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I am the Lord who heals youA Celebration of Wholeness and Healing Salisbury Cathedral, 3rd March 2012 Text of the address by Alison Morgan Introduction Good morning. It is wonderful to be here together in this great cathedral, worshipping a great God and knowing that we walk in the footsteps of those who have gone before us. And I want to start if I may by telling you about something which happened with a story, for our faith is a personal faith, and our experience of God starts with our own lives. One day in 1996 my husband didn’t come home after taking our son to school. Another parent came to tell me there’d been an accident. Roger had been hit by a lorry. He was taken to Leicester Royal Infirmary. I watched as they examined him. He had a snapped collarbone, ribs broken in 8 places with a whole section floating free, a punctured lung, a ruptured spleen and internal bleeding. The left side of his pelvis was in smithereens and the tendons in his leg had snapped. They rushed him to theatre, and then to intensive care. The consultant came to see me. I’m sorry, he said, but he’s critical. As he said the words, the world changed shape. It was as if the hospital with its trolleys and corridors and scurrying doctors was only half real, and I was looking down on it from a great height. I suddenly realised that reality is not primarily physical but spiritual it was like being catapulted into a different dimension. And I realised that it was in the spiritual realm that Roger would live or die. The church mounted a 24 hour prayer rota, and I went on a steep learning curve. That evening a church member called Steve rang. He’d been down to the hospital with a friend, and they’d walked round it praying. They didn’t know what the situation was, but Steve had had a picture of a punctured football being reinflated. The next day the anaesthetist said ‘Funny, this, but we’ve taken your husband off the ventilator. According to his x-rays he should be unable to breathe without it text book case, you could set it as an exam question. But his lungs have reinflated.’ Another mother rang me. She said God had directed her to Isaiah chapter 38, and the story of Hezekiah. Hezekiah, who falls ill, laments that his life is at an end, and that all his bones have been broken as if by a lionI don’t think they had lorries then! Hezekiah prays for recovery, and God promises he will live a normal life span. Meanwhile Roger was on an oxygen mask, unable to sleep, having hallucinations. We prayed God would use the hallucinations. The next night he had a vision from Ezekiel 37, where Ezekiel sees the dry bones of the dead pulling themselves out from the earth and being reclothed. Roger woke disappointed; but a group had been praying in South Africa, and wrote to say they had seen a picture of Lazarus staggering out of the tomb. A week later they operated on his smashed hip. We met to pray. One person had a picture of Roger on a bed, two small figures bending over him working on the hip area and one, enormous figure standing at the head end with his hands outstretched. The surgeon rang me. ‘I worked with my colleague. It went amazingly well, took us 4 hours instead of the 6 we’d expected’. A few days later, a little boy called Oliver sent Roger a card hed made himself. On it was a man in a bed, two small ones leaning over his hip area, one big angel standing at the head. After the operation they put him back on the ventilator. I visited daily, always taking someone with me, always praying. And each time we prayed, a nurse came and turned the ventilator down. I saw this happen 6 times in succession, from 69% oxygen to 60 to 55 to 50 to 45 to 40. Well, that could have been a coincidence. But when he came round I said did he know I came. No. Well I did, and we prayed each time. How many times, he asked. I don’t know, I’ll work it out, I said. Then he held up his fingers (he still couldn’t speak). 6. And 6 it was. How did he know that, when he was unconscious and hadn’t even known I was there? I didn’t ask at the time, and by the time I did he had no memory of the conversation.

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“I am the Lord who heals you” A Celebration of Wholeness and Healing

Salisbury Cathedral, 3rd March 2012

Text of the address by Alison Morgan

Introduction

Good morning. It is wonderful to be here together in this great cathedral, worshipping a great God and knowing that we walk in the footsteps of those who have gone before us. And I want to start if I may by telling you about something which happened with a story, for our faith is a personal faith, and our experience of God starts with our own lives.

