Jesus healed people to create faith in Himself and to 00:06:36.799 --> 00:06:42.379 stretch our imaginations around what God's intentions could possibly be for us in this broken world. 00:06:42.379 --> 00:06:50.939 Jesus wanted us to have even more faith in what He could do for us. And sometimes Jesus did heal to 00:06:50.939 --> 00:06:56.439 make a teaching point or to link it to a teaching point. Sometimes that was true, sometimes not. 00:06:56.579 --> 00:07:00.600 Sometimes He just healed for the sake of healing, but sometimes He built a teaching point on it. 00:07:01.279 --> 00:07:06.219 But it wouldn't be right to say that He'd heal just for the sake of teaching. And it's also important 00:07:06.220 --> 00:07:12.840 to see that Jesus was a full-packaged miracle person. He healed people of physical illness and injury 00:07:12.840 --> 00:07:19.580 because of His love. But He also taught people. He healed them emotionally and socially. He freed 00:07:19.580 --> 00:07:24.480 people from the demonic. And He did miracles like raising people from the dead or multiplying loaves. 00:07:25.360 --> 00:07:33.120 Even the gospel writers talk about Jesus' ministry, and they reference Isaiah 53, which says, 00:07:33.120 --> 00:07:38.720 Surely He has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases. And yet we accounted Him stricken, 00:07:39.379 --> 00:07:45.199 struck down by God and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, 00:07:45.399 --> 00:07:50.579 and upon Him was the punishment that made us whole. And by His bruises, we are healed. 00:07:51.360 --> 00:07:57.199 And it's very clear to the gospel writers that Jesus was fulfilling the messianic prophecy and mandate 00:07:57.199 --> 00:08:01.920 from Isaiah, and that what He was doing in His ministry, He would bring to an even fuller 00:08:01.920 --> 00:08:10.080 completion on the cross. That when Jesus died on the cross, it wasn't just for sin. It was for sickness 00:08:10.080 --> 00:08:17.960 as well. So some of us can ask, so what happened to physical healing in the church? I have a friend 00:08:17.960 --> 00:08:26.759 of mine who described, he grew up in the northeastern U.S. and said that when he was growing up in church, 00:08:26.759 --> 00:08:31.680 that he always thought that the Holy Spirit was for people from the south and maybe California. 00:08:31.920 --> 00:08:40.060 I don't know if that's true. And so for Him, you know, what happened to physical healing? What happened 00:08:40.060 --> 00:08:48.539 to the Holy Spirit? Initially, nothing. In Jesus' lifetime on earth, He modeled physical healing 00:08:48.539 --> 00:08:55.039 for His disciples, and then He sent them out to do the exact same thing. So we read about one of those 00:08:55.039 --> 00:09:01.959 commissionings in the gospel readings in Mark 6. It's echoed in Luke 9. And then later on in Luke 10, 00:09:02.099 --> 00:09:07.500 Jesus sends out an even bigger group to go ahead of Him. He gave them authority over unclean spirits 00:09:07.500 --> 00:09:13.639 and to heal all disease. The expectation that Jesus placed on those who followed Him was that they would 00:09:13.639 --> 00:09:21.039 do like He did. And this practice continued on into the early church. Last week, we read about Peter and 00:09:21.039 --> 00:09:27.339 John praying for a man who was unable to walk from birth. And in the book of Acts, it just keeps going 00:09:27.339 --> 00:09:34.819 from there. Individual stories of people being healed dot the book of Acts, but also passages that make, 00:09:35.259 --> 00:09:40.019 again, like other parts of the scriptures, broad commentary on what is the normal life and practice 00:09:40.019 --> 00:09:47.000 for followers of Jesus. The passage we read this morning describes how it was common that people 00:09:47.000 --> 00:09:52.240 carried the sick out into the streets. People came not just who lived in Jerusalem, but from the 00:09:52.240 --> 00:09:57.940 surrounding area to seek out the followers of Jesus because they had the understanding that you 00:09:57.940 --> 00:10:03.059 could bring sick people to them and they would pray and they would be healed. It was just a known thing. 