Friend [1]:

I had a conversation with a minister in our town the other day about healing which really annoyed me. Her understanding of the Bible’s teaching was along the lines of:

1.. All sickness if of the devil

2.. Jesus is stronger than the devil

3.. Therefore all sickness should get healed

Inevitably I asked her what that implied about those prayed for who were not healed, and she said there must be a cause, a blockage – either in the pray-er or the pray-ee. And it reminded me of the ways such thinking (I hesitate to use the term) can be abusive and add to the suffering of the sick.

I recall seeing a sign beside a hospital bed that said ‘don’t pray for me if you are going to say “If it be God’s will” ‘. The clear implication was that the sick person wanted to believe emphatically that it was God’s will to heal and that any doubts on the matter would invalidate the prayers. I was surprised to read in my Sunday text in Luke 5 (the synoptic story of the healing of the leper) “If you are willing, you can heal me.” And it worked for him.

The view that all sickness should be healed for Christians means that it is as if the pray-er has to crack a code of correct praying before God will grant the promised boon; and lack of healing is definitely associated with lack of spirituality – Jim Glennon (1970’s Sydney healing ministry priest)

says “Throughout the centuries, healing has always been an index of the spiritual state of the church.” It can all amount to a huge bundle of guilt and failure and condemnation to add to the sufferings of the righteous poor.

~~~

Friend [2]:

I have been on a journey with regards this topic for the last few years. I hear your struggle Geoff and have sympathy with it, however I also ask myself the question on the other side of the topic. We would acknowledge that God is all powerful and supreme and therefore has the power to heal all sickness and disease. If this is the case what does it say about a God who chooses one person to be healed and another to suffer in pain (death is a good option for Christians). If we as parents saw our children walking towards a snake or playing with a snake would we not try and protect them, if they were bitten and we had the antidote would we not give it to them. I don’t of any parent would say well I told you they were dangerous, lets see how this trial will help you grow.

I have been influenced by a guy called Andrew Wommack his web site is http://www.awmi.net/ where you can read and even download teaching. He would agree with Geoff’s minister friend, but probably put it in different language. The one thing that I have learnt in my struggle and journey is that we cannot deal with healing in separation from our salvation, the nature of God, who we are in Christ, etc.. For we need to take a holistic look at the topic. Geoff is right in saying that this can be a topic to cause abuse and judgment and we need to be really careful. However we also need to be just as careful not to struggle with the topic and miss out on the blessing that God has in store for us.

I don’t believe God sits in heaven and randomly chooses who He heals and who He doesn’t. I also don’t think He heals those who deserve it, who have enough praying for them, who earn enough heavenly points (whatever they are). I am coming to the conclusion that Healing is God’s will for everyone and thus if there is no healing coming ‘in the physical’ then there is some blockage. The blockage however may have nothing to do with a person’s faith, it could a battle ‘in the spiritual’ as Daniel talks about. I do believe that if we ask for healing it is done in the spiritual realm. To unpack all this you can have a look at the above web site and read/hear more about it.

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Friend [3]:

I can understand your annoyance with simplistic statements that put all of the onus for lack of healing back on one person. If your very short summary of the minister’s understanding is accurate, then I would agree with you to a degree. My reservations come from the fact that she is not wrong in those three points, even if her application of them might be faulty. Let me very briefly explain myself:

Point 1. – All sickness is of the devil. This is a bit loose. I would say that all sickness, being a product of the fall, is therefore the result of sin – someone’s sin, not necessarily that of the sick person. This sin therefore gives rights to demons to get involved. Certainly God does not cause sickness, (after all at creation, everything was declared good)except in the sense of allowing us free will and therefore permitting us to pollute our planet and ourselves physically, morally, psychologically, spiritually and every other way that human ingenuity can devise.

Point 2 – Jesus is stronger than the devil. Do we have any doubt of this? The devil is a servant of God. Jesus IS God!

Point 3 – Therefore all sickness should get healed. Yes it should – if we are now living in a Kingdom of God paradigm rather than a fall paradigm. It is the how and when it should be healed that is open to debate, not the ‘should’.

If someone is not healed, then surely there IS a blockage of some kind. It might not be what your minister friend thinks it is, but it is there (even if it is simply “not God’s will to heal” – a way of thinking I don’t generally agree with). Any potential abusiveness comes from the way such an understanding is then acted on, not from its existence.

We have much still to discover about healing, but our experience so far is that we can never leave God out of the equation. Reducing healing to a method, a formula, a set of requirements, a cause and effect relationship, etc. will always prove to be frustrating. However, the expectation of healing seems to always be a factor. This is where the “If it be your will’ prayer becomes self-defeating. I maintain that it is not often said in the manner of the man in Luke 5, who made a statement that Jesus COULD heal him. This is a faith statement. What we more often see today is church leaders praying reluctantly out of a sense of duty (James 5), then tacking on, “If it be your will” as a copout in case their prayer has no effect. This is NOT a faith statement.

I think you might be a little unfair on Jim Glennon. He was a pioneer in reintroducing the healing ministry into a church culture that had largely lost any expectation that Jesus could still be Lord in the realm of health and healing. After his sight was healed supernaturally Canon Jim Glennon established the healing ministry at St Andrews Cathedral, Sydney, in 1960, based on the belief that God heals today. He had a bout of cancer himself and was very effective praying for others with cancer. He was instrumental in many thousands of others beginning to risk themselves in the healing ministry. After a short stay in hospital Canon Jim Glennon died peacefully in his sleep last year at the age of 85. The teacher of healing died of illness, but I’d still say he finished up pretty well healed! He’s now a lot healthier than you or me.

And besides, I would say that the lack of healing in the church IS an index to its spiritual state. It’s not the only one of course. The way some people operate in this area can bring a bundle of guilt and failure and condemnation. This also applies to the way some ministers and priests handle their relationships with those they ‘disciple’, and the way some evangelists try to frighten people into the kingdom, the way church treasurers try to coerce people into giving to the building fund – need I go on? If the ‘healer’ is unhealed some mistakes are inevitable. But should we therefore not try to heal, or disciple, or evangelise? I’m pretty sure the failures are more the result of too few being willing to engage in healing, not too many. We need to learn more by risking more.

Are ‘the righteous poor’ going to suffer less if we don’t pray for their healing? I know of only one way to absolutely guarantee that no-one will be healed – don’t pray! I know a large number of people who might still be sick, or even dead, if we hadn’t had a go. Of course, we have our ‘failures’ too. I went through one stage when people were reluctant to ask me to pray because some had died. But they died WELL!

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Friend [1] again:

Thanks for the interesting responses…

I just read Jim Glennon’s 1978 book Your Healing Is Within You and I appreciated the challenge to deeply wrestle with God and people in sacrificial prayer – certainly an approach i would aspire to. However, when he looks at alternatives to the doctrine that “it is always God’s will to heal. “, he rejects them all, leaving no alternative but spiritual failure for those who are not so healed. People grab other explanations because reality does not match up with the theory.

I think healing is in the atonement, but not necessarily before the resurrection. I think healing is a sign of the Kingdom, a powerful testimony and witness, but I don’t think Christ died so that everyone in church would be healthy without doctors, it is a sign and a pointer to the redemption of ALL things like the other miracles (including the resurrection) of Jesus.

I have respect for those who are cessationists and expect no miracles in our day and age for they sometimes rise to great heights of spiritual serenity and strength and feel motivated to work hard in God’s creation to research causes of illness and natural methods of healing.

But I am not one of them. Of course there are miracles today and healings – but never enough to convince me against my understanding of Scripture that ‘our outward man continues to suffer decay while the inward man is renewed day by day’ (2 Cor 4).

I don’t really have enough positive experience of prayer for healing to make a great case for anything – but not for want of trying. And I honestly don’t think healing is certain enough to make it a marketing tool for our churches (“come at 8pm and get healed”) – it is a gift, a grace, undeserved and unentitled. I am happy with the motto of, I think it was John Wimber: ‘It is up to us to ask and up to God to answer in the way God sees fit’.

I love the lament psalmists who never let God off the hook but wrestle and argue and insist that God share each and every daily experience good or bad. What about the drought? Does God want everyone to have enough rain – like any parent would want their children to be well-fed? Can I claim a prosperous farming season on the basis of that catch-all prove-nothing verse 3 John 2? As someone suggested to me recently, if I really had faith I would organise a celebration thanksgiving dance for rain before the rain comes. I can’t see that that would accomplish anything but make God look bad – as does some of the rubbish associated with healing.

