Healing the child in the wheelchair

For the past while, I have been getting really stirred up – getting angry (in a righteous way) and getting more and more desparate and hungry, so much so I have felt like Jacob when he wrestled with God. ‘God, I will not let you go until you bless me!’ Forced to press in, forced to wrestle, forced to stuggle and press in and press in til I get what has been promised and I know is there.

What’s it all about? About healing. And why I don’t see it enough in the church and instead just see a load of quacks and charlatans, people denying they are sick in the word-faith movement (but they don’t get any better) or a load of disappointed Christians in other denominations.

I was miraculously healed a few years ago after a car crash so can testify that God really does heal today but that is not enough for me. I am very grateful for the healing of course, but I am desparate for more, to see this sort of healing and miracle happen regularly and not once in a blue moon. I am even more desparate after my own miracle than I was before it – why can’t it always be that easy? God in his mercy touched me but why does he not always show such mercy?

I read the stories in the gospels of Jesus healing all who came to him and it is a differant planet compared to my current Christian experience and those of everyone around me. In my 21 years of Born-again Christian life, visiting numerous churches (Pentecostal, Charismatic, Spirit-filled and other denominations such as baptist), numerous conferences and missions organisations, if I tried hard to think, I can count on the fingers of one hand people I know or have met who have been truly healed. I have heard lots of positive confessions and false testimonies but only one or two genuine healings.

I went to a Healing Conference run by the Vineyard about 12 years ago. (I would now steer clear of Vineyard because of dodgy doctrines but that’s another story). John Wimber (who has since died of cancer), the then-leader of the Vineyard movement had to constantly use a spray on his throat because of his cancer – this seemed rather contradictory to say the least. Nobody got healed over those three days but there was a lot of talk about the ‘how tos’ of healing along with manifesting and jerking galore and The Holy Spirit was quite happy (it seemed) to throw someone across the room and make others roar like lions or walk like penguins or whatever but He did not see fit to heal anybody.

The scriptures and my experience and the experience of my peers do not testify, they do not agree – why? – I MUST have what is in the scriptures as that is more real and more true than my own experience. Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever – he healed all who came to him.

I know that Jesus died for us and bore our diseases and sicknesses as well as our sins for us on the cross. Otherwise Isaiah 53 and Matthew 8:16-17 just would not make sense among many other scriptures.

Isaiah 53:4-5 “Surely He has borne our griefs (sicknesses) and our sorrows (pains); Yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.”

Matthew 8:16-17 “When evening had come, they brought Him many who were demon-possessed. And He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying: “He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses.”

So why don’t we see it – the real thing – in our times – much it at all?

There can be lots of issues why healing does not break through in our time, but I think one of the key issues is faith. But linked with that is active expectation. People can think they have the ‘faith’ but do not have the active expectation that goes with it. God showed me this when I asked him about a sick child I know of.

I think the hardest thing for most people to deal with is a sick child. Somehow a child locked into a serious illness is far harder to look at, and far harder to accept than an adult. There is a young girl of about 7 years old that is in a wheelchair at a local Pentecostal church I know. She is a beautiful child and her family love God, but looking at her touches that anger again, it touches that frustration that cries out God why?!!!!!!!!!! why??? I am not angry with God (although I have been in the past but God dealt with that, I misunderstood him big time – I am angry now at the sickness/the circumstances, angry why it remains). This church she goes to believe in healing and yet one of their most vulnerable members suffers as do others including their pastor. It really really, bothered me and I decided to ask God specifically about this child.

‘God, why is this child still in a wheelchair?’God showed me a vision of milk bottles – an empty milk bottle on a doorstep being filled miraculously with milk gushing from above out of nowhere.What does this mean, God?This does not just happen, this is not the way it works. You put a milk bottle out expecting it to be filled/replaced by the milkman – you put a note in it with your needs/demands – how many pints of milk you want to be delivered (ie you pray expectantly) – fully knowing in faith it will be filled/replaced.There is an issue of lack of expectation – people are not praying expectantly, they are waiting for a miracle to happen ‘when it happens’, (the milk to supernaturally fall down from heaven into the milk bottle) rather than praying in faith AND EXPECTATION now and using the authority now to ‘make it happen’. They have not put the ‘note in the bottle’ expecting the milkman to be faithful to honour his promises.

Should I tell the child’s mother this?

No – this is (mainly) explaining to you why it is. She will not grasp it or is not ready for it. It is more an issue for the leadership of the Church rather than the child’s mother anyway.Then I saw a vision of a policeman walking across the front of the Church taking his helmet off

There is to do with the issue of spiritual authority and not using it. The word exusia came to me – ‘Exusia’ is a Greek word which means EXERCISING AUTHORITY. “Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” [Luke 10:19]The Greek word translated as ‘authority,’ is ‘exousia,’ and its basic meaning is to have the right to rule or govern as one whose will and commands must be submitted to and obeyed. A traffic officer has very little power to stop the transport, but he has ‘exusia’ authority. When he holds up his hand the driver stops, because behind the officer’s authority is the whole weight of the Police Department, and if necessary, the resources of the State Government. But with that authority is the expectation element too. There are scriptures that back this up-This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.  (I John 5:14-15)

 

 

But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does…. (James 1:6-8]

The authority of Christ endorses his great commission which includes healing the sick.

So in summary, God does want this child to be well, to be healthy BUT the church have not come to Him in faith and exercised their authority. How many more childs in wheelchairs does the church have that are not whole because people have misunderstood faith and not prayed expectantly?

I am still praying and I still want to see, so pray with me that we will see healing break through. More than anything I pray that God will give me the gift of faith that includes the expectation He wants as without faith nobody can please God.