Churches That Heal - Part 1
Thesis: We need to commit here at New Life Community Church to create an environment that fosters spiritual healing for those who are wounded and in need of God’s touch.
Scripture Text:
John 5:1-17:
1Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. 2Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 3Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. 5One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”
7“Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”
8Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” 9At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, 10and so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”
11But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’”
12So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?”
13The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.
14Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” 15The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.
16So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jews persecuted him. 17Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.” 18For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
Psalm 147:1-3(NIV)
1 Praise the LORD.
How good it is to sing praises to our God,
how pleasant and fitting to praise him!
2 The LORD builds up Jerusalem;
he gathers the exiles of Israel.
3 He heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their wounds.
Psalm 147:1-3 (The Message)
Hallelujah!
It’s a good thing to sing praise to our God;
praise is beautiful, praise is fitting.
GOD’s the one who rebuilds Jerusalem,
who regathers Israel’s scattered exiles.
He heals the heartbroken
and bandages their wounds.
Introduction:
Doug Murren wrote the book Churches That Heal and this book has impacted me in a deep and spiritual way. It revealed to me the necessity and the importance here at New Life Community Church that we be a church that heals and restores people’s lives. Murren states, “Churches should heal because people need healing” (2). Such a simple statement but so filled with deep spiritual truth. The church needs to get to work and focus on its divine purpose which is to assist in helping people to heal by the power of the Word.
Doug shared his vision in why he wanted to write a book about this subject. He opens his book in the introduction with this thought:
Why should churches be places of healing? That’s the question I got from several doctors when I mentioned the title of this book to them. We have modern medicine. We have great scientific understanding. We have new breakthroughs occurring nearly every day. Why in the world would churches want to get into the act (1)?
Have you ever thought about this question? Why would churches want to heal? Why not just go through the traditions of religion and never let it impact you or someone else. Do you know how hard it is to help people go through the healing process? Do you know how much work it is to help people through the healing process? They will scream in pain and you will have to listen to it and comfort them. They will moan and groan and complain about the pain and you will have to listen to it with compassion! They will get mad and angry because they are tired of the suffering through the pain and then they will take it out on you. They will lose proper body functions and wet themselves and create a mess that you will have to clean up. They will continue to do bad things to their bodies and expect you to fix them with a power pill. You will have to learn to deal with death because not everyone will be healed. You will have to deal with the loss of ones you learned to love. People will die in your arms and you will be able to do nothing but pray for them. Why in the world would the church want to get involved in this difficult heart wrenching process?
May be because some people do get healed and get better. May be because you do help some to recover and get well. May be because your labor of love does bring rich and great rewards? May be because it’s what God wants you to do? May be because you will be blessed in the process of helping others heal. May be because you realize that a church which does not heal is really missing their mission on earth?
So I am convinced that over the next 3 weeks we need to learn How to become a church that helps in the healing process of the Lord. So let’s learn what we must do to create a place of healing here at New Life Community Church.
I. We need to be intentional about creating an environment that fosters healing.
a. We must focus on creating a place that becomes an unstoppable force for healing in our community!
i. For this to happen we will have to get away from the survival mentality in the church.
1. Mc Manus states, “Once survival has become our supreme goal, we have lost our way…, the church is not called to survive history but to serve humanity. As with each individual, there is a difference between living and existing for the church…The church exists to serve as the body of Christ, and it is through this commitment to serve that we are forced to engage our culture…The serving that we are called to requires direct contact. You cannot wash the feet of a dirty world if you refuse to touch it” (pg. 23, An Unstoppable Force).
ii. For this to happen we will have to be willing to change and be willing to grow and to stretch in our faith.
1. Here is the point we will have to be intentional about making sure we are producing a church that has purpose and meaning for the hurting.
a. The church must be relevant o the hurting in this world and culture.
b. They must be able to see that we are a church that helps people through the healing process.
2. This man was not healed at the pool because no one would help him in to the healing pool.
a. Not one person would take time out of their busy day to help this man get healed.
b. They could not sacrifice any of their time for the benefit of another.
c. So this man become a victim of church – religious system that did not foster healing because no one cared enough to help him into the pool to be healed.
d. Key point: NO ONE CARED!
3. We must be willing to step out of our spiritual apathy and engage the hurting so that they can be healed.
a. We must care about others by helping them heal!