~~~

To which I added:

And a quick response from another angle to four interesting contributions:

===>>> There are two parallel understandings throughout Scripture/Judeo-Christian history –

* Divine healing and

* Redemptive suffering…

To err in one direction or the other (as many Pentecostals on the one hand and many Roman Catholics on the other) have done is to court heresy.

Rowland Croucher

Hi,

My name is Sid Eavis and was a friend of the late Canon Jim Glennon to whom you have made reference in your website communications. I observe you comment on some of the idiosyncrasies of the Healing Ministry with your readers, especially those who have read his books.

Similar discussions have taken place with those who had met Jim and heard his teachings and I have been involved in many such discussions. The point, I guess is that Jim was very focused upon what the Bible said, particularly what Jesus said. Jesus’ ministry was involved teaching, preaching and healing. These are inseparable which prompted him to say on no few occasions, “the healing ministry is not going to the doctor’s with Amen on the end” any more than going to Church Service with the laying on of hands at the end, is not a healing service. There has to be teaching, preaching and healing. Anyway I thought that since your readers had referred to Jim’s two books, you might like to acquaint them with the recent release of a biographical treatise on the life and ministry of Canon Jim Glennon. As Jim’s friend, Executor and Trustee of his Healing Ministry Trust, I am also the author and self publisher of “A Healing Ministry – My Recollections of Canon Jim Glennon”. If you are agreeable you can point readers to my website www.canonjimglennon.com or its available at Koorong Bookshops, The Healing Ministry Centre and Moore Books in Newtown NSW, and at Rev Roger Rich’s Church in N Caulfield Vic, Southern Cross Ministries.