00:10:04.059 --> 00:10:09.860 When I read passages like that, it makes me want to know why was the early church like this and why was 00:10:09.860 --> 00:10:15.460 their experience different from ours? I've spent a fair bit of time reading through church history, 00:10:15.460 --> 00:10:21.879 kind of wanting to know what happened after the time of the apostles. And what you find when you 00:10:21.879 --> 00:10:29.500 read through church historians is that for about a thousand years after Jesus' death and resurrection, 00:10:30.200 --> 00:10:38.639 physical healing was just a standard part of Christian churches and communities. So all the major 00:10:38.639 --> 00:10:44.720 writers that we know and reference when we're talking about church fathers and doctrine, they all write, 00:10:44.720 --> 00:10:51.040 if you look to the side of their doctrinal statements, they also talk about in their own lives and 00:10:51.040 --> 00:10:54.960 ministries and in those of the churches they were part of, there were healings and miracles. 00:10:55.700 --> 00:11:02.320 And all through the first 300 years of the early church. And then church historians who pick up the 00:11:02.320 --> 00:11:09.300 pen from that point on also talk about healings happening. If you go to any of the Catholic mystics, 00:11:09.560 --> 00:11:13.980 you see that healings and miracles were just a part of their lives. It never really went away. 00:11:14.720 --> 00:11:23.279 My read is that over time, the healing gifts were not given the same primacy in church life. 00:11:23.840 --> 00:11:29.580 There were fights over doctrine and ecclesiology and attempts by secular kings to control the church. 00:11:30.440 --> 00:11:35.300 There was worry about the external threat of military forces on the borders of Europe and 00:11:35.300 --> 00:11:42.180 Christian Europe. So the focus got distracted from the gifts of the spirit. And eventually, 00:11:42.179 --> 00:11:47.939 our own ways of thinking, our own Western ways of thinking split the material and the immaterial into 00:11:47.939 --> 00:11:54.979 two separate categories, the seen and the unseen. And value and primacy was placed on the things we can 00:11:54.979 --> 00:12:02.659 touch and see. But physical healings still never really disappeared. They always showed up in these 00:12:02.659 --> 00:12:09.419 outpourings of the Holy Spirit during revivals. The Wesleys, John Wesley in particular, in his journal, 00:12:09.620 --> 00:12:15.439 documented all the healings that he saw happening in his prayer meetings. His contemporary, Jonathan 00:12:15.439 --> 00:12:20.259 Edwards, did the same. One of the things I like about Jonathan Edwards, and I may have mentioned this, 00:12:20.339 --> 00:12:28.939 is he was so matter-of-fact about his teaching and his following of Jesus, it shocked him sometimes that 00:12:28.940 --> 00:12:34.340 the Holy Spirit burst out on the scene. And people would, you know, the Holy Spirit would hit them, 00:12:34.680 --> 00:12:39.200 and he would just kind of keep preaching and then later write about it. And so I find it really 00:12:39.200 --> 00:12:45.660 interesting. He grappled with what it meant. If any of you know who John Wimber is, he founded the 00:12:45.660 --> 00:12:51.300 Vineyard Movement. When he started praying for people and having prayer services and worship services, 00:12:51.300 --> 00:12:56.900 and he saw the Holy Spirit moving among people, he didn't know what to do with it. So he went to, 00:12:56.899 --> 00:13:08.199 that was not me. Somebody say Gesundheit. Yeah, thank you. I can't tell if we're Anglican anymore. 00:13:08.360 --> 00:13:16.340 I'm sorry, we're doing this call and response thing. It's nice. But he went to John Wesley's 00:13:16.340 --> 00:13:22.220 journals. He read Jonathan Edwards because he needed a grid to try and interpret what's going on in my 00:13:22.220 --> 00:13:29.879 prayer meetings. I don't understand it. And for any of us who remember the charismatic renewal of 00:13:29.879 --> 00:13:35.720 liturgical churches like ours in the 70s and 80s, we saw a fresh wave of the Holy Spirit and a renewed 00:13:35.720 --> 00:13:42.860 interest in physical healing. So it's never really gone away. And it's something that, for me, I want 00:13:42.860 --> 00:13:48.759 to encourage all of us to keep pressing into. So a couple working assumptions for pressing into 00:13:48.759 --> 00:13:55.919 physical healing. First of all, Jesus heals. He did it in the Gospels, and he's the same today as he was 00:13:55.919 --> 00:14:02.179 yesterday and will be forever. And so we should assume that he still heals. Another assumption, 00:14:02.340 --> 00:14:07.539 that he wants to heal through us. This is what happened with the disciples and the followers of 00:14:07.539 --> 00:14:15.500 Jesus in the early church, and it's not changed. But there is some variation and some nuance that we 00:14:15.500 --> 00:14:20.840 should be aware of in Scripture when it comes to physical healing. We read, for instance, that there 00:14:20.840 --> 00:14:26.779 are moments when the anointing for healing is greater than at other times. Luke 5, 17 says, 00:14:27.299 --> 00:14:31.820 one day while Jesus was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting nearby. 