GIFTED (part eight)
1st Cor. 12:7-11, "Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines."
1) Healing.
The ability to serve as an instrument to bring about the curing of illnesses and restore health. They are the vessel through whom God chooses to use to heal. God moves him at specific times when he wants them to perform a miracle of healing.
This ability can often be seen with someone like a missionary for the same purpose as was needed in the time of Jesus and the Apostles when they traveled to new places to spread the gospel to confirm the power and supremacy of God over any other god or belief system already established.
The gifts of miracles and healing may not be as prominent in today's church like they needed to be in the first century establishment of the new church, but they do still exist and shouldn't be deemed as non-existent because of all the fake healers and so-called miracle workers.
I'm not here to legitimize or de-legitimize any of them but I think one important thing to note is you have those who will say if you're not healed it means you don't have enough faith. That could be true if a person doesn't believe God can heal. But I can believe God can heal me but I don't know if he will heal me. That's not a lack of faith that's leaving room for his will.
There may be various reasons why a person isn't healed from their affliction. Sometimes the healing doesn't come because there's a certain sin getting in the way of the it. But don't believe the misconception that my suffering is automatically because of sin.
The disciples made that mistake with the blind man; assuming his condition was because of sin. Jesus corrected their thinking and said that wasn't the case. Job's suffering wasn't because of sin, like his friends thought.
But you not being healed doesn't mean God has rejected you; It could be that it just isn't God's will for whatever reason. It could be a test to see if you will remain true to the Lord despite not being healed.
The following is from a sermon by K. Edward Skidmore, "I’ve know people who questioned God’s love for them because God didn’t heal them. I’ve known others who questioned their own faith...they felt like if they’d just had more faith God would have healed them. In fact, I’ve known people who were told by a faith-healer that the reason they were sick was because they didn’t have "enough faith."
A few weeks ago, I saw a TV special about faith healers. In that show, Lisa Ling went to the meeting of a renowned faith healer where she interviewed a man named Steve. When he was 18, Steve was in a car crash that left him with a brain injury and a speech impediment. Years after that, he fell off a roof and was paralyzed from the waist down.
Doctors said Steve would never walk again--but Steve said God had told him this was his time to be healed. He was completely convinced that he would leave that meeting walking and pushing his wheelchair. His faith was absolute; he didn’t express a single doubt that God was about to heal him.
On the last day of the meeting, Steve’s turn came. He went forward and sat in a row of people where the faith-healer touched his forehead and said "Bam!" Then a group of people prayed over him, reached under his arms, and lifted him up--but then after a couple of minutes, they set him back in his wheelchair. His condition was unchanged.
After this, Lisa Ling became very concerned for Steve. She knew he was completely convinced that he would be healed and she wondered what would happen to his faith. When she found Steve after the meeting, though, she was amazed. He was disappointed--but his faith was unshaken. In his halting voice, Steve told her, "It wasn’t my time to be healed--but one day I will walk and run--when I get to Heaven, God will give me a new body." Then Steve laid his hand on Lisa and prayed for her.
When I saw that, I realized I was witnessing a miracle. The miracle wasn’t in the man’s legs; it was a miracle of his soul--the light of Jesus was shining out of his heart. After all, a physical healing is always temporary. But spiritual healing, a healing of the faith, lasts for eternity."
Aside from the miraculous laying on of hands type healing, this gift can also be seen in a traditional sense with the knowledge and wisdom God gives doctors, nurses and medical people to help people. These are the ones who have the strong passion and inherent desire to want to help hurting people become well. They want to mend broken bones, treat diseases, find cures-they want to cause people to be able to live a better quality of life.
Although they learned medicine and treatments through school, that doesn't mean there isn't a godly inspired gift there. Someone with a gift of healing may be able to see something beyond their learning that will help someone. They have insight into determining what's wrong with someone where traditional practices have left other doctors stumped.
Luke was a doctor who may very well have been given the gift of healing, perhaps not in a miraculously laying on of hands way like the Apostles, but spiritually gifted nonetheless. There were medicines and such used in biblical days. They talked about using healing balm and leaves and such.
But then there are times when traditional medicine doesn't help and the healing is going to come miraculously. Jesus had agreed to help a man named Jairus whose daughter was sick. As they traveled the crowds were pressing around him. That's where we're introduced to the bleedy lady.
