Tag Archives: healing

Healing is part of the New Covenant: it has never been withdrawn. If we don’t see more healings it is not because God’s word is not true or His power is not available, but it is because, for all sorts of reasons, most of us aren’t accessing the gift.

Knowing God, Walking in the Spirit

The Pool of Bethesda (2): the paralysis of religion

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After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda,  having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had. Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” he sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your bed and walk.” And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked. And that day was the Sabbath. (John 5: 2-9)

God’s house of mercy
The healing at the pool took place on the Sabbath. In the sequence of signs as John recorded them, this was the first time that Jesus challenged the religious order by “working” on the designated day of rest, and John records it as the opening skirmish of His battle with the pharisees that ended at Calvary. “For this reason the Jews persecuted Jesus, and sought to kill Him, because He had done these things on the Sabbath.” (John 5:16) “Bethesda” means “house of mercy,” or “flowing water,” and it was by the Sheep Gate. This is not just a place in Jerusalem: it is a picture of the church. The healing at Bethesda was certainly a sign pointing to our need for an encounter with the living Christ, but it also tells us that there are many sheep in God’s house of mercy and flowing water who are immobile on their beds by the pool, and that one of the main types of paralysis is the paralysis of religion.

Paralysed by religion
The dictionary definition of religion refers to worship of a God or gods and the activities surrounding that worship, and in a broader sense to “enthusiastic and repeated engagement” in a particular pursuit. Avid sports fans are often referred to as making a religion of their sport, for example. However, I worship the Christian God, enthusiastically and repeatedly, yet if someone asks me the question “are you religious?“ I say, “No I’m not religious; I have a living faith.“ So in the church many of us now see the term religion as not so much describing our worship of the living God, but the practice of those who, in the words of Paul to Timothy, have “a form of godliness but deny its power.” (2 Timothy 3: 5–7). The question for those of us who say we have a living faith is this: is it possible for us also to be paralysed by religion?

We tend to Pillory the Pharisees today as archetypal examples of everything we want to avoid in our worship of Christ. And so we should: they lived by the law and missed Jesus. There is no need to quote here any of the many things that Jesus said against them: the important point is that we don’t follow their example and find ourselves as paralysed and lifeless as they were. They too were lying by the pool on their bed, the bed of the law, waiting for the waters to be stirred by the Messiah – who was standing right in front of them.

Flowing in the spirit?
The Bible tells us, “Whatever was written in the past was written for our instruction so that we could have hope through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures.”  (Romans 15:4) The Holy Spirit hasn’t just made it clear how tragically fruitless the religion of the Pharisees was so that we could feel superior in our relationship with Him: those scriptures are also there for our instruction so that we can take care not to follow any of their practices. How much of this instruction are we actually taking on board? For example – and I know I’m far from being the first person to say this – I was born again In 1984, when the charismatic movement was surging through the established church. We used to think of ourselves as “flowing in the spirit,“ and (I’m ashamed to say) how superior we were to the church down the road whom we saw as ossified in their “hymn– prayer sandwich“ format. I now belong to one of the larger modern evangelical Charismatic/Pentecostal networks. We consider ourselves to be free in the spirit, and to be hosts of the presence of God during our meetings. But before I go to church on a Sunday, I know that we will start with a couple of fairly lively praise songs, the host for the day will do the notices, the children and teenagers will go out to their respective groups, we will continue with worship for about another half an hour, then there will be a preach (we used to call them sermons, but that was  too religious) for about 30 minutes, and then a closing song and an appeal for ministry at the end. We will start at 10:30 and finish around 12:15; gather for refreshments after the meeting, and will be out of the building by about 12:45. We do make room for the gifts of the Spirit during the worship time, so three or four people might bring a word of encouragement, a prophecy or a word of knowledge; maybe a tongue and an interpretation – but how different is this really from the “hymn-prayer sandwich?“ The fillings might be a bit different, but it is no less predictable, and I suspect that we are not very different from many modern evangelical churches.