One day in 1996 my husband didn’t come home after taking our son to school. Another parent came to tell me there’d been an accident. Roger had been hit by a lorry. He was taken to Leicester Royal Infirmary. I watched as they examined him. He had a snapped collarbone, ribs broken in 8 places with a whole section floating free, a punctured lung, a ruptured spleen and internal bleeding. The left side of his pelvis was in smithereens and the tendons in his leg had snapped. They rushed him to theatre, and then to intensive care. The consultant came to see me. I’m sorry, he said, but he’s critical.

As he said the words, the world changed shape. It was as if the hospital with its trolleys and corridors and scurrying doctors was only half real, and I was looking down on it from a great height. I suddenly realised that reality is not primarily physical but spiritual – it was like being catapulted into a different dimension. And I realised that it was in the spiritual realm that Roger would live or die.

The church mounted a 24 hour prayer rota, and I went on a steep learning curve. That evening a church member called Steve rang. He’d been down to the hospital with a friend, and they’d walked round it praying. They didn’t know what the situation was, but Steve had had a picture of a punctured football being reinflated. The next day the anaesthetist said ‘Funny, this, but we’ve taken your husband off the ventilator. According to his x-rays he should be unable to breathe without it – text book case, you could set it as an exam question. But his lungs have reinflated.’

Another mother rang me. She said God had directed her to Isaiah chapter 38, and the story of Hezekiah. Hezekiah, who falls ill, laments that his life is at an end, and that all his bones have been broken ‘as if by a lion’ – I don’t think they had lorries then! Hezekiah prays for recovery, and God promises he will live a normal life span. Meanwhile Roger was on an oxygen mask, unable to sleep, having hallucinations. We prayed God would use the hallucinations. The next night he had a vision from Ezekiel 37, where Ezekiel sees the dry bones of the dead pulling themselves out from the earth and being reclothed. Roger woke disappointed; but a group had been praying in South Africa, and wrote to say they had seen a picture of Lazarus staggering out of the tomb.

A week later they operated on his smashed hip. We met to pray. One person had a picture of Roger on a bed, two small figures bending over him working on the hip area – and one, enormous figure standing at the head end with his hands outstretched. The surgeon rang me. ‘I worked with my colleague. It went amazingly well, took us 4 hours instead of the 6 we’d expected’. A few days later, a little boy called Oliver sent Roger a card he’d made himself. On it was a man in a bed, two small ones leaning over his hip area, one big angel standing at the head.

After the operation they put him back on the ventilator. I visited daily, always taking someone with me, always praying. And each time we prayed, a nurse came and turned the ventilator down. I saw this happen 6 times in succession, from 69% oxygen to 60 to 55 to 50 to 45 to 40. Well, that could have been a coincidence. But when he came round I said did he know I came. No. Well I did, and we prayed each time. How many times, he asked. I don’t know, I’ll work it out, I said. Then he held up his fingers (he still couldn’t speak). 6. And 6 it was. How did he know that, when he was unconscious and hadn’t even known I was there? I didn’t ask at the time, and by the time I did he had no memory of the conversation.

Well, it wasn’t all plain sailing. He got MRSA in his lungs, and for the second time they said they thought he would die. But actually he did what the doctors said he’d never do – he not only walked out of the hospital, but he can run, jog and climb mountains. All he’s left with is a slight limp. That wasn’t altogether unexpected – one of his visitors, a close friend he’d known for years, had sat in his room in the high dependency unit, looked at him and laughed. You are like Jacob, he’d said. Jacob had wrestled with God; and carried a limp for the rest of his days.

Well, it wasn’t a miracle but it was a healing, and I tell you the story partly because it changed my life, and partly because it carries so many of the elements we experience in the ministry of healing, which is what I want to talk about tonight. Healing is a complex, mysterious and powerful business. Nobel prize winning scientist Alexis Carrell once said that prayer is the most powerful form of energy that we can generate, and I think that’s a good place to start.