00:14:32.360 --> 00:14:37.960 They'd come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem, and the power of the Lord was 00:14:37.960 --> 00:14:47.500 with them to heal. In another part, we read that the anointing for healing was lower. Mark 6 talks 00:14:47.500 --> 00:14:52.700 about when Jesus went back home for a visit in his hometown. And it says he could do no deed of power 00:14:52.700 --> 00:14:58.060 there except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them, and he was amazed at their 00:14:58.060 --> 00:15:04.180 unbelief. I find it so interesting that in the life of Jesus, who had perfect access to the Father 00:15:04.179 --> 00:15:10.879 and who had the most free access for the Holy Spirit to operate through him, experienced days of 00:15:10.879 --> 00:15:18.279 greater anointing and lesser anointing, when the power of God was present to heal, but he could only 00:15:18.279 --> 00:15:27.199 heal a few people. And I think we should take that as a bit of a help to us. We pray for people in faith, 00:15:27.500 --> 00:15:31.759 but there are times when people seem to get healed more often and times when they don't. 00:15:31.759 --> 00:15:37.919 It happened even to Jesus. To be very frank, the bad day Jesus describes where he can only lay his hands 00:15:37.919 --> 00:15:43.340 on a few people and heal them would be an amazing day for me. It said he could do no deeds of power, 00:15:43.439 --> 00:15:48.259 just heal a few people. I'm like, Jesus, take me there. A few people would be great. 00:15:50.399 --> 00:15:56.279 Another thing we should pay attention to is actually the issue of faith. There are two times in the 00:15:56.279 --> 00:16:02.579 Gospels when Jesus was amazed. We should pay attention to the things that amazed Jesus. First instance 00:16:02.579 --> 00:16:09.659 was when he saw the faith of the centurion. So this person was outside of the Jewish faith. He was part of 00:16:09.659 --> 00:16:16.459 an occupying military force causing his people to suffer. And yet, when he came to Jesus with faith 00:16:16.459 --> 00:16:24.459 for his servant who was sick, Jesus was amazed at his faith. And he even said that he hadn't seen such 00:16:24.460 --> 00:16:30.019 great faith in all of Israel. That's amazing, and a little bit ouch, to be frank, that Jesus was 00:16:30.019 --> 00:16:36.180 calling out great faith among someone who was not an insider. And the other time Jesus was amazed was 00:16:36.180 --> 00:16:42.940 for opposite reasons, in the passage I just quoted, when he went to his hometown and people couldn't 00:16:42.940 --> 00:16:48.720 think of him as anything more than the carpenter's son. And their faith was low, and their expectations 00:16:48.720 --> 00:16:59.360 were low. Faith seems to matter. We should also recognize that in 1 Corinthians, Paul lists, 00:17:00.200 --> 00:17:05.620 it's kind of his catalog of spiritual gifts, and he includes in them the gifts of healing. 00:17:06.220 --> 00:17:11.460 There are some people in the body who will have a healing gift, along with other people with other 00:17:11.460 --> 00:17:16.860 gifts. And these are given for the benefit, comfort, and upbuilding, and even assurance of the church, 00:17:16.859 --> 00:17:22.079 and to bear witness to people outside of the church about the reality of Jesus. We shouldn't 00:17:22.079 --> 00:17:28.399 turn down those opportunities for prayer from people. So what that means is, if you start praying 00:17:28.399 --> 00:17:34.419 with each other, and you start noticing that there's somebody among us who consistently seems to, 00:17:34.559 --> 00:17:40.000 God seems to work through, and when they pray, there seems to be a change or a result, keep going back 00:17:40.000 --> 00:17:45.779 to that person. This is how the body becomes aware of how the Holy Spirit has given gifts to people. 