I was once again reminded how the institutional church teaches the bride of Christ that God is far, that He is on His own time schedule and that He is always in control. So, we must just accept whatever we get. Their favourite saying is “His time is not our time” and “His ways are not our ways”.
An uncaring and absent father is being portrayed in this way.
So, we never know if He is going to heal or not … or when.
Then they’ll teach that His decision to heal depends on your holiness (or lack of) and the size of your faith (well, only if you are a Charismatic). Basically, we should not expect anything at all. And if we do, there is no telling how it may look!
I was also reminded how that we are often taught that God is always in control, no matter what. That says that any kind of healing (and by implication also sickness) is His doing as and when He pleases.
What utter blaspheming!
In all this, the finished work of Jesus is never, ever acknowledged or taught.
Even worse, our inheritance from His finished work, is deliberately discarded, corrupted, and shushed!
To me this is a corroboration with the enemy for the sole purpose of discarding the solicitation of our inherited authority. Can I state this simply? The devil wants you defeated! And the institutional church appears to be an accomplice.
Defeat comes from doubt and unbelief (see this post) of who you are in Christ. It will make you become passive and unresponsive to His Grace and the fully accomplished work of Jesus!
The result – defeated heirs of Christ
The outcome of these lies?
Doubt, and our prayers, our authority, and position in Christ in this life become completely hopeless as we stand defeated.
We do not take authority, speaking to the mountain, because we are made to believe that we do not have any authority!
Just the way the enemy wants!
And we wonder why our prayers do not work!
What is the flip side?
Back to the present situation
I am not saying that I always do it right, but by praying in agreement with the Holy Spirit and the finished work of Jesus the other day, there was no delay, no distance, and no confusion over who should be in control.
There is no doubt on whether we are Kingdom heirs, not in our minds and certainly not with the enemy!
And, praying, we stand on that.
And what did we have to do benefit in this way … nothing, except receive!
So, we prayed.
Healing manifested within just a couple of minutes of us praying and the finished work of Jesus was glorified right there and then, just confirming his love, grace, kindness, and His provision that includes healing.
Resist the devil!
The day after the night before
This morning, as I stepped out of bed, I was reminded again of a 13 year old girl that we prayed for some years ago in October of 2009.
I want to share the testimony again in this post, but before I do so I would like to remind myself and anyone reading this post that there is no such thing as distance, delay, and control issues with Jesus. (This is the doctrine of 99% of the institutional church.)
Reality check
The reality is that there is no distance because God by His Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus now lives inside of us.
There is no delay because the healing of Jesus is immediate and provided for by His finished work.
Because it is done, the gift (our inheritance) is immediately available for the taking. (Remember my post on prayer and demand?)
There is no question of who should be in control in this seemingly hopeless situation (or any other situation for that matter), and we should NEVER cop-out of our responsibility by doubting the authority that we have inherited! NEVER!
There are no control issues – Jesus said to go and heal the sick! Not to pray to Him and request Him to heal the sick.
We should therefore, never go out praying for someone doubting and expecting a delay of when maybe he or she may be healed because of a fickle unresponsive, passive and control-freak God (this is not your God!).
No!
He already accomplished all that is necessary for you to walk in total victory!
It is done!
On to the testimony
A couple of years ago, in October 2009 a brother and myself prayed for a young 13-year-old girl that had been diagnosed with cancer of the brainstem just a short while before.
Her father, Jasper, inquired from our local church at the time, about the possibility of prayer and faith healing for his daughter, Tarien.
However, the church traditions did not accommodate or allow for faith healing to be done(or any of the other gifts for that matter). So, the dominee (church leader or reverent) in control decided to consult our little prayer group that interceded before, during and after services at the time. Yes, he was aware of us …
The prayer-group was an invention of a few likeminded individuals at the time who wanted to do intercession and pray for people of the congregation. We saw the vacuum and the need. We were all new at this and being members of a denomination that disregarded the gifts of the Spirit and the finished work of Christ, we really were not sure about, what was considered weird stuff like the laying on of hands and praying for the sick. Some of us never even heard of praying in tongues, much less practice it!