The theology of healing

“I am the Lord who heals you”

Now I’ve told you a story of healing. I could have told you many others, less personal but even more remarkable. But I am aware that I could also have told many stories of when people were prayed for and did not apparently receive healing. So I’d like to start by taking an overview. I think if we want to understand healing we need to start not with the healing itself but with God. What kind of a God is he? Who is it we are asking to heal us? This was something the people of God needed to get their minds round as soon as they began to understand that they were indeed the people of God.

So let’s start by taking ourselves back 4000 years to Moses, appointed by God to lead his people out of slavery in Egypt. Released by Pharaoh from their forced labour, they set off with high hopes of a new life of freedom and prosperity, only to find themselves starving in the desert. They complain; what kind of a God is this? They certainly believed in him – he’d just parted the Red Sea before their very eyes. But did he actually care about them; did he know what it felt like to be stranded without food or water in a desert? God’s response was, for the first time, to make them ‘a statute and an ordinance’. Obey me and I will look after you, he said. You want to know who I am? “I am the Lord who heals you.” And so we have God’s first clear self definition. He is a God who heals. It’s in the book of Exodus, chapter 15 verse 26.

What did God mean, exactly? Well, in Hebrew the word healing doesn’t just mean physical healing, the kind of healing Roger experienced. The Hebrew word heal is related to the word whole. So when God says ‘I am the God who heals’, he isn’t just saying ‘I will sometimes perform amazing works of physical healing.’ To be healed is to be made whole, rescued, cared for; to be saved. In identifying himself as a God who heals, God is offering something far bigger than emergency medical treatment. He is saying that by his very nature he is the Lord who heals. Healing isn’t what God does. It’s who he is.

“Today these words have been fulfilled in your hearing”

So it comes as no surprise to find that in the New Testament healing turns out to be a key aspect of the ministry of Jesus – 18 of the 24 chapters of Luke include stories of healing. But it seems that for Jesus too, healing is not just something he does. The name Jesus, or Yeshua in Hebrew, also has a double meaning – it means both to heal and to save. To be saved is to be healed; to be healed is to be saved. So like his Father, Jesus announces his very identity as being to do with healing – he comes, he says one day in Nazareth, and there it is on the screen, to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom to the oppressed. The very next sabbath he goes to Capernaum, delivers a man from an unclean spirit, heals Simon’s mother in law from a fever, and lays hands on all those who were sick with various kinds of diseases and cures them. He summarises the day’s work as having proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of God. So healing is not an end in itself; healing is a sign of the kingdom. It points to something far bigger, something permanent and eternal.

So it seems that our faith does not just encourage us to look for healing; it is about healing. The God in whom we have faith is a God who heals.

Healing in history

If healing really is part of the gospel, then we should expect to find that it has been a continuous mark of Christian ministry – which indeed we do. Jesus made it quite clear to his disciples that this was not just what he was doing but what they also were supposed to do: “Proclaim the good news: the kingdom of heaven has come near. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. Freely you have received, freely give” (Matthew 10.8). To be a Christian is to do these things.

So aafter his death they continue to do it – there are 11 accounts of healing miracles in the book of Acts, plus 6 generic accounts of signs and wonders performed through the apostles. So: Here are the sick being healed when Peter’s shadow falls on them, from Acts 5. Here is Paul restoring Eutychus to life after he falls to his death from a window, from Acts 20. And it didn’t stop there; the early Christians continued to proclaim the good news, heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and cast out demons. People have in fact experienced healing in every century from then to now. In the fourth century Augustine speaks of seventy attested miracles; in the seventh, historian Bede writes of the ministry of healing and deliverance offered by the Celtic missionaries. Martin Luther in the 15th century, John Welch in the 16th, Richard Baxter in the 17th, John Wesley in the 18th and the Curé d’Ars in the 19th century all had recognised ministries of healing. We have written accounts of many of these healings, and I’d like to read one of my favourites to you. It comes from the ministry of Martin of Tours in the 4th century, and was written by his disciple and contemporary Sulpicius Severus: A certain girl at Treves was completely prostrated by a terrible paralysis.. Her afflicted relatives were standing by expecting her death, when it was announced that Martin had come to the city. When the father of the girl heard this, he ran to make a request on behalf of his all but lifeless child… Uttering a cry of grief, he embraced the saint’s knees and said, ’My daughter is dying of a dreadful disease; and what is worse than death itself, she is now alive only in the spirit, her flesh being already dead before the time..I beg you, please go to her and give her your blessing; for I believe that through you she will be healed’. Martin shrank back saying that that the old man was mistaken in the judgment he had formed. But at last he went down to the home of the girl. An immense crowd was waiting at the doors to see what he would do. First he cast himself down on the ground and prayed. Then he asked for some oil. After he had received and blessed it he poured the powerful sacred liquid into the mouth of the girl, and immediately her voice returned to her. Then gradually, through contact with him her limbs began, one by one, to recover life till at last, in the presence of the people, she arose with firm steps.