The Spirit of God does graciously meet with us in the little box that we give him, and we rejoice in the fact that we have been in his presence, even though it may have just been the hint of a reflection of a glimmer. We say, and pray, that we want more of him; we long to see healings and deliverance; yet how much more of ourselves will we give? Would we know more of His presence and His power if we gave him more of our time? Or even if we took the compartments out of the box and, for example, allowed the allocated time for worship to eat into the allocated time for the sermon? Or even – shock horror – not have a sermon (sorry, a preach) at all?


The mountain and the chocolate box
I think we can be very easily satisfied with the experience that we describe as “entering the presence of God.“ When the presence of God came into Solomon’s temple at the time of its dedication, the priests were unable to stand. When the Roman soldiers came to Gethsemane to arrest Jesus, they fell to the ground when He identified himself with the words “I am He.” (John 18:6) In our own church we had a half night of prayer a couple of months ago (we should have them more often…), from 8 pm to 2 am. People came and went as they pleased; not many stayed for the whole six hours. But it wasn’t until about 1:30 that the presence of God really came, so powerfully that most of the few of us who were there had to fall to our knees; and then someone gave a prophetic word that brought a long awaited breakthrough in the life of one of those present. When the presence of God came to Toronto, He changed lives and impacted people like Heidi Baker, (Iris Global) Che Ann (Harvest International Ministries) Bill Johnson (Bethel Church) and Nicky Gumbel (the Alpha Course) whose ministries have brought the Kingdom of God into millions of lives. A hallmark of Toronto Airport Vineyard meetings in the 1990s, as well as of other revivals, was daily meetings that went by the clock in heaven and not the clock in the kitchen. I think we can package the presence of God in a chocolate box when He wants to take us up a mountain. God has a much bigger space to move in than we often allow Him. If the dimensions of our box are so far away from His, it’s because our religion keeps it small and keeps us too easily satisfied.

The dynamic of Life
Jesus said , “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself,” (John 2:26) and that He had come to “give life, and that in abundance.” (John 10:10) I love to go out and take photographs of birds. One of the great difficulties in bird photography is the fact that the subjects rarely keep still. Life is always on the move. When the cells in a body become motionless, that body is dead. When Jesus told the paralytic to pick up his bed and walk on the Sabbath day, He was giving him life: He was asserting the dynamic of Life over the inertia of religion.

So how much are we really free from the constraints of religion that we see in the Pharisees of Jesus‘s day? Anne and I lead one of the small groups in our church (we call them “life groups.“ What do you call yours?) This Summer each life group is  leading an evening midweek meeting for the whole church. Everyone in our life group comes to the school of prophecy that we host at our house, and our vision is to encourage the other groups to pursue the presence of God more actively in their gatherings. I had planned how I felt our meeting should flow, and who should contribute what. Anne was most dismissive. “And where exactly is the Holy Spirit in control of all of this??“ she asked. And she was right. How easy it is to operate in the flesh when we think we are being spiritual. When man controls he brings religion. When the Holy Spirit controls, he brings liberty.

A living, breathing bride
Jesus comes to give life. His words are words of life. Walking is not doing the same things the same way, but doing what He says, when He says it. Life is movement. When He speaks, the life He speaks brings into us movement. We can be walking in the Spirit while we have a meal out with friends because we can be responding to His promptings between mouthfuls in the conversation, and we can be walking in the flesh every Sunday at our Church meetings because we are following our prepared format and not His dynamic instructions. When He returns, He will coming back for a living,  breathing bride that He has perfected and made beautiful in His presence, and He is longing for us to run to meet Him, however our theological lens views that moment. We may not fully understand how we will be caught up in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:17), but one thing we do understand is this: He will not be pleased with a bride who sits in her pew and recites the litany of the wedding service without even looking into His face.

Be prepared; hold on., Walking in the Spirit

The Pool of Bethesda

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Take up your bed and walk! From a painting by Karl Bloch (1834-1890)

A awake sleeper, and rise from death, and Christ will shine on you.“ (Ephesians 5:14)

“After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda,  having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had. Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” The sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your bed and walk.” (John 5: 1-8)

I woke up this morning and got out of bed, and what did I do next? I started walking. it’s the first thing we do when we get out of bed: if we are able to walk, we walk somewhere. it might not be long before we sit down again, but we have walked. When we are born again the first thing we do it to start walking. Our spiritual being that has just risen from death needs to put its feet somewhere.

