|
late July to early September 2009
from our Curate . . .
Prayer and Healing Ministry
One of the most common requests I receive as a Christian minister is to pray for people who are ill or dying. It is an enormous privilege and a very humbling experience to be invited to support and care for people when they are at their most vulnerable.
I believe this ministry is at the heart of our vocation as Christians and as Church. Indeed, as a church, we regularly incorporate the ministry of laying on of hands for healing and wholeness within our service on Sunday mornings and I was especially thankful to be able to restart our monthly healing service on the fourth Sunday evening of each month; the first service in June was a lovely evening of quiet devotion.
Vulnerability and good health; brokenness and wholeness are certainly contradictory aspects of the human journey that we all share at different stages of our lives. Our personal encounters with illness and dying naturally cause us to experience times of great worry and anxiety in the same way that our experiences of healing and wholeness can bring great joy and celebration. In all these deeply challenging moments in our lives and the lives of others, we are often led to question God; his purposes and his involvement in our lives. Where was God in all of this? Why does he allow people to suffer? Will God answer our prayers? Does God care?
These are all hugely challenging questions; questions that have been asked by people for generations. Indeed, in the Book of Psalms, we often find the authors calling to God for healing and to relieve them from pain and suffering:
“Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am Psalm 25: 16-18
As a Christian minister, I too, ask the same questions. I am very aware of how often we pray for healing for people over many years. Often these prayers are answered in the most wonderful ways but often they are not. People get ill and die and we struggle to come to terms with the sadness and loss. It causes us to wonder if our prayers have failed; did we lack sufficient faith for our prayers to work? Did we fail to pray the right thing or did God just ignore us?
I was therefore recently heartened when I heard of a quotation from John Wimber, one of the founders of the Vineyard movement, a church that has been greatly blessed by many wonderful charismatic healings of the Holy Spirit. When asked of his experience of miraculous healings, he responded that for every amazing healing that he had known, he could recount many more times when someone had died in his arms in hospital. And when Jesus’ friend Lazarus died, Jesus simply wept.
Perhaps, without realising it, I believe John Wimber hit the nail on the head as we struggle to come to terms with the issues of God’s presence at our times of need. John Wimber was present when those people died. Jesus was present when Lazarus died. And so too, God was present. It was not whether the person was miraculously healed, we rejoice when that happens, but more importantly, God’s comfort and care is present when we reach out and hold another person’s hand as part of their journey in life. Just as God promises to be alongside us in our time of need, John Wimber was right there with those people at their time of need and I believe that, just as Jesus sends his disciples to heal the sick and dying, he also sends us to be alongside people to pray, love and care for them in their time of need.
You see, illness and dying as well as healing and wholeness are part of human life. Just as there are times of sadness and mourning, there are also times of hope and celebration and Christians have come to understand through the ages that God is not far away and distant at these moments but is instead ever present alongside our lives, sharing our journeys, feeling our sadness and delighting in our joys.
Jesus, the Son of God, was a human being who knew pain and suffering as well as joy, friendship and fellowship. God fully understands our experiences because he has shared them in the person of Jesus and he shares them in our lives as Christians today. The Christian hope, whether in sickness or health, life or death, vulnerability or brokenness, is that we too can know Jesus in our own lives through prayer and fellowship, through the support and ministry of other people, through our quite attendance to personal prayer, and through the love of God that is discovered in Christian ministry, service and devotion.
Revd Martin Brown |
|
St Mary’s Parish Church Marshalswick, St Albans |