1

The centuries passed, but prayer for healing continued. Here are some illustrations from the Middle Ages:

This is the Northumbrian saint Cuthbert, in the 7th

century, praying for the healing of a child [C13th MS of Bede’s Life of Cuthbert].

This is St Guthlac, in the 8th

century, expelling a demon from a madman in Lincolnshire [C13th MS].

This is St Dominic, in the 13th

century, praying for the restoration of a man who has broken his neck falling from his horse [C14th MS].

1 Sulpicius Severus, Life of St Martin, ch 26, A Select Library of Nicene and post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church,

vol 11, New York 1894. Translation amended and abbreviated.

Healing today So, healing is part of our experience and our identity. And yet for a long time now it has not been a central part of our ministry. We have been living for 300 years in a scientific world which has shown little interest in the miraculous. But over the last generation or so the atmosphere has been changing. Today, people are increasingly interested in the spiritual dimension of life, and increasingly open to exploring it. A BBC poll in 2004 found that 75% of people say they have tried prayer, and 28% say they pray regularly – prayer in fact tops the list of all the things people try when in need of help. But they try other things too. The NHS online Directory lists 32 alternative healing therapies including reiki, crystal therapy, flower therapy, iridology, kinesiology and shiatsu. I live near Glastonbury, which offers a whole host of complementary healing services – you can sign up for Medicine Wheel teachings with a Native American leader from the Bear Clan, Theta healing and Angel healing, Tibetan pulsing for emotional transformation, Sound healing, and Shamanic workshops including tantric healing massage, soul readings, emotional block release, psychic rune readings, cord removal, and soul retrieval. The problem is, this kind of experimentation may do more harm than good. Many of us have prayed with people who have been involved in these things and suffered emotional and spiritual distress as a result. Even their own practitioners recognise the dangers – they run additional workshops in Glastonbury to help people deal with what they describe as the ‘various bouts of painful emotional, physical and spiritual stress’ which they may suffer, ‘a phenomenon which is sometimes called their ‘Glastonbury Experience’. And yet if we as the Church of Christ are not offering people what Jesus offered them, a relationship with the God who heals, then people will continue to search in these dangerous places. A few years ago now the Church of England published a report entitled A Time to Heal, which sums it all up. Since then many churches have begun to pray for the sick, the hurting and the oppressed. We have been saved by a God who heals, and we have been commissioned to tell people so.

The ministry of healing

So, God defined himself as the Lord who heals. Jesus said he came to save and to heal. And he told his disciples that they too were to do that, and teach others to do it too. What does that mean in practice? Paul talks about three kinds of healing, and they offer as good a way as any of thinking about healing today: May the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly: and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ - 1 Thessalonians 5.23 So taking these in reverse order, we can talk about healing of the body or physical healing. And we can talk about inner or emotional healing, the kind of healing which happens when we are released from stuff which harms our soul or psyche. And we can talk about spiritual healing, the kind of healing which happens as we are cleansed from the sins and ties which separate us from God. Later on this morning there will be an opportunity to receive prayer for healing. But before that, and immediately after this talk, you will be invited to participate in a workshop which will explore one of the three types of healing Paul describes. We hope you will choose whichever one seems most appropriate for you, and to help you do that I’d like to look a bit more deeply at the kind of thing that happens when we come into contact with the God who heals. 1. Physical healing – ‘healing’ Firstly, healing of the body. Physical healing occurs in both the Old and the New Testaments, where it is one of the ways in which people most commonly encounter Jesus. Jesus makes people better; he offers physical healing as a sign of the deeper healing which is on offer to us as we enter the kingdom of God. It seems