The word Jesus uses for the man who was lying by the Pool of Bethesda is the same as that used in Ephesians 5:1 – its primary meaning is to rise from the sleep of death. When someone has been born again – risen from spiritual death – we encourage them to join a church. As a rule, it is “our” church that they join: they may have come along to a service as visitors, or they may have responded to a gospel outreach that our church has put on; but most of us would agree that this is secondary to their need to become part of a local expression of the body of Christ where they can be fed, nurtured and supported in their new walk with Jesus. When they get out of bed, the first spiritual steps of their new life will usually be on the “floor” of a church.

The House of Mercy.
So what is the meaning of Bethesda, where the sick were gathered in their multitudes? It’s an Aramaic word meaning “house of mercy.” The Strong’s citation also gives “flowing water.” Whether we take the meanings individually or in combination, it’s hard to see that they point anywhere other than to the church, where the water of the Holy Spirit flows in the house of God’s mercy.

The pool is by the sheep gate. We, the body of Christ, are “the sheep of His pasture.” The sheep gate was the entrance through which the sheep will lead into the temple where they would be sacrificed. When Jesus said “I am the gate (also translated door) all the sheep“ (John 10:) He was pointing to his own sacrifice, through which we have access to the temple. The Sheep Gate is a picture of the blood of Jesus, the only means of our salvation.

Sick, lame, paralysed and blind
In many of the gospel accounts, the sick and the demon-possessed are grouped together in the record of those whom Jesus healed or who came to him for healing (eg Mark 1:32, Matt 4:24, and Matt 8:16). However there is no mention of demon- possessed people here, which again suggests a connection between Bethesda and the Church. Christians can be oppressed by the devil, but I think most readers of this article would subscribe to the belief that a born-again spirit cannot be possessed. As in the Church, it would appear that no-one at the Pool of Bethesda was demon-possessed. What is true, however, is that many were sick, lame, paralysed or blind. Alongside those of us who need healing of “whatever disease they have,” there are many who are blind, lame, or paralyzed. They – or we – can’t see, can’t walk, or can’t move.

The Porches
God said to Jeremiah (and I’ve quoted it before on these pages): “If you have run with the footmen, and they have wearied you,
Then how can you contend with horses?
And if in the land of peace,
In which you trusted, they wearied you,
Then how will you do in the floodplain of the Jordan?” (Jer 12:5)

The porches were a covered colonnade, where people sheltered from the elements. We come to salvation through the Sheep Gate, and in the porches we find shelter, rest for our souls. We are sheltered from God‘s judgement on sin; we are under the shadow of His wings. From our place of shelter, or to quote Jeremiah, our “land of peace,” we can see the pool and enjoy the power of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes the waters are stirred, we see people step in, and we see their lives transformed. But it’s not our turn, not today. Nevertheless it’s great to have the pool…

Days of turmoil are on us. The waters are rising, and the hoofbeats of horses are in the wind. Those who can’t walk, can’t move and can’t see in the spiritual realm will find it difficult to survive in this season, let alone live a victorious life. But Jesus is walking by the Pool with healing in His wings, strengthening us and and encouraging us to take up our beds and walk.

Some of us have been there a long time, waiting for someone to help us in. While we are strongly exhorted in the Bible to love one another, bless one another, and pray for one another, we still need to “work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.“ (Phil 2:12) To live in the good of our salvation, we need to rely on the Lord ourselves and not depend on the ministry of others. It is the Holy Spirit himself who is the Helper, not the pastor, the prophet, or a small group leader. We must have our own encounter  with Jesus, even if we are lying down in the shelter of Bethesda and watching the waters move.