Mark 5:25-34, "And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.
At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?” “You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ” But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”
She found no relief from any means until she encountered Jesus. She was probably waning in her hope after exhausting all her time and resources into any doctor or remedy known to man-and coming away not feeling any better-only worse! But then she heard about Jesus. And she had such faith in him that she said, "If I can just touch his clothing I will be healed. Nothing else has worked but I know Jesus is my cure."
Jesus called her out and acknowledged the reason she was healed was because she had faith. But again, this doesn't mean if you're not healed then you must be lacking in your faith. But I think one lesson this story gives is that although medical personnel can help people and are gifted individuals, the real healer is Jesus.
We could have the tendency to put our faith in a doctor or a medicine and not rely on God. God may use the doctor and the medicine but our faith and trust should not be in them. There are many stories of people going to the doctor and having them say, 'there's nothing that we can do for you'. You walk away feeling sad and dejected. And then the Lord does the miraculous and the affliction is lifted. You go back to the doctor and they're befuddled. They might be confused but you know it's Jesus.
And to extend this gift of healing beyond the physical, think about those with the ability to help heal someone from mental, psychological or spiritual problems. In regards to psychiatry there are those who treat patients with no regard for God and can actually be anti-God in their approach; I'm not talking about them.
But there are plenty of Christian psychologists out there. The ones who have the ability to help someone overcome addictions, mental problems, spiritual bankruptcy, etc. are people with a gift of healing. They first help a person to believe healing is possible. They are good motivators; they know the right things to say to inspire them. They know what to suggest as an action plan for the person to help themselves.
So whether it's the miraculous laying on of hands, someone in the medical field or those who deal with a person's mental, psychological or spiritual state; they all constitute having the gift of healing. But regardless of the ability a healer, doctor, psychiatrist or pastor has; we all need to recognize the healing comes from God; we are merely the vessel he uses to accomplish it.
2) Miracles.
A miracle is defined as: "1. An event that appears to be contrary to the laws of nature and is regarded as an act of God. 2. An event or action that is amazing, extraordinary or unexpected."
One with the gift of miracles has God working through them to accomplish acts according to supernatural power. Miracles bear witness to the presence of God and the truth of his proclaimed word. God's prophets were able to perform miracles. This was done mainly to provide legitimacy for themselves as agents of God and the message they were proclaiming as well as to show who was truly God.
One case of this is Elijah on Mt. Carmel. Elijah assembled the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah on Mt. Carmel to show the people who was truly God. They built an alter and placed a sacrificed bull on it. They stacked up the wood but didn't light it. Then he had the prophets of Baal call on their god to see if he would send fire down upon the alter. From morning until evening they chanted and shouted and cut themselves but to no avail.
Then Elijah prepared his alter and bull. He had them dig a trench around it. Then he had water poured over the alter again and again until it ran down and filled the trench. With the sacrifice and alter drenched, it was time for Elijah to call upon God.
1st Kings 18:36-40, "At the time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed: “O LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, O LORD, answer me, so these people will know that you, O LORD, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.”
Then the fire of the LORD fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench. When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, “The LORD—he is God! The LORD—he is God!” Then Elijah commanded them, “Seize the prophets of Baal. Don’t let anyone get away!” They seized them, and Elijah had them brought down to the Kishon Valley and slaughtered there."
God provided a miracle through Elijah's prayer to show who was more powerful. The signs and wonders of the prophets would authenticate the messenger and therefore legitimize the message behind it. In the first century Jesus and then the Apostles were performing miracles for the same reasons. In the establishment of the church, the Apostles gave miraculous signs to prove their authority as agents of Jesus as well as providing authenticity for the new covenant.
Like the prophets and Apostles, the ability to perform miracles today would often be seen with missionary activity and the reasons would be the same. A missionary going against false beliefs may be given the ability to perform miracles as God directs to convince foreign people that Jesus is the way, truth and life. The gospel message carries its own authority but sometimes miracles are used to validate it and open doors to proclaim the message of love, forgiveness and living a Christian life.
But there is such a thing as a miracle worker who does not operate in the Holy Spirit. We saw an example of this when Moses approached Pharaoh.
