About Healing...

        I've been thinking...... I told some of you about a sick baby that we prayed for. Rather than being healed, the baby got sicker and sicker and then died. Why didn't God heal that innocent little baby? That is a question that has been debated for centuries and the books
written trying to answer this same question would fill libraries. I can add nothing that hasn't already been said. But I want to know the answer... not in a confrontational way. God is God and His ways are not my ways. But I am asking in the sense to find out how my ways can be conformed to His ways.

        I do know that God's Word is living and active TODAY. God is healing the sick, delivering the demonized and even raising the dead TODAY. God did not retire after the last lines of the Bible were written. Neither did His power level go down as time passed. He is the God of the impossible! He does the supernatural! TODAY!  Then why I am living such a natural life...with so little supernatural?

        I figure as His people that we should be marked as people that live the supernatural. Jesus Himself said that signs [miracles] would follow  those who believe (Mk 16:17) Am I "into signs and wonders"? Most emphatically I say that I am "into Jesus". And I make it my business to be into the same things that He is into.   I want to follow Jesus... I want to bear the family resemblance of my Father. I want to be someone that is clothed with the radiance of His glory. Someone that is ready for Him to pour Himself through in whatever way He chooses. If that be to offer a cup of water to the thirsty, to feed the hungry, to visit widows and orphans...then let it be. But if it be to heal the sick, free the demonized, and raise the dead...then by God, let it be that too!

        We are stirred by sermons about the Great commission in Mat 28:18-20: Go and made disciples of all nations, baptizing them...and teaching them... But what about the equally great commission from Mat 10:7-8: As you go, preach this message: "The kingdom of God is near." Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons.

        Making disciples, teaching, and baptizing are somehow more palatable to us. It fits our doctrine. But the commission to heal the sick and raise the dead is treated with our theological butchery and interpreted as specifically for that time and not for us today. Why do we do that? Is it really a search for truth? Or is it an attempt to make God's word fit our experience. If the latter is true (and I propose that at it is at least partially true) then our doctrine (our attempt to express in words what is truth) has been perverted by our experience.  Let's let God completely overhaul our "doctrine". We have tried to explain God with our little words and our little doctrines until we have put God into a very little box.   

        Even the great commission says: "...teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you..." And surely the Mat 10 commission falls into the category of "what I have commanded".

        Every revival in the last centuries, every one has been preceded by prayer, and sparked by someone daring to take God at His word. Each revival was accompanied by 1) preaching 2) repentance and 3) miracles.  Let's look at those revivals... let our hearts open to what could take place again in our days. Let our hearts hunger and long for God to move
in our days.  

        What will it look like when God pours out His Spirit in the last days?  (Joel 2:28) It will have to look different than before He poured out His Spirit.   My heart's desire is that He would find me an open, connected, clean and faithful conduit through which He can pour Himself through to touch this corner of the world.

All for today........