The dominee wanted to know from us if anyone in the congregation (which was one of the largest of the particular denomination in the country, by-the-way) was familiar with praying for the sick and faith-healing. Imagine!
I took the phone number of Jasper, the father of the 13-year-old Tarien from the dominee and replied that I would find out and contact Jasper.
A death sentence
This young lady, at the time, was just slightly older than my eldest daughter. She was at the dawn of her adult life. Her whole future was laying before her … and she had this death sentence. And here was a powerless, helpless, and hopeless church that could not and would not even pray for her!
It turned out that there was one such person in the congregation who disregarded church doctrine and prayed for the sick. However, he was out of the country at the time.
So, we had an even bigger problem!
Would we have to pray for her ourselves?
I discussed the matter with one of my prayer-group brothers and together we agreed that we should pray about praying for this healing.
We would inquire from the Lord if we could pray for her. We would hear from Him when He would want us to pray for her and we would hear from Him how we should go about in doing so.
We were hoping that maybe the bold and fearless church-member of our congregation would miraculously return back home by the time we had finished our prayers and supplications so that we would not have to do this strange and an unfamiliar prayer!
We were clueless!
But things turned out different
The bold church-brother did not return.
Days, and probably weeks passed as we waited.
By profession, I am a researcher, an anthropologist. This requires that at times I travelling away from home. So, in the week that followed I had to travel to another province. On my way back home, I received a call from Jasper. He was becoming more desperate and he urged me to expedite our planned praying for his daughter.
It had become urgent …
Confusion is a bad decision-maker
I did not know what to do.
Were we to take matters into our own hands?
Were we even qualified to do this kind of prayer? (Seemingly, not even our dominee was.)
What about God’s plan?
What about God’s time?
What about the covering of the church (… and was there even any such thing)?
Desperation calls for desperate measures
In shock I called Jasper back and replied that I would consult with my prayer-group brother and get back to him. I was really anxious and clueless.
Immediately following my conversation with Jasper, I spoke to my wife, Charelene and again went to hear from the Lord.
Although our church did not even remotely accommodate faith healing, our prayer-group knew even back then, such existed in one form or the other and we said to ourselves that we knew that God was able to heal. But we were just not sure whether He was willing … or whether our time was His time …
We were clueless!
We were confused about God's will, either because we were never taught what it was or we were taught wrong about what it was.
Ask for confirmation of time, place and method
So, in desperation I asked God to give me some sort of a confirmation from Scripture.
I blindly opened the Bible and got two scriptures. Looking back now, I know that I acted in total religious mental state and both scriptures both wrong. Well, today I know better. Asking for scripture would not even appear on my radar.
But God has a beautiful way of working even innocent and ignorant.
On my question asking when we should pray for the little girl, the Holy Spirit focused my attention on the very first sentence of the second scripture I opened on in Isaiah 30:18. It reads: And therefore will the LORD wait, that he may be gracious unto you, and therefore will he be exalted, that he may have mercy upon you: for the LORD is a God of judgment: blessed are all they that wait for him.
Yes, the word “wait”!
However, I was reading the 1984 Afrikaans translation of the Bible at the time where the word "wait" is translated as "gretig". “Gretig” means eager or keen.
Well, good thing I did not read from my KJV – that would have been hope deferred even more!
From this verse I took it that we needed to respond straight away!
I cannot remember how I twisted the two scriptures to come up with answers on where and how … but somehow, I knew that we had to spring into action and that our prayer had to take place right that very evening at Jasper and Tarien’s house …
Did I mention that we were clueless?
Time to spring into action!
I phoned my prayer-brother and told him that I had an answer.
We drove to Jasper’s house in one of the neighbouring suburbs. I remember before entering their premises we nervously stopped at the side of the road to pray again, just to make sure.
We were met at the door by Jasper. It was a strange and unfamiliar situation as we sat down with Jasper, his wife and Tarien.
Strange because as we sat down in their living room the big clock on the wall announced that it was 08:00. I remember, because those were eight load gongs.
