The Spectrum Of Healing Series

The Spectrum of Healing Mark 5:21-43

Many of you watched the Tiger Woods press conference this week. He came off genuinely sorry for his deeds and apologized profusely to everyone involved from his family to his co-workers. This story has been played out in the media since Thanksgiving night 2009. That’s just the way it seems to be in this world of ours, no one is immune to the lurking eye of the camera and if you’re famous you’d better mind your P and Q’s or it will wind up on youtube and played on every iphone in the country.

The one thing I brought away from the interview was a sense for a deep need for healing. Granted, Tiger needs to be healed from an apparent sex addiction, but there are many more in the story who need healing. Elin Woods, the Woods children, Tiger’s many employees, the golfing community and the professionals in his sport will all need healing on some level. Tiger Woods is not alone, whenever anyone does something that brings harm to another, there is a need for healing.

That’s what Brit Hume from Fox News was referring to when he stated he hoped Tiger would seek out a relationship with Jesus Christ in order to receive forgiveness and healing. There’s healing power in the cross of Jesus Christ.

Unfortunately, so often, in the church, we relegate the healing ministry of Jesus to the Pentecostals or charismatics. That’s their “thing” we like to say. On some level I can understand how the mainline church became so disenchanted with the healing ministry of the church. There have been many abuses and misuses of the healing ministry. What we mainly see on TV about healing involves some “faith” healer who claims to have a special touch from God. Now hear me on this: I do believe that God uses people to heal and I believe there are some people who do have the gift of healing. But, unfortunately, the good hearted, hard working people who have legitimate healing ministries aren’t the ones vying for your TV dollars. They are hard at work praying and laying on of hands and counseling and offering guidance.

Over the next seven weeks, during this season of Lent, I want us to look at the healing power of the cross of Jesus Christ. I want us to examine several accounts of healing recorded in the Gospel of Mark to help us determine what the healing power of the cross is, what the ministry of healing is and what our role in that ministry should be.

Those of you who have been around here long enough know that I’ll pray for healing at the drop of a hat and believe that our prayers bring healing, so my purpose through this series is to deepen our understanding of healing and, at the same time, broaden our own ministry of healing here at NewSong.

Our first passage comes from the fifth chapter of Mark’s gospel verse twenty-one.

READ SCRIPTURE HERE

ILL: A man once bought a dog named badger that had the reputation of being both the smartest bird dog in the world and very religious as well. When he brought the dog home, his wife wanted a demonstration. He went outside and ran the dog through several trials which Badger performed flawlessly. "So what makes him religious?" asked the wife. "I'm not sure, let's fine out." He called to the dog, "Badger, heel!" To which Badger jumped to his feet, placed a paw on His owner's forehead and said, "In the name of Jesus!"

As I said, that’s what a lot of Christians think of when they think about healing in the church. Let’s look a little deeper into Jesus ministry so we can have a better picture of what this is all about. The first thing we see about Jesus’ healing ministry is that it is:

Permissive (v 22, 25)

Then a leader of the local synagogue, whose name was Jairus, arrived. When he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet… (22)

A woman in the crowd had suffered for twelve years with constant bleeding. (25)

When we lived in New Orleans, our kids attended a private, uptown school. It was a school for the upper crust of New Orleans society. Kids of the city’s wealthiest and most famous people went to school there. Two boys with the last name Manning played their High School football there, former Saints player Pat Swilling’s kids went to school there, the owners of hotels and oil companies and politicians sent their kids to this uptown school. Even Morris Bart sent his kids to school there. (“One call that’s all.”) Our kids went there as well. We were the token poor. I assure you we were the recipients of a very generous scholarship.