By Christine Darg
Jerusalem Channel
We have to be ever so diligent to maintain great faith in these perilous times. The world’s turmoil and corruption can erode your faith. . . . if you’re not careful.
Listen to your words. Are they full of THE Word? Or…..are you allowing unbelief to creep into your conversations?
Recent months have been filled with too much fear of sickness, disease and death. The only reason any church does not practice biblical healing today is because of a lack of faith and unfaithfulness to the Word of God.
Also miracles are limited when they are not expected!
“Faith’s conflict with the world is . . . a battle of character. The person of faith is a person of character who does not insist upon comprehending everything. . . The world wants to alarm the believer against such foolishness. This is precisely why faith is a task for the person of character.” ~ Søren Kierkegaard
For many centuries, Messiah’s original command to heal the sick was obeyed and carried out in its literal sense. Healing the sick was unqualified with the phrase “if it be thy will.” Wholeness, or salvation of both body and soul, was considered the will of God. Frequently the Lord was addressed as “the Saviour of our souls and bodies,” or the “physician of our souls and bodies.” That title, “physician of our souls and bodies,” was common to ancient liturgies.
In the “Liturgy of St. Mark,” the ministry of healing was presented with faith–
“Master, Lord and our God, Thou didst elect the twelve-lighted lamp of the twelve Apostles, and didst send them into the whole world to preach and to teach the Gospel of Thy Kingdom, and to heal every sickness and every infirmity in the people; and didst breathe into their faces and didst say to them, Receive the Holy Ghost, the Comforter…”
The “Book of Dimma” in the 7th Century contained an Office for the Communion of the Sick, and the “Stowe Missal” (9th Century) also contained instructions for visitation of the sick. These prayers for recovery from sickness were unconditional; the sick person was exhorted to perceive the hand of God NOT IN HIS SICKNESS but in his RECOVERY.
A typical prayer from these ancient books is full of faith and devoid of doubt:
“Let us pray, brethren, to Our Lord God for our brother, ______, whom present sickness sorely wounds, that the Lord’s kindness may condescend to cure him with heavenly medicine….O Lord, Holy Father….perform Thy accustomed work.”
I recommend the faith in that phrase: “PERFORM THY ACCUSTOMED WORK!” Amen!
God uses us in every decade of our lives when we are submitted to him. In 1 Timothy 4: 12, the Apostle Paul admonished Timothy not to allow anybody to despise his youth. And when we study God’s Word, we can take courage that men of God like Moses came into their prime in older age.
A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that at age 60, you reach the top of your potential and this continues into your 80s. Therefore, if you are between 60 -70 or 70-80 you are in the best and second best level of your life, according to the study. The third most productive stage is from 50 to 60 years of age.
Amen! Impeccable timing, such exhortation and instruction to hold on IN FAITH! Using this most confident prayer now over a brother. Perform thy accustomed work Oh Abba Father!
AMEN!