Christian Life, Discipleship and witness, Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

Identity Crisis

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Bartimaeus (Mark 10 v 46-52)

Bartimaeus knew about Jesus and knew what he would do for him, yet he also was aware that he did not deserve to be healed as he called out “Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Herein lies another key, which is knowing our frail spiritual state. As Bartimaeus showed, we really don’t deserve anything: all that we receive is by the Lord’s mercy. But because of what Jesus has done on the cross for us  we can boldly enter the throne room of our Father and ask for what we want. “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Heb 4:16)

Bartimaeus recognised Jesus and not stop calling out to Him.  Even when he was told to be silent he was persistent and called out even more, and when Jesus called him he  threw off anything that was hindering him, jumped up  and went to Him.  Then jesus asked him what he wanted.  Bartimaeus simply said: “I want to see,” not “if it’s your will,” or “It would re really nice if I could see…”

So we can see how much he wanted to see and be healed: he threw his cover off and jumped up;  he didn’t just get up on his feet and tentatively wander over in the hope that he might be noticed.  Bartimaeus had one thing on his mind, and his actions expressed it. Although this story is used for healing, I believe we can do the same with whatever we want from the Lord. The writer to the Hebrews says:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. (Hebrews 12 v1))

These weights could be things that we have held onto from the past that we have allowed to  become part of our identity. This could include illness, disability, even sin:  essentially anything that we hold onto that means that we are not fully accepting our identity In Christ. Are we willing throw off everything, even things that have become our identity, like Bartimaeus’s begging bowl?  We don’t need them: we are new creations, as 2 Corinthians 5: 17 makes absolutely clear.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation: The old has gone, the new is here!

Our identity is in Christ and not things of the past; whether it’s our wealth, our position in our job, what we have given away, our house, our reputation, even our healing.  It has all gone, and the new has come. We are hidden in Christ.

For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God .(Colossians 3: 3)

So our identity should be focused who Jesus says we are; and since this is hidden in Him, nothing can take it from us.  It will always be true.  How we process this truth is our choice: we can either throw everything off to fully take hold of it in faith; or we can put some of our eggs in different baskets, maybe because we don’t want to let go of something else that has become our identity due to fear, or maybe we are just hedging our bets because our experience hasn’t matched up to the  truth. However, the truth remains, whether we choose to believe it and act on it or not, much like the sun is always shining even if it cloudy. If our experience is not matching the truth we need to take hold of the Word fully, letting go of everything that hinders us. 

Now go back to the sub-title of this article. I left a word out. What was it?

So anything that stops us remembering and living out these truths could be classed as part of the identity of our old self; the one that has gone.   Are we willing to throw them all off and jump up, making ourselves look  foolish, shouting louder than the noise of the distractions around us? Are we prepared to stumble blindly towards Jesus, through the mocking and the catcalls, despite all the adversity, until we hear Him say to us: “What can I do for you?”  Will we speak the truth that is in our hearts and say directly and plainly, “I WANT TO SEE!”

Our Father in Heaven doesn’t mince His words. Jesus tells us to let our “yes be yes, and our no be no.” I believe we need to follow His ways in this, and tell Him what is on our hearts without wrapping it up in formulae.

John Wesley and Billy Graham.
Two more recent examples of calling out earnestly and in desperation are John Wesley and Billy Graham.  In John Wesley’s house there are two knee sized marks in the carpet next to his bed where he cried out to God for revival. When Billy Graham was a student at Wheaton College he was one of a group of students that visited the building. When the lecturer returned to the coach he counted the students and found one missing, so he went back into the building to find Billy Graham kneeling in the same knee marks as Wesley, his face flat the bed, calling out: “Do it again lord!” Do we have this passion? How much do we want to know Jesus and do what He asks of us? Will we long for and cry out for healing and revival? Do we cry out for God to touch us again? And the big question: what are we willing to sacrifice to gain these things?

If we want to learn from Bartimaeus and Billy Graham we must be willing to shut ourselves away and lock into the Lord, to become more like Jesus and to let his holy fire refine us. In so doing we in turn will be set on fire for him.  If it only takes one man to stand in the gap for the Lord to do what He did through John Wesley and Billy Graham, just imagine what one church can do. Jesus said when two or three are gathered in my name I will be there in the midst.