4. The truth is the church quit healing people when it fell into the mindset of being a place of refuge from the world and the belief that we must keep the things of the world including the hurting ones from polluting the church. So we closed the door on them and told them to stay out!
a. So therefore to correct this problem we must open the door!
i. This business is a risky business and it’s not about a “safe theology”.
ii. It’s about taking risks to help the hurting to heal.
b. Just read about the heroes of the faith and you discover that Christianity is not about playing it safe and hiding out in our spiritual little bubbles from the world.
i. It’s telling us to become salt and light to this lost and corrupt world.
ii. The reason we must become salt and light is so the world can experience a healing from the Lord through our lives.
iii. The other problem why many churches do not heal is because the Christians in the church believe the church is to provide them with customer service. For us to foster a healing environment we will have to lose the customer service attitude toward the church.
1. McManus put it this way, “Our motto degenerated from ‘We are the church, here to serve a lost and broken world’ to ‘What does the church have to offer me’ (30)?”
a. If a church does not meet my needs when I want then I am gone.
b. If the church does not have all the programs so that I don’t have to do anything then I am gone.
c. The mindset of this type of Christian: I am the one matters first not others!
2. This has created a belief system in church people that says “I am the center of the universe and it’s all about meeting my needs.”
a. Therefore we have all types of self-centered Christianity going on in our culture today.
b. We have people all wrapped up in their selves and have an “apathetic attitude toward helping others.
c. It’s not different then the attitude we saw demonstrated in Jesus story about the Good Smaritan.
b. Creating a church that heals will require us here at New Life to take risks and to leave our safety zones.
i. Illustration- Risks
To laugh is to risk appearing the fool
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental
To reach out for another is to risk involvement
To expose feelings is to risk exposing, your true self
To place your ideas, your dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss
To love is to risk not being loved in return
To live is to risk dying
To hope is to risk despair
To try is to risk failure
But risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing
The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing and is nothing
They may avoid suffering and sorrow but they cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love or live
Charmed by their attitudes they are a slave, they have forfeited their freedom
Only a person who risks is free
ii. McManus reminds us that Christianity is a dangerous faith. Listen to what he says: “How could we ever think the Christian faith would be safe when its central metaphor is an instrument of death? It is not a coincidence that baptism is a water grave depicting death and resurrection” (33).
1. These upcoming Baptismal pictures from last Sunday reveal individuals who have chosen to die to self and have decided to live for God. This is a risky business!
a. PLAY THE SLIDE SHOW!
b. I am so blessed and amazed at services like this. People share what God has done for them and it becomes exciting and energy charged.
c. You see people who have changed – transformed – and have made a public stand for Jesus Christ.
iii. “It is no less significant that the ongoing ordinance of the Lord’s Supper is a reminder of sacrifice. How did we ever develop a safe theology from such a dangerous faith” (33)?
1. COMMUNION
a. This religion is a dangerous faith that is willing to take risks so that others may be healed!
b. Have the elements distributed to the congregation and challenge them to meditate on dangerous our faith is to be to this lost world.
c. Read 1 Corinthians 11:23-29: Let me go over with you again exactly what goes on in the Lord’s Supper and why it is so centrally important. I received my instructions from the Master himself and passed them on to you. The Master, Jesus, on the night of his betrayal, took bread. Having given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, broken for you. Do this to remember me.” After supper, he did the same thing with the cup: “This cup is my blood, my new covenant with you. Each time you drink this cup, remember me.” What you must solemnly realize is that every time you eat this bread and every time you drink this cup, you reenact in your words and actions the death of the Master. You will be drawn back to this meal again and again until the Master returns. You must never let familiarity breed contempt. Anyone who eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Master irreverently is like part of the crowd that jeered and spit on him at his death. Is that the kind of “remembrance” you want to be part of? Examine your motives, test your heart, come to this meal in holy awe. If you give no thought (or worse, don’t care) about the broken body of the Master when you eat and drink, you’re running the risk of serious consequences. That’s why so many of you even now are listless and sick, and others have gone to an early grave. If we get this straight now, we won’t have to be straightened out later on. Better to be confronted by the Master now than to face a fiery confrontation later. So, my friends, when you come together to the Lord’s Table, be reverent and courteous with one another. If you’re so hungry that you can’t wait to be served, go home and get a sandwich. But by no means risk turning this Meal into an eating and drinking binge or a family squabble. It is a spiritual meal—a love feast.
T.S. – We need to be intentional here at New Life Community Church about creating an environment that fosters healing. It does not just happen we have to partner with the Lord and make it happen. To do this we must learn what to do.
II. How do we here at New Life Community Church create a church that heals?
a. Here’s some suggestions gleamed from Doug Murren’s book Churches That Heal.
i. We need to lighten up and not take ourselves too seriously.