00:17:45.779 --> 00:17:50.879 And it's, but it's other gifts too. We all know somebody around us who we think, I need good 00:17:50.879 --> 00:17:55.940 advice. And you think of somebody in the congregation, I should go have coffee with that person, because 00:17:55.940 --> 00:18:01.639 they always give good advice. The Holy Spirit's given them a gift of wisdom. Why wouldn't we go talk 00:18:01.639 --> 00:18:07.099 to that person and have coffee with them when we're in need and benefit from what God's given to them? 00:18:07.579 --> 00:18:09.759 We should do the same for physical healing. 00:18:09.759 --> 00:18:16.579 But it's also important to notice from Scripture's testimony itself, that while God's intention is 00:18:16.579 --> 00:18:23.859 to heal, sometimes it doesn't happen. So Paul tells Timothy in 1, he writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy. 00:18:24.839 --> 00:18:30.859 He says, no longer drink only water, but take a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your 00:18:30.859 --> 00:18:37.240 frequent ailments. And then in 2 Timothy, Paul writes to Timothy saying, 00:18:37.240 --> 00:18:44.220 Trophimus, I have left and Miletus sick. So I'm thinking, surely Paul prayed for Timothy, 00:18:44.579 --> 00:18:50.359 and he prayed for Trophimus, but apparently they weren't healed. And Paul doesn't kind of hide that 00:18:50.359 --> 00:18:56.660 or sweep it under the rug and, you know, make sure that nobody knows about these missed healings. 00:18:57.059 --> 00:19:02.019 He acknowledges them. They're a part of his life. People were not healed. And even Paul had his own 00:19:02.019 --> 00:19:07.639 afflictions that he wanted healing from and never received. Paul also tells the Philippians that his 00:19:07.639 --> 00:19:14.720 co-worker, Epaphroditus, was so ill he nearly died. He eventually recovered, but we don't know how, 00:19:14.960 --> 00:19:21.839 and it sure wasn't an instant miracle. There was no conflict for Paul between praying for the sick 00:19:21.839 --> 00:19:28.119 and giving somebody medical advice. And there shouldn't be a conflict for us. For me, 00:19:28.119 --> 00:19:33.679 all healing comes from God, whether it's by prayer or through medicine, medical research, 00:19:33.739 --> 00:19:41.539 and practice. So we shouldn't say no to any of it. I will say, I've not ever seen anybody take, 00:19:41.679 --> 00:19:46.000 Paul's advice was, take a little wine for the sake of your ailments. And I haven't really heard anybody 00:19:46.000 --> 00:19:54.699 quote that as much as I thought they would. You know, the blessed St. Paul said, take a bit of wine. 00:19:54.700 --> 00:20:04.259 Um, so when do we see physical healing happening? When people ask for it and when they want it. 00:20:04.600 --> 00:20:09.259 There has to be intentionality. There has to be a little bit of risk-taking, a little bit of opening 00:20:09.259 --> 00:20:16.600 yourself up to the possibility that God might heal if you ask. It happens when people believe that the 00:20:16.599 --> 00:20:25.039 Lord can and will do it. Recall that there was a man with leprosy in Mark 3. He believed Jesus could 00:20:25.039 --> 00:20:31.579 heal, but wasn't sure he would heal. But Jesus loves to take our tiny grains of mustard seed faith 00:20:31.579 --> 00:20:36.019 and that we sow persistently in prayer, and he honors them with his love. 00:20:37.219 --> 00:20:42.919 Um, we read in, in James, in his letter of instruction to the church, that if somebody is sick, 00:20:42.920 --> 00:20:48.019 gather the elders, and they should anoint somebody with oil and pray. It's supposed to be just what 00:20:48.019 --> 00:20:53.400 happens in a church. And it happens also all throughout the Gospels and through the, in the 00:20:53.400 --> 00:20:58.820 book of Acts, through the laying on of hands and prayer. In some ways, these are easy things for us 00:20:58.820 --> 00:21:03.000 to do. We can all pray. We can all anoint with oil, and we can all ask Jesus to help. 00:21:04.560 --> 00:21:10.779 So I want to, I want to tell a few stories, a few examples to close off, um, this sermon. So when I was a 00:21:10.779 --> 00:21:15.720 deacon, I mentioned that I did my diaconate placement in what I called an Anglicostal church 00:21:15.720 --> 00:21:21.940 in Baltimore. And as part of my, my formation and my process, I had to write, I think they were 00:21:21.940 --> 00:21:28.139 quarterly, monthly or quarterly reports to the bishop on how I was doing, how was ministry going, 00:21:28.259 --> 00:21:33.660 what was I doing, things like that. And I always added an annex with testimonies of the healings that 00:21:33.660 --> 00:21:39.099 I saw when praying for people. And I'm actually grateful for that now because I can, I have them as a 00:21:39.099 --> 00:21:45.559 bit of a, um, a bit of a record and a testimony to encourage myself. Um, I want to tell one story. 