I also remember we shared scripture. And I remember sharing a strange story that went with that. Still, I don’t know the exact scripture or our twisted interpretation to validate my strange story. I know now that we knew next to nothing about the heart of God and His beautiful Grace when it came to healing.
But we prayed.
Equally, I do not know what we prayed or how we prayed. I don’t even remember if we laid on hands.
I do clearly remember, however, my own insecurity over a possible physical manifestation of my hands that I used to get back then the moment I started praying. In those days I experienced some visible shivering of my hands when I became aware of the Holy Spirit in me as I prayed. I was worried just how the family might react to this. But, miraculously no shivers happened. Instead, the there was a certain supernatural contentment that filled our hearts as we prayed.
No visible manifestations, no distraction no weirdness about the whole situation.
It may as well have been a regular incident!
And the healing was there.
Even though we could not see it yet.
And then it ended
The very minute our prayers stopped, the clock on the wall announced that it was 08:30 pm in a load gong sound again.
Looking back now, I am convinced that we did everything contrary to the way I would have done it today. But we were willing … and God was eager, and the family received healing and healing did manifest.
And later I learned that all that manifested was already provided for in one complete package of salvation - the finished work of Ya'shua.
Time passed by
Almost one year later in June of 2010, Jasper spoke to me again on the phone. He confirmed that since the day we prayed for Tarien, she showed no further symptoms of what she previously had. He mentioned that she was about to go for another check-up within that week, and he wanted us to remember her in our prayers again.
And so, we did.
And even those prayers I do not remember.
And more time passed
Six years passed.
In those six years life went on for my family and I. We left the church we attended when we prayed for Tarien. We started experiencing an intense closeness to Yah’shua, and we became aware that the teachings of the Holy Spirit Himself were what we needed most. We learned about His unequivocal Grace and love towards all man-kind.
We had moved church several times since my last conversation with Jasper and would soon come to a real awakening of the ekklēsia. (More on that in my post on ekklēsia.)
In the process contact was lost between Jasper and myself.
On Wednesday, July 8, 2015, I felt a sudden urge to get hold of Japer's number again and phone him.
Jasper was excited to hear from me since he likewise had lost my mobile phone number.
And the testimony is one I will never forget.
Tarien, it turns out, was a fine young lady. She was studying and in her second year as a varsity student. It was going extremely well with her.
Taking me back to the time we first prayed for Tarien, Jasper shared with me that after that first prayer, she went for a single chemotherapy session in late October of 2009.
In the coming days after that chemo session the family decided to stop the treatment altogether. The decision was made because it was evident that she no longer had any of the symptoms.
And Tarien never had any symptoms since.
Jasper explained that the only thing that bothered Tarien now was a slight iron deficiency that caused her to become tired at times.
Jasper described his daughter as a lovely, determined young lady with a happy outlook towards life and doing extremely well!
Years later, what do I think?
There is an old Afrikaans saying that says God slaan ‘n reguit hou met ‘n krom stok – God strikes a perfect shot with a crooked club. And it is true. But I have also come to know that we are not the crooked clubs and broken vessels that the institutional church makes us believe we are.
In Christ we are made new, and in this world, we are as He is. (1 John 4:17)
We are not hopeless, powerless creatures left to our own devices.
We have the living Spirit of the resurrected Jesus living inside of us, guiding us, moving us, embracing us, and having communion with us every hour of every day.
We are once and for all washed by the blood of the Lamb and righteous co-heirs in the kingdom of God!
My thoughts, looking back at our first prayer for healing?
- Glory to Jesus who gave His Body for our healing on the cross so that we may receive abundant life from Him. Thus, He is ALWAYS able and willing and has done a beautiful complete work already – behold (receive) the finished work of the cross!
- Oh, and I declare, right now, that Tarien is healed even from that deficiency and any other ailments the enemy tries to bring to her.
- Yes, the Gift and calling of God are without repentance. (Rom 11:29)
What do we have to do?
Nothing!
Just receive and rest in His unconditional love and provision.
How?
Open your hands and heart and take.
Declare it.
Amen!
And HalleluYAH!
No comments:
Post a Comment