1. Lose the masks of being phony and to serious.
a. We need to drop our guards and be willing to open up to those around us. For us to be involved in the process of healing we must be willing to reach out to others by risking involvement in their lives.
i. It’s time the church removes the masks of religion and perfection and learns to become real to the people in need.
1. They need to see that they are not the only ones who have problems and are in need of healing.
a. They need to see that everyone has struggles, no one is perfect.
2. We need to lovingly assimilate people into the kingdom of God by developing unselfish relationships with others.
ii. Smile and get happy in Jesus
1. Too many people in the church need to quit frowning and start smiling if they want to help others to heal.
a. Lose your cynical attitude and look for the positive in the church.
b. No one wants to come to a place were people are grumpy and critical of others.
c. No one wants to come to a church filled with hatred and bitterness toward each other.
d. No one wants to come to a church filled with un-forgiveness toward each other.
iii. Quit working yourself to the point of exhaustion and then you end up blaming others for you over commitment
1. The church needs to quit burning others out because they think programs will change people’s lives.
2. We need to quit letting the few do all the work of the Lord in the church and decide to help out.
3. Truth is it takes a willingness of all to work at creating and maintaining a healing church.
a. God has gifted all of us talents and we need to use them for the Kingdom of God.
iv. We need to slow down and learn to take spiritual sabbaticals with the Lord.
1. We today need to lose the busy as a bee obsession.
2. We must schedule times of spiritual refreshing in our lives if we want to be effective in ministry.
3. If we want to stay spiritually healthy we must spend time away with the Lord.
v. Quit talking so much and learn to become a active listener.
1. The best thing many could do in the church is to be quiet and listen more!
a. We must also learn to listen to the heart of others so as to help in starting the process of healing.
b. What are the characteristics of a person who is an active listener and who helps people heal?
i. A person who can listen to everyday conversations of others and be genuinely concerned. The following is gleamed from When Someone You Know is Hurting-What Can you Do to Help. (Richards, pages 61-71).
1. We tend to not hear what people say to us today.
a. Out minds are moving a mile a minute and we fail to listen to the person speaking to us.
2. We interrupt people we are talking to and do not acknowledge what they themselves have just said.
a. This shows that we did not listen!
3. The truth is people who listen are usually considered our best friend and people who genuinely care about us.
4. An effective listener is someone who helps you to sort out your hurts and pains and your emotions so that healing can take place.
ii. A person learns to ask questions and then allows for free expression will help people to progress in the healing process.
1. We need to be genuinely concerned about others and ask questions to help in the healing process.
iii. Don’t take the negative comments from the hurting person personally.
1. People may say things like, “God hates me!” “God is cruel!” It’s important to learn to let people “Blow off Steam!” without trying to fix them right then and there.
2. The best thing we can do is pray for them and help them to see the truth in their situation with gentle patience.
iv. Be accepting and affirming of the person who needs a healing.
1. Remember keep the process of healing moving forward.
v. Make sure that you give nonverbal affirmative actions toward the one who is in the process of healing.
vi. Work at the gift of patience with the ones laboring through the healing process.
1. It’s the best gift you could give.
T.S. – We do need to know how to create a healing environment here at New Life Community Church and we also must understand that healing is a slow process.
III. To Create a Healing church we need to understand that healing is a process.
a. Most healings do not happen over night.
i. They take time-patience-and determination to persevere through the long process.
ii. My own experience with the healing process.
1. Truth is I want my knee to be better right now not tomorrow. I want a microwave healing. I want an immediate result from my surgery. I want fixed now because I have things to do and I am tired of waiting for it heal!
a. I don’t want to have to walk with crutches.
b. I do want to be able to drive and transport myself around.
c. I do not want to be dependent on others.
d. I don’t want to have to ask people to get things for me.
e. I don’t want to have to wait for others to do things for me.
f. I don’t want people to have to get my food and my coffee because I cannot carry it.
2. Why do I do this and think this? Because I want an instant healing and but it does not work that way!
3. Because I am so independent and I feel that I should always be able to take care for myself. I pride myself on being independent and I am learning God wants me to become interdependent not independent.
a. Being independent does not make God proud of us! What He wants is the willingness for us to care for one another and to be dependent on one another.
b. He is not pleased with independent self centered spirits!
c. God wants us to be united not independent contractors. Listen to these thoughts form the Word.
i. 1 Corinthians 12:27: “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is part of it.”
ii. John 17:20-26: 20“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: 23I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.24“Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. 25“Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. 26I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”
1. The Lord Jesus prayed that we would be one and understand the importance of being linked together through his sacrificial acts for us.
