Health to Whole Soul
Homily for Anointing/Healing Service
Health to the Whole Soul
July 14, 2021
Homily for Anointing/Healing Service
Health to the Whole Soul
July 14, 2021
As we gather here tonight for prayer, it is helpful to keep a few things in mind. We are asking the Lord to intervene in the lives of several of our suffering saints, and we are asking Him to intervene supernaturally. And asking Him to intervene supernaturally is not the same as asking Him for a miracle. God works all things for good in our lives. He orchestrates and acts in every detail through His Providence. God is a spirit. He is the Creator of all things so this means that all of His actions are supernatural.
What we often call the natural order of things really isn’t. We all know this and have told many stories about how all the little details of an event had to work out just exactly so for some good thing that happened.
In my case, it was when I had my heart attack and cardiac arrest. Every little thing that happened was part of the plan to bring me through that incident alive. And yet, every little thing that happened seemed to have a natural explanation. John just happened to be at home in his front yard on a Friday afternoon. Andrew and Holly just happened to be driving by and able to immediately call 911. They just happened to know that Benjamin, across the street, was an EMT and was home and flew to grab him and bring him back to my house in one minute. Even my wife’s panic and inability to dial her phone was the necessary event to drive her outside yelling for help. This is not one miracle, my survival, but a bunch of miracles involving a bunch of people, some of whom, don’t even serve the Lord.
God is not constrained by circumstances. He uses them all to His glory and our good. Now, I say this, not because I don’t believe God can or will heal. He can and will. But it is an established fact that, for the most part, He does not choose to heal through direct miracles. So, we are not claiming that or expecting that to happen tonight.
But we do believe that God’s work in the world is real and that His power is revealed both in weakness and in healing. Furthermore, the Bible says that sick people can call upon the elders to anoint and pray for them for healing.
Furthermore, it exhorts those asking for healing to confess their sins. 14 Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: 15 And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. 16 Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed.
We know that the confession of sins is necessary for spiritual healing. You confess and repent and God grants you forgiveness. In this is the promise of being raised up at the last day in Christ. But the apostle also talks about how this heals the body. Confess your faults, one to another and pray for one another, that ye may be healed in spirit and in body.
So, we exhort you to confess your sins to God and also to one another. When you have sinned against someone, confess and forgive so you can be healed.
One of the means of grace in bodily healing is healthy living, confession, repentance, forgiveness. So, we exhort all of you to be right with God and right with one another, so that you can be healed.
Sometimes, people are not healed. Paul had a thorn in the flesh, some sort of bodily ailment and he asked the Lord to deliver him three times and the Lord refused. Paul had the gift of healing but could not heal his friends Epaphroditus, Trophimus, and Timothy. Why? Because it was the Lord’s will to afflict them. We may not like that answer but it is biblical.
So, in addition to seeking the Lord’s healing, we also have to learn to be like Paul, content in plenty and content in want.
The bottom line is that we belong to God. We seek Him for healing when we are sick. We submit to His will whether we are sick or healthy. And in all of this we are more than conquerors in Christ.
Romans 8:28-39 28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. 29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. 30 Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. 31 What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? 32 He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? 33 Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. 34 hWho is he that condemneth? It is Christ that idied, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. 37 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. 38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor tpowers, nor things wpresent, nor things to come, 39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
We are going to call up the people we are praying for, anoint them and ask God to heal them. We ask you to pray for them quietly in your pews while we pray for them.