00:21:45.659 --> 00:21:50.619 I told this in our healing prayer bootcamp. I pray for people at my work. Well, I did before COVID, 00:21:50.719 --> 00:21:55.619 but I pray for people at work a lot. And, um, these are people from all over the world. Some people 00:21:55.619 --> 00:22:01.839 know church, some people don't, some people know Jesus, some people don't. Um, and people are not 00:22:01.839 --> 00:22:06.480 generally open to talking about faith or church, but everybody is spiritual and everybody will take 00:22:06.480 --> 00:22:12.360 prayer. So I had a colleague, uh, she was French and, uh, she, we were supposed to talk about, 00:22:12.620 --> 00:22:17.960 we were trying to meet over some work issue. And she said, my day is super jammed, but I'm going to 00:22:17.960 --> 00:22:23.440 go downstairs for a smoke break. Why don't we talk on my smoke break? I said, sure. So we go down for 00:22:23.440 --> 00:22:28.799 her smoke break and we're standing outside and she's, she's clearly, she starts struggling in her 00:22:28.799 --> 00:22:34.120 breathing, uh, with one hand holding the cigarette in the other. I say, oh, what's wrong? And she says, 00:22:34.119 --> 00:22:39.199 I've had this sinus infection for two weeks. I can't smell and I can't taste. And I'm thinking 00:22:39.199 --> 00:22:45.259 she's French. If she can't taste food, it's an existential crisis. So I say to her, you know, 00:22:45.279 --> 00:22:50.619 this might sound a bit odd, but can I, can I pray for your, your sinus infection? And she sort of 00:22:50.619 --> 00:22:55.819 pauses and looks at her cigarette. And I say, that's okay. Like, you know, that, that's not going to get 00:22:55.819 --> 00:23:01.779 in the way. Just like hold it to the side for my sake and I'll pray for you. And, uh, and so I'm 00:23:01.779 --> 00:23:05.440 thinking, you know, colleagues could walk by. So I said to her, you know, here's what I'm going to do. 00:23:05.480 --> 00:23:10.079 I'm going to pray for you and I'll just reach over and I'll, I'll tap your nose and ask the Lord to 00:23:10.079 --> 00:23:15.639 heal you. So I start praying in a, in a, in a normal voice, right? Like I wasn't going to start 00:23:15.639 --> 00:23:21.460 using King James language or shouting in a loud voice. I wasn't going to slap her. So I just, 00:23:21.660 --> 00:23:27.660 in a conversational eyes open way, just prayed for her, her healing. And I reached over and I tapped her 00:23:27.660 --> 00:23:32.259 nose and I'm kind of closing my prayer all the time thinking, I wonder, you know, do she think 00:23:32.259 --> 00:23:37.400 this is weird? Is she going to call HR? Like what's going to happen? And she interrupts me to say, 00:23:37.519 --> 00:23:43.759 I can smell my cigarette smoke. And I'm like, that means you were healed. And so, and so she's looking 00:23:43.759 --> 00:23:48.060 at her cigarette and I'm thinking, I never thought Jesus would use a cigarette to verify someone's 00:23:48.060 --> 00:23:56.519 healing, but it happened. Um, another, another, um, story I, I, before COVID, I like to go, uh, 00:23:56.519 --> 00:24:01.940 pray on, I do walk and pray for people. And there are parts in my neighborhood and, um, Union Station 00:24:01.940 --> 00:24:06.940 and other places where there are homeless, uh, encampments, people who are sleeping on the street. 00:24:07.079 --> 00:24:11.980 And I would go in the summertime, maybe with some water and say, you know, talk with them and 00:24:11.980 --> 00:24:17.720 offer prayer. And so there was a guy, um, I can't remember his name. I think it was James. He said 00:24:17.720 --> 00:24:23.259 that he had a broken fist. He'd punched somebody. And he said, but I don't think, you know, I don't think 00:24:23.259 --> 00:24:27.879 Jesus is going to heal my broken fist because after all, I broke it hitting someone. And I said, 00:24:27.960 --> 00:24:33.819 let's, you know, let's pray anyway. So he holds his hand up. He can't open it. It's like this and 00:24:33.819 --> 00:24:39.119 it's