sensible therefore that we should expect him to wish to do that today too, for we know that God is the same today, yesterday and forever. At the same time we have to recognise that we are not Jesus, and healing is always something of a mystery. Should we pray for physical healing? The great minister of healing John Wimber offered this advice: ‘When we didn’t pray for healing, no one got healed. When we did pray for healing, some got healed and some didn’t get healed. So we think it’s best to pray.’ That seems good to me; and of course we also need to recognise that sooner or later we must all die. Lazarus is not with us today.

I told you earlier about my husband. I like to use personal examples – we can all quote well known and second hand stories of remarkable healings, but somehow I think if God really does heal today, we all ought to be able to tell ordinary stories about that from our own experience. So this is Nicky, a friend of my daughter Katy – Nicky is the one on the left. Nicky was not a Christian. When she was 13 she was found to have a highly unusual cancerous lump, a synovial sarcoma, on her knee. Katy had already tried to share her faith with Nicky, and Nicky had been very negative about it, but in desperation she prayed one day that if God would heal her, she would consider becoming a Christian. Nicky’s treatment was successful, and she duly made a commitment to Christ. A few months later Nicky found an identical lump, this time on her wrist. Her GP was alarmed and referred her immediately for an emergency MRI scan. We offered to pray, and she said she’d welcome that. So we prayed for her as a family, laying hands on her and asking God to remove the lump through the healing power of his Holy Spirit. Nicky was filled with a strangely peaceful tingling sensation, and within two days the lump had disappeared. The MRI scan revealed no abnormality in her wrist and no further trace of cancer. Nicky is now 18, a strong Christian and part of the youth leadership team in her local church. Nicky encountered the Lord who heals, and it changed her life. It’s good I think to remind ourselves that we can pray for those who do not yet know God - for healing is not meant to be some kind of in-house perk for Christians. Jesus healed mostly not the religious but the lost. Physical healing is not a destination but a signpost; it points to what is to come. 2. Inner healing – ‘wholeness’ Secondly, Paul talks about the Healing of the soul. The Greek word is psyche, from which we get ‘psychological’; this kind of healing is often referred to as inner healing – it’s the healing of the mind and the emotions. Wholeness is a good word for it too. Different people talk about it in different ways, but I like to start with Ephesians 3: For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

For me, inner healing is about drawing closer to God, about understanding the depths of his love for me and learning to respond to it. It has been around for a long time. If we look at the ministry of Jesus, we see him meeting with people not just physically but also emotionally. He offers acceptance to the woman taken in adultery. He offers forgiveness to the paralysed man let down through the roof. He challenges the rich young ruler’s dependence on his wealth and status. He rebukes the man at the pool of Bethesda for his passivity. And we watch him constantly helping Peter to become less impetuous, to accept his own weaknesses and to think of himself not as an uneducated Galilean fisherman but a fisher of men, a rock on which great things will be built. All are given the opportunity to change and grow. Different traditions within the church continue this ministry in different ways. For some, it is part of what happens in the sacrament of reconciliation, as we bring our sins to Christ and receive healing and forgiveness. For others, it takes place in the context of spiritual direction. For others, through an informal meeting between a wounded person and two prayerful others who will walk alongside them, encouraging and helping them to come into the presence of God. It can be quite simple; a moment of forgiveness, of letting go. Or it can be quite complex.

