Healing in the Jordan pt2

Then He said, “I assure you and most solemnly say to you, no prophet is welcome in his hometown.  But in truth I say to you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was closed up for three years and six months, when a great famine came over all the land;  and yet Elijah was not sent [by the Lord] to a single one of them, but only to Zarephath in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow.  And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet; and not one of them was cleansed [by being healed] except Naaman the Syrian.”  As they heard these things [about God’s grace to these two Gentiles], the people in the synagogue were filled with a great rage; and they got up and drove Him out of the city, and led Him to the crest of the hill on which their city had been built, in order to hurl Him down the cliff. But passing [miraculously] through the crowd, He went on His way.
LUKE 4:24‭-‬30 AMP
https://bible.com/bible/1588/luk.4.24-30.AMP

Background

Jesus Christ was introduciing a radical shift in the thinking of His fellow Jews, gathered on that occasion in the synagogue! He was daring them to believe that God had revealed Himself through one of their own! A family they were quite well acquainted with! That the oldest son of that family was the long awaited jewish Messiah they had all been expecting. The one their ancestors had expected for centuries! His fellow hometown folk were not quite ready to jump on his bandwagon yet!Even if Jesus was clearly being elaborate in sharing from the scripture and building a very solid case about why this was so, even if He had clearly illustrated from scripture why this was so, they were not ready to acknowledge the truth!

But they were prepared to protest His audacity! The audacity to suggest He was someone other than the carpenter's son! What they were prepared to do was to stop Him! They attempted to execute this in the most brutal way! They sought to do it in the most violent way they knew which was to turn  nearly'murderous towards Him'! It is amazing how we sometimes react when something is shared that we aren't prepared to accept!
We often respond from our entrenched and our longheld dogmatic positions! We are very often  prepared to undermine the 'messenger' and to go for any flaws in their personal life rather than face up to the fact that there may be some truth principle in what they are sharing!

Years ago a pastor friend named Godwin observed me using my prescribed inhaler for the symptoms of asthma.  He asked me about seeking God for healing from the condition which I suffered with at the time. I was crossed with him that he would even think that God would heal asthma in the 20th Century.  By then I had been doing my Nursing Training for sometime and had began to question certain convictions I had previously held about healing.  As a result of what I thought I  witnessed from others who had exhibited a really poor defence of healing I had decided that no one got healed of Asthma.
  in the 20th century.THAT BECAME MY DEFAULT POSITION AND MY DEFENSE UNTIL GOD SHATTERED THROUGH MY OWN PHYSICAL HEALING FROM ASTHMA IN 1995!

The irony is that  I was visiting with my friend Godwin the weekend I experienced healing from Asthma, and I also had the opportunity to acknowledge to him that I had previously  been wrong in presuming that God did not heal of asthma in the 20th Century.

Jesus Christ had told one of his disciples Thomas, 'Blessed is he that does not see and yet believes. (John 20:29).That is still true about our lives today. We ought to trust the Lord through the evidence of His word first before we experience healing first hand.!

On another occasion whilst watching Christian TV, i had witnessed a youngman testifying that he had been healed from a condition which was associated with breathing difficulty.I struggled with believing that particular testimony because it had not been my personal experience up until that point..This was because although I had witnessed several healings first hand whilst ministering to individuals who were healed I had developed a mental block associated with  not trusting God for my own healing. Infact I was hesitant about asking God for my own physical healing from Asthma, due to the fact that i had accepted the condition as hereditary. Atleast one other member of my family suffered from that condition.

How do we eventually become entrenched in our position about a subject based on our experience? Well there are a number of factors that can lead to that. 

1. Conditioning through Education: Initially I had had doubts that healing occurs because my personal experience of healing up to that point mostly involved others getting healed when I ministered to them. I had not experienced healing personally, the way others had. Subsequently , I had learnt a lot more about Asthma as a  medical condition during my nursing training. During my nursing trsining I became more and more that the best I could do is to manage the condition. This was a gradually deviation from a previous position that healing was atleast a possibility. Also within   the period of my nurse training I became a captive audience hearing constantly aboutf the virtues of medical science as the main answer to human health ailments.Note, I appreciate medical science and all the great advances and fantastic results from its rightful application. However our particular education programme resulted in  quite a bit of conditioning  too which had unintended consequences in my case atleast. Through the knowledge I gained, perhaps even because of the professional training as a whole I began to have doubts about  God's healing in answer to prayer..

If your  doubts about healing in answer to prayer are partly fuelled by your educational research you may identify with me. But whatever positiont you take on this issue do stay with me through the rest of this series on healing. Because just like the jews embarked on a journey with Jesus, which did not take overnight to arrive at a destination of faith and believing  we won't get there either in the shortterm

1.  2. Peer Pressure and People Pleasing:  We often uphold certain beliefs and positions publicly although privately you could refer to as secret disciples of Jesus😁!. Jesus had many secret disciples who missed out on the experience of real action! There are fewer benefits to being a secret disciple but you are still a disciple so you can be credited for that! However, a secret disciple usually lacks the kind of defining commitment which is required in order to experience a certain dimension of God's dealings with us. So what I am suggesting is that you start with your family. Let them know that you believe and take a stand for Godly positions. Be open about your believing to the degree that you can be held accountable for what you believe.When we have taken a stand on our belief in healing and in miracles we would be held accountable as believers in the manifest presence of a risen  saviour and Christ.

In conclusion, I will like to extend an invite to you to join me in prayer about a need you may have. The passage in Luke 4:24-30 which I began with,  highlights the categories of individuals who mainly received God's intervention. There were people whom God sent the instrument tof healing to like the widow of Zidon, whom Elijah was sent to.  There were  others  who initiated a request for healing from the Lord as Naaman the Syrian General had done. These are the main two categories who experienced healing or miracles in the Bible.

Majority of the people were healed because they made a request. But some were also healed because of the Sovereignly of the Lord God. At times they were spontaneous occasions that created  the opportunity by leading a human vessel to them either in person or via a point of contact.Through that point of contact they were able to release their faith towards God.

Sometimes we delay the experience of healing because we do not pray for a divine appointment to occur and we do not request for healing. When I got healed in 1995 it occured to me that many from within the Christian community whose hospital i served in had been praying for me. However, when  I got healed i realised perhaps I could have been healed sooner if only I had dared to ask God.Although I had not been asking God, something happened spontaneously whilst I was in an environment of healing
You have got to be in that environment through reading this reflection. Let us pray:
Father, in Jesus name I pray for my brother and my sister and ask you to bring them into an experience of your presence. Give them the healing they require, make them feel your touch and we thank you for answered prayer, Amen.
God bless you and we will continue with the next reflection on another occasion.