2. He wants us dependent on Him and on one another.
4. This is the lesson I believe the Lord is teaching me right now.
a. Yes, I want instant healing and I do get frustrated.
b. Yes, I want instant answers to my prayers. I don’t want to have to wait for my prayers to be answered.
c. There is a battle raging in my heart and I need to understand that patience will build my character and help to me to mature more in Jesus.
d. I must admit that I have been frustrated because I have not learned to accept the fact that healing takes time and patience.
e. This is not a microwave process! It is a slow but effective process that brings long lasting healing to people’s lives if they learn to have patience in the process.
f. Yes, I still battle with my self because it wants things now and not tomorrow! But I am determined to grow through this experience.
5. There is another lesson that I am learning through this healing process.
a. I don’t like to be considered handicapped.
b. I learned a valuable lesson last Monday. I noticed when I was in the handicap motorized cart at Walmart cruising around how others responded to me in that chair. All the other people in wheel chairs said “Hi” to me and smiled at me. But most of the normal people walked by with out acknowledging me or even making eye contact with me. They walked bye not even noticing that I was there. I even had a person I knew go right past me and not even look down at me.
c. I thought to myself while I have a little sense of what that man felt like by that pool for so many years.
i. Ignored, not acknowledged by the upright ones.
ii. I actually started feeling even worse about my situation.
iii. Then I thought to myself “This man had to deal with this for a very long time unlike me my condition was only for six weeks.”
b. The process of healing takes time and most of all patience and kindness with the wounded.
i. We often fail in helping the healing process progress. You ask. “How do we do this?”
1. Murren gives us reasons why we fail to help people heal and recover:
a. “We tend to rely too heavily on ascribing a moral solution for everything” (202).
i. When Jesus went to heal the blind man the disciples asked, “Who sinned this man or his parents?” Jesus said in John 9:2 “It’s for the glory God.” In other words neither he nor his parent were to blame for his blindness, But he was born blind and going to be healed at this moment to give God the glory! (202).
ii. Far to often we write people off with moral answers to wounds that a person has sustained in life.
iii. The story of the pastor who took my support group while I was on vacation.
b. “We often have little patience for the relapses that all addicts face” (202).
i. 85% of addicts relapse at some time in their life. But the truth is we all slip and blow it in life. We all make mistakes in our lives. The key is to help these individuals get back up not kick them when they are down.
ii. We need to learn to forgive and forget and decide to help others up. We must be committed to helping others move toward the completion of their healing.
c. “We tend not to let people grow” (204).
i. We far too often hinder people’s growth by making them adopt our ideas, our methodologies and theologies. And if they deviate from our ideas we criticize them for what they are doing and even blame them for their wounds.
ii. We have a tendency to not allow the Holy Spirit to led them into who he wants them to be. Because we want to be what we want them to be.
iii. This is what the religious leaders did to this healed individual in our text today. Listen to them:
1. John 5: 8Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” 9At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, 10and so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”
2. They were not excited that he was healed. They are mad that he is carrying his mat on the Sabbath.
a. Talk about being blind and legalistic.
3. Then they want to know who did this terrible thing to him. Not his healing but told him to carry his mat.
4. They were more concerned about doing things their way then rejoicing in this man’s supernatural healing.
5. The sad fact is this happens far to often even in the church today.
iv. We also tend to hinder people’s growth by the way we keep reminding people how they are imperfect.
1. When we can only see the flaws n others then we are the one’s with the problem not them!
v. We need to forget who people where and rejoice in who they are today we don’t they will never grow or be healed!
Conclusion:
If we want to be a healing church it becomes imperative that we look and act like Jesus.
Learn the act of caring for others to help the healing process progress. Here are some thoughts and ideas on what you personally can do to help people heal and act like Jesus.
Practical actions we can do to help people progress in their healing:
1. Write them a note of encouragement.
2. Send a card.
3. Give them a call and listen to what they say.
4. Make them out for a meal or invite them over for a meal.
5. Take them out for coffee and visit.
6. Pray for them.
7. Remember their birthday and do something nice for them.
8. Encourage them with a good book.
9. Encourage them with a blessing of CD that helps them to heal.
10. Be present in their lives and don’t shun.
11. Help them out with a financial blessing.
12. Transport them to church and other healing meetings.
13. Do a Bible study with them.
14. Forgive them when they do things different than you.
If we want to be a healing church it becomes imperative that we look and act like Jesus.