I once prayed over a period of 4 years with a young woman who had been terribly abused and neglected as a child. Raped twice, she’d become involved with violent men and got into drugs. She was a single mother, and she was in debt. Desperate, she came to church one Christmas Eve, came forward for communion and gave her life to Christ. She had a massive amount of internal pain, but she was utterly determined to change. So we scheduled a series of prayer ministry appointments. It was an amazing journey. We began with the abuse. God took us into all the rooms of the house in turn. He came with us into the cupboard where she used to hide, showing her he had been with her. We dealt with the nightmares and the shame. We prayed for release from the consequences of the occult activities she and her family had been involved in. We looked at her identity and self esteem. We asked for guidance. We prayed over the family tree. We sought to give and receive forgiveness. We never prayed through the same issue twice; each time she would take what God had given her, go home with it, and receive it into the depths of her being. Today she is free from anger, secure in her identity, and is happily married with 4 children. She is also an ordained Anglican minister running a growing church plant in a deprived inner city area. ‘Can I share your story,’ I asked? ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And tell them it lasts’. That’s inner healing.

Inner healing is about drawing closer to God, about understanding the depths of his love and learning to respond to it. It’s life-changing, and in contrast to physical healing, it lasts for ever.

3. Spiritual Healing – ‘salvation’ Finally, Paul talks about Healing of the spirit. The New Testament word sozo, meaning to heal or make whole, also means to save. So if for physical healing we simply talk about healing, and for inner healing we talk about wholeness, for spiritual healing it is appropriate to talk about salvation. And that helps us to understand it.

We experience spiritual healing in various ways – we are set free from sin, we are reconciled to God, we are delivered from evil. The first and most obvious thing we need to be healed from is sin, that part of our alienation from God which is our own direct responsibility. Usually this is a simple process, a matter of changing direction, making a decision, a matter of repentance and belief, to use the biblical phrase. But there may be a darker element to spiritual healing too, or more precisely there may be spiritual obstacles which prevent a person from responding fully to Jesus. Over the years I have found that small but significant number of people come for prayer for spiritual issues which are beyond their own control – nightmares, strange happenings, hallucinations, patterns of suicide or early death in their families, inability to pray or to overcome certain temptations. In the early Church every baptism service included exorcism, and an element of that remains even today. In baptism we say, God calls us out of darkness into his marvellous light. To follow Christ means dying to sin and rising to new life with him. And we ask these questions:

Do you reject the devil and all rebellion against God?

Do you renounce the deceit and corruption of evil?

Do you repent of the sins that separate us from God and neighbour?

And then:

Do you turn to Christ as Saviour?

Do you submit to Christ as Lord?

Do you come to Christ, the way, the truth and the life?

Today we live in a world in which people are becoming increasingly aware of the demonic; 25% in this country now say they have directly experienced the presence of evil. This awareness of evil fits with the teaching of the Bible. Jesus himself was tempted by Satan. He resisted; but many do not. Time and again he and his followers were called upon to deliver people from evil spirits. Peter said that our adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for people to devour. Many who have experimented with ouija or other occult practices testify to being frightened by their experiences. I have often prayed with people suffering from nightmares, irrational fears, and recurring temptations whose symptoms have completely disappeared

after prayer. Most problems of this kind can be dealt with very simply, but if the problems persist or the person behaves in any unusual or alarming way, we should always seek the help of those who are experienced and authorised to pray in this kind of way. 4. Healing of the land

There is one final dimension of healing which perhaps we should touch on briefly, and this is healing of land. In Genesis we are made responsible for all of creation. But as part of the alienation between us and God which is pictured in the story of the Fall, there is an alienation between us and the land on which we live. The earth groans in pain as with us it waits for freedom which is to come, Paul says to the Romans.

Many years ago God gave this promise:

If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land – 1 Chronicles 7.14.

What does that mean? Well, it means obvious things – things like not grubbing up rainforests, not building on floodplains and not wrecking the earth’s atmosphere. But it seems that just as God will sometimes bring healing to our bodies, so too he will bring healing to our environment, as a sign of what is to come. We can pray for rain, as I once did as part of a team working in Kenya, in a region which had suffered months of drought. The next morning we received a shower of rain along with a prophecy of God’s blessing; within another 24 hours the land had gone from brown to green. And we can free buildings from ghosts, cold patches, and frightening atmospheres – things commonly caused by human sin, occult activity or tragic events. And perhaps just occasionally it will be more remarkable and direct; we once spent an evening in prayer and repentance for the pride and conflict which had recurred throughout the history of our church, only to find the following week that the dry rot which was undermining the foundations had disappeared, to the astonishment of the expert who was investigating it. Healing, it’s been said, is as wide as creation itself.2

How does it work?