Exodus 7:8-13, "The LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “When Pharaoh says to you, ‘Perform a miracle, ’ then say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and throw it down before Pharaoh,’ and it will become a snake.” So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the LORD commanded. Aaron threw his staff down in front of Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a snake.
Pharaoh then summoned wise men and sorcerers, and the Egyptian magicians also did the same things by their secret arts: Each one threw down his staff and it became a snake. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs. Yet Pharaoh’s heart became hard and he would not listen to them, just as the LORD had said."
When Aaron threw down his staff it became a snake. But when Pharaoh's magicians threw theirs down they became snakes too. One might think, 'why would God allow that'. But then, Aaron's snake ate up all the others-thus showing who was the supreme miracle worker.
But we see that Pharaoh wasn't swayed by it. Sometimes God performs miracles in people's lives but they won't be swayed by them. In Matt. 11, Jesus denounced many of the cities he performed miracles in because they didn't repent.
Just because a miracle is performed doesn't mean it will have the effect that God intends. I can either explain the miracle away or perhaps it changes me for a minute but it doesn't last. This can happen because of my expectations. I receive the miracle, but then I expect them to keep coming. And if they don't I cut and run.
The reality is that we actually see miracles all the time; we just don't always recognize them as such. Things that appear as coincidences are really small miracles. The person who doesn't know how they will pay their overdue bill suddenly receives a check or a bonus or a monetary gift of some sort; that's a miracle. When something goes wrong and it looks like doom and gloom but then something happens and it all works out-that's a miracle.
If you thought about it you could probably come up with plenty of cases in your life where this has happened. Have you ever had God answer your prayers? Answered prayer is the delivery of a miracle. Have you ever asked God for help and then seemingly out of nowhere help arrived? That's the delivery of a miracle. Miracles happen every day; we just need to have eyes to see them.
And we need to understand that we can be used by God as agents of miracles. When God moves us to act in some way, which is often in a way that seems odd to us, we can be an answer to someone's prayer. And it's typically for the same purpose-to draw people to God and to show them how great he is so they would trust him.
There is something pretty amazing that Jesus said in John 14:12, "I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father."
Jesus and his disciples are in the upper room at this point. This is shortly before Jesus' arrest so the miracles of Jesus were already done, including raising Lazarus from the dead. So when he says they will do greater things how could this be?
Adam Clarke's Commentary: "Some account for the greater works thus: 1. The very shadow of Peter healed the diseased, Ac 5:15. 2. Diseases were cured, and demons cast out, by applying to the persons handkerchiefs and aprons that had before touched the body of Paul, Ac 19:12. 3. By the word of Peter, Ananias and Sapphira were struck dead, Ac 5:5,9,10. 4. Elymas the sorcerer was struck blind by the word of Paul, Ac 13:11. 5.
Christ only preached in Judea, and in the language only of that country; but the apostles preached through most of the then known world, and in all the languages of all countries. But let it be remarked that all this was done by the power of Christ; and I think it still more natural to attribute the greater works to the greater number of conversions made under the apostles' ministry. So perhaps the greater works refer to the immense multitudes that were brought to God by the ministry of the apostles.
By the apostles was the doctrine of Christ spread far and wide; while Christ confined his ministry chiefly to the precincts of Judea. It is certainly the greatest miracle of Divine grace to convert the obstinate, wicked heart of man from sin to holiness. This was done in numberless cases by the disciples, who were endued with power from on high, while proclaiming remission of sins through faith in his blood."
Notice that Jesus said, "anyone who has faith in me". That wasn't just meant for the apostles; that was meant for all Christians! I don't know of anyone today that has a shadow like Peter's or a garment like Paul's but that doesn't mean people aren't given the power to perform miracles.
And I agree that being able to lead someone to Christ is the greatest miracle we could ever perform. Because in a spiritual way, bringing someone to Christ is like raising them from the dead. And that's how a lot of our miracles would happen. We help the deaf to hear and the blind to see-spiritually. We help the lame to walk-in a spiritual sense. We help people become released from demonic oppression when they turn and follow Christ or overcome sin.
When we get to be a part of helping someone transform their lives for Christ it's part of the miraculous workings of the Holy Spirit.
