Recap
Title: How We Can Experience God’s Healing Power Today
Series: Discovering The Real Jesus
Key Text: John 4:46-54 & John 5:1-3,5-15
Key Message:
God is encouraging us to have much more expectation of His supernatural power so that healing ministry will become our new normal, especially when introducing people to Jesus.
Jesus taught his disciples to spread the good news about the Kingdom of God by their words and also by demonstrating the authority of God over sickness and evil.
Luke 9:1-2 says: ‘When Jesus had called the Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick’.
Divine healing is something that has always been taught in our church. And there have been different stories of people who have been healed. Our own senior pastor was healed of a life-threatening illness as a child after the church prayed.
Healing is one of the signs that God is at work. As we continue in our studies of the gospel of John, we learn important lessons as we look at 2 particular healings that are highlighted at the end of John chapter 4 and the start of John chapter 5.
In one instance a younger person was healed. In the second instance a man was healed who had been sick all his life.
To experience healing we must call out to God. (John 4:47)
To experience healing we must believe (John 4:50; Mark 9:23)
To experience healing we must obey the word of God (John 5:6-9; James 5:16; Isaiah 53:5)
Apply
In our story from John 4:46-54, we learn that desperation will drive us to seek answers, and the best way to find them is to cry out for God’s help. That is when we find that God is the one who is close to the broken hearted and who saves those who have lost all hope.
It is when we come to Jesus in our desperation that miracles can happen. If you are in a desperate condition today there is hope for you if you will call out to God with all your heart.
Are you crying out to God? Or are you are trusting in the things of this world before you trust God for provision of healing?
What is clear in this story where the young boy is healed, is that when Jesus told the official to go home because his son was healed, he simply believed it. He didn't get into a debate or discussion about it. He set aside his preference to have Jesus come back to his house with him, and headed home. He made a decision at that moment to do what Jesus had said and believe that it would all work out the way Jesus said it would.
Healings and miracles happen when we act on what God has promised in his word. He is not asking us to produce something of ourselves, but only to believe his words, and trust him to do things only he can do.
We might struggle to believe based on past experience or logic, but Jesus calls us to set aside our doubts and fears and believe in him. He alone is the answer to our needs.
Everything begins with our decision to believe in Jesus, to take him at his word. In the words of Jesus in Mark 9:23 ‘...everything is possible for him who believes’.
Like the official in the story, do you trust God’s word? Do you trust that will deliver on His word?
In the second story we read of a man who thought that he could only be healed by getting into waters which were believed to have healing qualities at particular moments. But he never made it. “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”
To his mind, all his options were closed as no one would help him. Over the 38 years of being sick he had only known constant disappointment. Now he was face to face with the one who created all things by the power of his word. But Jesus first had a question for him. Verse 6 says: “When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”
Have you given up hope? Are you content to stay as you are? Or do you really want a total change?
Well Jesus, having heard how the man had never been helped, then just gave a word of command that required the man to simply obey him. Jesus said “Get up, take up your mat and walk”.
And that’s exactly what this man did. After a lifetime of being paralysed as verse 9 says ‘he picked up his mat and walked.’ Just like that. In one moment of time everything changed through one act of total obedience.
God’s power is released when we obey God’s word. For example, when we humbly confess our sins, then we can receive our miracle. James 5:16 says: Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.
Are you willing to obey the word of God? Will you act in faith, as the paralysed man did, and obey the word of God?
Today to receive your healing, be sure to cry out to God, to believe God and to obey God. For Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday and today and forever and His healing power can be released to you and through you. Let’s pray.