Bartimaeus’s old identity.
Bartimaeus’s old identity was “blind.” This was the word I missed out earlier.  He knew who Jesus was, and not caring what he sounded or looked like he approached Him boldly and in complete faith that Jesus would meet his need. His identity was Bartimaeus, not Blind Bartimaeus. And yes, Jesus healing him was an awesome miracle, but there is more written about Bartimaeus than the miracle here. I think that the fact that he was blind is secondary to the fact that he was persistent and didn’t hold onto his disability. I think Mark is making the point that it was persistence and desperation for Him which caused  our Lord to stop. He wants to see how much we really want what He has for us.  He wants us to be utterly reliant on him and desperate for Him. In His presence all of us are beggars.

Christian Life, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

Going against the Flow

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Which direction are we facing?

I was at a retail park recently: it was first thing in the morning so there were hardly any cars around, and I felt the Holy Spirit start to speak to me through the arrows that designate the one way system.

Very often we are called to move in the opposite direction to the world. Jesus tells us (Matt 7:14) that the way that leads to life is narrow, and not many find it; whereas the road to destruction is a broad one and many travel along it. Just to move along the path to Life runs contrary to nature: by believing in Jesus we set our faces squarely against the one-way system that leads to death.

Most of Jesus’s teaching turned accepted values and practices on their heads. We bless those who curse us. If we give, it will be given unto us. The value of the greatest riches in the world cannot compare with the pearl of the Kingdom of God. The path of faith in Jesus calls us to turn our backs on our previous direction of travel, and we have a word for this: repentance. By definition, a Christian is someone who has turned round and is heading towards the Kingdom of God and its promise of eternal life instead of the realm of sin and inevitable death.

The New Testament is clear that we are to obey the laws of the land that we live in, so there is a set of arrows that we are all required to follow. Romans 13: 1 makes this clear: “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.” There is another set of arrows too, a set that was literally set in stone when it was first given, and that is the set of instructions given to us by God in the Bible. These are basic principles of Christian living, and they are arrows that we follow.

But having accepted that we are now facing in the “wrong direction” according to the one-way system of sin, how often do we still accept the arrows that are painted on its roads? Who put them there? Who said, for example, that a terminal cancer diagnosis is a one-way street? God didn’t. Jesus healed all who came to Him, and multiple thousands have been healed through faith in His name since He walked the streets of Galilee. We don’t understand why it is that so often the arrow of sickness still takes our lives, and the lives of our friends and loved ones, down a shortened and unexpected cul-de-sac; but we can start by believing that God didn’t put it there, and at least we can do what James 4:7 says, which is to “resist the devil.”

Jesus said: “The thief (that is, the devil) does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10) One of David’s noted victories is recorded in 2 Sam 5:22. In this instance, the “thief” is represented by Philistine raiding parties in the Valley of Rephaim. The Rephaim were one of the tribes of giants that scared the Israelites out of the promised land when they were first delivered from slavery. Sometimes the devil will attack us just out of hatred and malice, but sometimes he sends his raiding parties into places where “giants” still cast a shadow over our lives. Before he went into battle, David “inquired of the LORD” for his battle plan. We cannot receive the abundant life that Jesus offers unless we ask Him for His direction.

“Then the Philistines went up once again and deployed themselves in the Valley of Rephaim. Therefore David inquired of the LORD, and He said, “You shall not go up; circle around behind them, and come upon them in front of the mulberry trees. And it shall be, when you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the mulberry trees, then you shall advance quickly. For then the LORD will go out before you to strike the camp of the Philistines.” (2 Sam 5: 22-24)

Sometimes the arrow of God’s direction is unusual and unexpected. To see it, we first have to resist the devil, and then we have to prepared to look. To look, we have to believe that it is there strongly enough to “ask, seek and knock” until we see it. And if we are being raided, we also need to ensure that we don’t have any valleys of giants where the thief is welcome. Current sin or past occult practice are common “Rephaim” today. Faith is “the evidence of things not seen” (Heb 11:1), whereas Proverbs 14: 12 says “There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.” So let us not accept the arrows of seeming inevitability that let the thief have his way, but let’s remember which direction we are supposed to be facing and go against the flow. If we look hard enough we might see a signpost pointing to the front of the mulberry trees.