bruised up and he can't open it. And so he's standing like this and he's talking to his friend, 00:24:39.240 --> 00:24:44.359 just kind of almost humoring me. So I put my hands on his hand and I pray for him and he interrupts 00:24:44.359 --> 00:24:50.299 himself to say, what the, and I'll let you supply the word that came afterwards. But he just suddenly 00:24:50.299 --> 00:24:57.579 stopped. And I'm thinking again, like he has, he testified to his hand being healed in, in a way 00:24:57.579 --> 00:25:03.279 that I wouldn't have picked for, you know, a shout out to Jesus. Right. And he starts opening his hand 00:25:03.279 --> 00:25:08.220 and he, and he says, that's, you know, I don't even know what to say. And I'm just like, kind of me 00:25:08.220 --> 00:25:13.879 either. Right. Like, I'm, you know, that's amazing. And, and it turned into a conversation about how 00:25:13.880 --> 00:25:22.440 Jesus sees him, even in his circumstance. Um, uh, my daughter, uh, she, she has a testimony of 00:25:22.440 --> 00:25:27.720 praying. She, uh, one of her legs was shorter than the other and she was complaining about it. 00:25:27.780 --> 00:25:32.680 And so we prayed for her leg. And if you still ask her, she'll, she'll tell you about the time we 00:25:32.680 --> 00:25:37.460 prayed and she felt her leg lengthen so that they were the same length. Now we tried this at our healing 00:25:37.460 --> 00:25:43.860 prayer bootcamp and we had a couple of people with legs that were uneven. Um, nobody's, as far as I can 00:25:43.859 --> 00:25:49.759 tell, nobody's legs lengthened in the healing prayer bootcamp. So just to keep it real, I, it, 00:25:49.759 --> 00:25:56.479 nothing happened at that time. Um, I had, uh, one time I remember, I mean, you pray for people 00:25:56.479 --> 00:26:00.740 sometimes at services or in prayer meetings or things like that. And you don't always remember 00:26:00.740 --> 00:26:06.919 that you prayed for them. And I remember a time, a woman came up to me and she said to me, um, a year 00:26:06.920 --> 00:26:15.019 ago, you prayed for me for my stage four cancer. And I said, um, maybe, yeah. Um, I said, tell me 00:26:15.019 --> 00:26:19.860 more. And she said, well, you prayed for me for healing. And so that was the turning point for me. 00:26:19.940 --> 00:26:25.240 She stayed with her doctor. She stayed in her treatment, but she felt that this was the moment 00:26:25.240 --> 00:26:29.779 that things started turning around and her cancer really started responding. And she said, 00:26:29.880 --> 00:26:35.240 it's funny. I'm seeing you at this service today because two days ago, my doctor declared me cancer 00:26:35.240 --> 00:26:41.559 free. And I was like, wow. So I'm telling you this because you never know when you pray for someone 00:26:41.559 --> 00:26:46.759 and it seems like nothing happens in the moment. You never know what's happening. The Lord honored 00:26:46.759 --> 00:26:52.279 this person's prayer. She stayed with her doctor. She stayed in treatment, but she felt like they all, 00:26:52.380 --> 00:26:59.099 it all came together. And to her surprise a year later, she was declared cancer free. So pray in faith, 00:26:59.380 --> 00:27:04.880 always pray for each other. You know, we know, yes, it may not always happen, but you don't know if it 00:27:04.880 --> 00:27:09.680 didn't happen. It may be that somebody will come back to you at some point with a testimony of what 00:27:09.680 --> 00:27:19.000 changed. So let me close us in prayer. Lord Jesus, we're grateful that this is something that you did. 00:27:19.120 --> 00:27:24.920 You healed people's bodies. You healed people's minds and hearts. And Lord, you want us to receive 00:27:24.920 --> 00:27:34.100 from you and you want us to take the risk and pray for each other and take this journey of risk with you. 00:27:34.099 --> 00:27:42.000 And Lord, it's a big deal to come to you and to open ourselves up to you and to be vulnerable 00:27:42.000 --> 00:27:49.980 before each other in moments asking for prayer. It feels high stakes when we put our needs out before 00:27:49.980 --> 00:27:57.279 you with others. So Lord, I ask that you help us take those steps of courage and boldness and risk 00:27:57.279 --> 00:28:06.920 to put our needs before you and to really see and wait on you for you to come and do what you do in 00:28:06.920 --> 00:28:14.379 scripture and what you want to do for us still. We thank you, Lord. Amen.