So this where we are up to.

There is an increasing need for prayer for healing

It was a key part of the ministry of Jesus

It has been exercised by the church throughout its history

It continues today

So - how does it work? Who can do it? How do we prepare ourselves?

Jesus’ own ministry began after the Spirit descended on him at his baptism (Luke 3). He was driven out into wilderness for a time of testing then returned ‘filled with the power of the Spirit’ to make the announcement we’ve already looked at:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour. (Luke 4.18-19)

The role of the Holy Spirit is key to the ministry of healing. If you feel nervous about offering to pray for or ask for healing, well, so do I; and the reason is that we know that we ourselves have no power whatsoever to bring about any kind of healing at all.

Jesus knew this. When he left his disciples, this is what he said: Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you. When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit (John 20.21-23).

2 Morris Maddocks

The role of the Holy Spirit is key to the ministry of healing. It’s not about us, it’s about God. Our role is simply to help one another come before him in penitence and in faith, and to ask that he who heals should bring healing to us.

Conclusion So let me sum up. Healing is not about what God can be persuaded to do, but more fundamentally about who he is; he is a God who heals. Jesus said that he had come to bring wholeness, healing and salvation; and that these things were given as signs of the kingdom. And in these truths I think we find the answer to many of our questions about the healing ministry.

In eternity our healing will be complete; in heaven there will be no more mourning or crying or pain, as we read in the Book of Revelation. For now, we live in a broken world, and we suffer the attention of a spiritual enemy who wishes to undermine our relationship with the God who heals.

It is my experience nonetheless that all those who wish to experience ‘salvation’ healing, healing of the spirit, do in fact do so – if you wish to be forgiven for your sins, freed from the oppression of your enemy or received for the first time as a child of God, you may do so, and if you’ve not done it before you are most welcome to do it today.

It is also my experience that the majority of those who seek ‘wholeness’ healing, healing of the soul, also receive it – sometimes instantly, more often gradually as part of an ongoing journey in which we are transformed gradually into the likeness of Christ. So if you wish to ask God to touch your heart and mind today, to bring healing to your memories and help you enter more and more fully into the love that God has for you, that too is a work you may ask God to begin in you today; and he will.

And finally it is my experience that those who seek physical healing receive it, often but not always. More often perhaps when it comes to a person as their first sign of the reality of God, and more often in places where people are not too infected by a materialistic world view. One day we will all receive it. In the meantime we are encouraged to present our requests to God and to trust in his loving care and provision for us from now into eternity.

Should we pray for healing of ourselves, body mind and spirit, and our lands? We can scarcely do otherwise. “I am the Lord who heals you”.

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This talk was given in Salisbury Cathedral on 3rd March 2012, as part of a celebration of wholeness and healing organised by the Diocesan Wholeness and Healing Group. The day was attended by some 300 people, and culminated in a eucharist presided over by Bishop Nicholas. The speakers were Alison Morgan and Martin Cavender. For more information about the healing ministry in the Diocese of Salisbury please visit the Diocesan website or visit Shalom in Sarum.

Revd Dr Alison Morgan works for ReSource, a charity commissioned by Archbishop Rowan Williams in 2004 and based in Somerset. Our patron is Archbishop John Sentamu. We work all over the country, across denominations and traditions, offering resources, support and training on a number of key areas of ministry today, including the healing ministry.

ReSource publishes In His Name, a training course for healing prayer teams, by Alison Morgan and John Woolmer, and we are able to offer support and training in the use of the course. For more information about what we do, and to browse our resources, do visit www.resource-arm.net or contact us at [email protected]. Alison’s own website is www.alisonmorgan.co.uk.

©ReSource 2012