And these signs
will accompany those who believe: in my
name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick
up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not
hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
Mark 16:17-18
Therefore, confess
your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great
power as it is working. Elijah was a man
with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and
for three years and six months it did not rain.
Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its
fruit.
James 5:16-18
A couple days ago, my team was out
doing door to door evangelism, stopping at each house to share the word of God and
to pray for the residents. We came to
one house of a man who had a spinal injury and was paralyzed. Naturally, we prayed for healing. We finished praying, and as we finished, the
man continued to lie in his bed, still paralyzed. Not exactly the story that grabs people’s
attention, right?
As we went on to the next house, I
became frustrated and wondered why the man wasn’t healed. We all laid hands and faithfully prayed; he
should have been healed. I asked similar
questions when I was in Thailand on the World Race and when I was in Uganda,
leading a Real Life trip. Every time we
prayed for someone, and they weren’t healed, it just didn’t make any sense.
Now, of course, many of you readers
are probably now thinking the typical Christian response (or at least the
Christian response in the Western world):
“God has a plan; it just wasn’t His will for that person to be
healed. There are probably still lessons
he wants to teach that person first.”
Growing up in the church, I’ve heard this response many times. And to be
honest, I think it’s just a bullcrap response we give to cover up the fact that
we lack true faith in the church. Don’t
get me wrong; I know there are plenty of verses in the Bible about God’s
sovereignty, His will, and how He works everything to our good. But when I look in the Gospels and in the
Book of Acts, I find that every time there was a prayer for healing, that
person was, well, healed. I’ve never
read the story in Acts where Peter and the other apostles pray for healing,
that person isn’t healed, and Peter then stands up and gives a sermon on God’s
will. What happened in the last 2000
years between the day when Peter’s shadow was powerful enough to heal people
(Acts 5:15) and the day when it is God’s will for people to remain sick
(American Church 2012)?
And so, we left the house of the
paralyzed man, and I asked God why. God
lead me to Mark 9:14-29. In this
passage, Jesus comes upon a crowd. He
asks what’s going on, and a man comes to Jesus and tells Him that his son is
possessed by a demon, and Jesus’ disciples were not able to cast it out. Jesus rebukes the crowd for being faithless
and then proceeds to cast out the demon.
Afterwards, Jesus’ disciples come to Him and ask why they were not able
to cast out the demon; Jesus responds, “This kind cannot be driven out by
anything but prayer.” (Mark 9:29) There have been times in the past when this passage
has been given to me as an explanation for why people are not always immediately
healed today. In other words, people
have told me that this passage explains that sometimes you just have to pray
for a long period of time in order for healing to occur. But when you look at what happens in this
passage, that explanation doesn’t line up.
Mark doesn’t tell us that Jesus prayed for multiple days and then the
demon was cast out. We still see in the
story that the demon is nearly immediately cast out. So what did Jesus mean when he said, “This
kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer”?
I don’t believe that Jesus meant
what we typically think of as prayer.
Usually, in today’s church, prayer is asking God something specific or
hearing something specific from Him. And
for many people, prayer has been minimized to something to be done before meals
and right before going to sleep. But I
think that Jesus was talking about devotion to God. We read in the Gospels that Jesus often got
alone to spend time with His Father. We
read in Acts that the apostles and the other early believers devoted themselves
to prayer. In other words, they spent
enough time with God to be filled up so that they could go out and actually
make a difference in the world and maybe actually see His kingdom come.
So go spend time with God. I mean, actually truly spend time with
God. Devote yourself to Him. And watch God move in amazing ways.
If my people who
are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from
their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and
heal their land.
2 Chronicles 7:14
P.S.
Please be praying for the team. We have
finished up our week in Kiathe and will be headed to a new village, Nkubu,
tomorrow. Please pray for continued joy
and strength for the team. Pray that we will all continue to see God’s purpose
in what we are doing and that God will continue to use us in amazing ways. Also, please be praying for unity with the
team. Finally, please be praying for
Hailey and I, that we will continue to have wisdom and discernment as the
leaders of the team.
P.S.
again. I am still in need of about $125 to be fully funded for my
trip. If you want to donate towards this
cause, you can click the “Mind on my money, money on my mind”
link to donate online. Or you can be old-school and write a
check. To donate in this way, make out a check to Adventures in Missions
and put “For Robby Smith – Passport” in the memo line. You can
then mail it to Adventures in Missions, PO Box 534470, Gainesville, GA 30353-4470.
I also still have student loans and other personal expenses. If you
would like to donate towards this cause, you can make out a check to Robby Smith and mail
it to Robby Smith 306 Saltlick Trace Peachtree City, GA 30269.
