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Commentary on "Faith and Healing"

RICHARD PEIFER

 

Day 6: Thursday, May 6, 2010

 

Overview

Perhaps it takes more faith to accept death and not be healed than it does to be healed.” (SDA Teacher’s Quarterly, P. 73)

 

Observations

Before I respond to this statement I want to reiterate my thanks that this lesson openly and honestly takes on the issue of divine healing. In many churches today a sure way to cause people to shudder in horror is to suggest that God can and does heal people.

There is a particularly good passage on Page 73 of the Teacher’s Quarterly: “Some ministers say that it demonstrates a lack of faith to pray ‘Thy will be done’ when there are promises in Scripture for healing. What do you think? Did Lazarus die because his sisters did not pray or because they lacked faith? Discuss. What greater purpose did Jesus have in mind that they could not see at the time? In the bigger picture, in what way is it possible that a healing could lead to negative consequences in the future?”

This explains the other side of the miracle coin very well. On the one side are those who fear anything and everything to do with the miraculous. On the other side are the name-it-and-claim-it folks.

Both extremes suffer from the same root problem. The first group wants to initiate their will to God, but fears that He will be miffed at them, that they are not “right” with Him, that the targeted recipient is not “right” with Him, and a thousand other performance-oriented, guilt-inducing reasons. The second group wants to initiate their will to God, and they do so impudently. They make demands of God that show their only concern is in controlling Him as one would control a wild animal. The problem is initiation – either the fear of it failing, or the pride of assuming that God responds to us.

This is why I was so shocked at the statement quoted above. Given the even-handed and Biblical way miraculous healing is discussed, why would the author(s) write that statement?

The only thing I can guess comes back to the nature of faith as I’ve written about in the previous two commentaries. To the authors, it takes more faith to die than to live. To me, it takes more faith to live than to die. To die means that I get to see Jesus face-to-face, to know Him even as I am known. There is nothing better than that!

Put another way, until a person is ready to die that person is not ready to live. A person cannot be ready to die until that person knows, absolutely and unequivocally, that he or she is a completely forgiven person and has eternal life.

It is this assurance that makes it possible to deal with the process of dying. That’s what we really fear. Death itself isn’t so bad for believers. It’s the way in which we die, the time it takes to die, or the pain involved in dying that we fear. Therefore, it takes faith – the moment by moment response to God in us – to live.

This is true for both the sick person and his or her friends and family. Of course we want God to heal. Sometimes He does; sometimes He doesn’t. In every case, it is His call, His initiative. When we live by faith we discover that His grace is sufficient, we trust that because He knows the end from the beginning we can joyously ask that His will be done.

Now we’ve come full circle. Remember the father I mentioned in Saturday’s lesson. He had lost sight of his and his daughter’s eternal life. He had gotten wrapped up in his grief, which is completely understandable. We were able to remind him of his assurance, to encourage him that his daughter was absent from the body and present with the Lord. We were able to encourage him that he would see Jesus not one second later than His daughter (such is the amazing difference between time and eternity). Will he continue to grieve? Yes. Will he live through it? Yes. Will his faith be strengthened as a result? Yes, if he continues to respond to God instead of initiating to Him.

This, too, is the meaning of true healing. If the person healed and/or the person through whom God worked to heal respond with humble thanks for the miracle, then God is glorified and others impacted by the event may be spurred on to a relationship with the living Christ. Any response that smacks of pride is the spawn of Satan.

 

Summary

  1. Miracles are real! God, being God, can do anything He chooses at any time He chooses. We shouldn’t be so surprised when He does.
  2. A proper understanding of faith is key to dealing with the question of divine healing.

 

GO TO DAY 7

 

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