Fervent Prayer: Health and Healing

Notice the high calling and purpose that Jesus charges our lives and prayer with.  Pray then like this:  Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. (Matthew 6:9) Are we satisfied with our calling, and our purpose of prayer?  That is, to hallow, or glorify the Father’s name.

  When the Christian considers health and healing in one’s life, could it be that we often misplace our need for health and healing?  Do we realize that our Heavenly Father has called us to, and provides much more to His children than mere health and healing?

It will do us well to consider the subsequent verse in our Lord’s model of prayer and life.  Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. (Matthew 6:10)  Because God is our Father, and does delight in His children, we have been called into living for God’s kingdom to come, and for His will to be done.  Ponder this…called (chosen) by God to hallow His name in our living!  

Oh, but you may think, it feels strange to me that God seeks His own glory, and that His children should be designed for that what He seeks above all other things – His own glory.  But now, quiet yourself, and embrace this stunning truth:  the sovereign God of the universe gives Himself to us!  It is brothers and sisters, infinitely loving that our Heavenly Father calls us to glorify Him; He gives us the very best, the ultimate of all worth – Himself!  And it is here that we must grasp, that the desire for mere health and healing is a superficial need for our life; health and healing must be purposed in the hallowing of God’s name.  True joy and satisfaction can be found only in such ambitions.

How then should we come to our Heavenly Father for health and healing?  Not at all?  Hesitant?  Demanding?  We should come as the psalmist in Psalm 147 – knowing.  The psalmist knew that it was fitting to praise God.  Immediately in building his case for praising God, the fact that God gathers the outcasts of Israel is mentioned.  Further, the healing of broken hearts is declared.  He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. (Psalm 147:3)  We must come knowing that by grace, our sin broken hearts are healed!  One time outcasts separated from God are now healed and the bitter wounds of sin bound up; therefore, life purposed for God’s glory becomes the Christian’s delight.

In our needs for health and healing, we come then, knowing that the sovereign of the universe has given Himself to us.  We come in the joy of our rescue, in the purpose of life lived for God’s glory, and in the peace of understanding that God’s sovereignty is a banner of love over our lives.

Brothers and sisters, ask for health and healing in confidence, knowing that all you will ever need to live for God’s glory will be given to you!  Pray then also, to know Him in such delight.

- By John Klein

FERVENT: HEALTH & HEALING

There are a lot today in our culture who talk about wellness.  There are wellness coaches, wellness programs, and a myriad of opinions on how we can be well. I think most people recognize the great need for healing.  We are people who are inherently NOT well.  We are broken and warped, twisted by our sinful natures.  Of those of us who are members of the family of faith, however, there is a way that we can be well despite our sinful condition.  The scripture above states that the Lord “heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”  This is the same language that is used in Isaiah 61:1-2 “The Spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance or our God, to comfort all who mourn…”  This is also the scripture that Jesus read in the synagogue at the beginning of his public ministry and said, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing,” (Luke 4:21).  For those who have put their faith in Christ Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins, the process of healing has begun.  The first words that Jesus spoke to his disciples after his resurrection were “Peace be with you.”  Jesus reassures the disciples that they have his “peace.”  The Greek word used here transliterated is “eirene” is equivalent to the Hebrew word “shalom” used by the writers of the Old Testament.  These words are translated into English as “peace,” yet these terms connote a much deeper, more profound significance than our usual definition of peace.  The terms express a complete and entire emotional/physical/spiritual well-being among people that affects every aspect of life and every relationship.  Paul in his letter to the church at Ephesus states, “For Christ himself brought peace to us. He united Jews and Gentiles into one people when, in his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us…He made peace between Jews and Gentiles by creating in himself one new people from the two groups. Together as one body, Christ reconciled both groups to God by means of his death on the cross, and our hostility toward each other was put to death” Ephesians 2:14-16.  True well-being and health are obtained through our relationship with Jesus Christ.  This shalom is also not an individual experience but one that provides restoration to all relationships.

Let us pray for healing and restoration in our lives and relationships that God might be praised and glorified and that His peace may penetrate every aspect of our being.