Does God still heal?

14 At Iconium Paul and Barnabas went as usual into the Jewish synagogue. There they spoke so effectively that a great number of Jews and Greeks believed. ² But the Jews who refused to believe stirred up the other Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers. ³ So Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there, speaking boldly for the Lord, who confirmed the message of his grace by enabling them to perform signs and wonders. ⁴ The people of the city were divided; some sided with the Jews, others with the apostles. ⁵ There was a plot afoot among both Gentiles and Jews, together with their leaders, to mistreat them and stone them. ⁶ But they found out about it and fled to the Lycaonian cities of Lystra and Derbe and to the surrounding country, ⁷ where they continued to preach the gospel. Acts 14:1-7

It was, I think, a Church of England bishop who lamented the difference between his ministry and that of the apostle Paul: “Why is it that everywhere Paul went there was a riot, but everywhere I go they make cups of tea?”

A nice joke, and it contains an element of truth. In the New Testament the preaching of the gospel often provoked fierce, even violent, opposition. This is true, according to Acts 14, of the witness of Paul and Barnabas in the city of Iconium (just one example among many); they ended up fleeing for their lives. There are still parts of the world where that sort of thing happens, but they certainly aren’t common in the western world, which, while it may not be truly “Christian”, is certainly “christianised”.

But I can’t help wondering if that bishop was being a bit hard on himself. I’m sure there were preaching occasions for the New Testament apostles which ended up pretty humdrum – Paul’s ministry in Athens, for example (Acts 17:16-34), caused a bit of “sneering” certainly, but we get the impression that Paul’s departure was dignified and untroubled.

There’s another difference between Iconium and Athens: in Iconium God “confirmed the message of his grace by enabling them to perform signs and wonders”, whereas no such thing is said about Athens – Paul operated as a preacher pure and simple, not as a wonder-worker. This reminds us of a vital truth: when it comes to making Christ known, word and deed need to accompany one another; words alone are not enough. (This is no criticism of Paul, of course – signs and wonders depend upon God’s “enabling”, and if God didn’t provide that enabling, well, that was just the way it was.)

Two questions occur to me.

First, in our evangelism how seriously do we take the need for our words to be backed up by our deeds? – in our case, by the witness of our everyday lives? Putting it negatively, does the way we live and talk ever undermine the message we profess to believe?

That’s a question we need to be putting regularly to ourselves.

Second, what about “signs and wonders”? Should we expect them to accompany our evangelism more often? I suspect this is what may have been troubling that bishop; after all, it’s probably what provoked the rioting.

To answer the question, I think we need to recognise first that our world is very different from the New Testament world. In those far-off days the gospel message was brand new – a divine saviour who allowed himself to be crucified, but who then rose from the dead! - so there was a shock element when this truth was proclaimed, and not everyone could stomach it. Not only did it seem literally incredible, but it offended long-held beliefs, especially among the people of Israel: this crucified man Jesus was said to be their long-awaited king, their messiah! The whole idea was preposterous, indeed blasphemous.

Today, on the other hand, most people have heard at least the name of Jesus, and have some idea, however vague or mistaken, about his story. The shock element is missing, so people are likely to respond merely with puzzlement or indifference: the “so-what?” response. Making the ancient story fresh and newly relevant without being shallow or gimmicky is not easy! We can’t force God to provide that “enabling” of signs and wonders.

When wondering about signs and wonders today, most Christians retreat into one of two camps. Taking them at their extremes…

First, there are the sceptics, who maintain, in effect, that the days of miracles are past, and we simply shouldn’t expect them or pray for them. I once heard somebody justify this interpretation on the basis of 1 Corinthians 13:10: “when completeness (or perfection) comes, what is in part disappears”. They applied this to “charismatic” gifts as a whole, now that the “perfect” – which they interpreted as the complete Bible – has come.

That, I think, is a very artificial stretch, to say the least! The New Testament never clearly makes any such suggestion, and passages such as James 5:13-16, however puzzling we may find them, seem to flatly contradict it.

Second, there are those who believe we should not only be open to signs and wonders, but should actively seek them. They might even scold the rest of us for lack of faith, as Jesus reprimanded his disciples (for example, Matthew 8:26). If only we had more faith, miracles would come tumbling around our heads!

But that simply doesn’t square with the reality of either experience or of scripture. Men and women of truly wonderful faith often pray for healing or other miracles, yet seem to see very little or nothing at all as a result. And as we work through the New Testament we find that even such a great wonder-worker as Paul didn’t always expect them (I love 2 Timothy 4:20: “I left Trophimus ill at Miletus”, which prompts the question: “You did? But why, Paul…?). Even of Jesus it was said that “he could not do any miracles there…” (Mark 6:5).

I suggest that we need to steer a middle course between scepticism (“healings just don’t happen any more”) and unrealistic expectations (“just have more faith!”). Personally, I have always felt it right to pray for miracles, especially if asked, sometimes with laying on of hands or anointing with oil (though never, in my case, with tongues, as I don’t have that gift). Have “miracles” happened as a result? Only very rarely.

But I have to say: as a result we have experienced very precious times of blessing – and always, something good has happened.

Why not at least ask in humble faith – and then just leave it to God to do as he sees fit? Who knows what might happen? One thing is sure: something will.

Lord, I confess that sometimes reading your word can be a little disappointing, leaving me wondering why miracles seem to happen so rarely today. Please help me nonetheless to step out in faith, to pray for big things from you, and to expect real answers as a result, even if they may not come in the form I hoped for. Your will be done! Amen.

Giving up on Jesus?

Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink”…

From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. John 6:53-66

Normally, when I start a new blog, I aim to write something that will make sense to anybody and everybody who might happen to hit on it, whether Christians or not.

But today is different. I feel it right to target one group of people in particular - anyone who is thinking about giving up on Jesus, like those mentioned in John 6:66: “disciples” (yes, they’re called that) who “turned back and no longer followed him”.

This happens. You don’t have to be a pastor to be aware of people who used to be part of the church, but who now are absent. They might, of course, have decided to go to another church, or to continue to follow Jesus from the privacy of their own home (whether that’s right or wrong is another matter). But there are also those who have simply ceased to follow Jesus: “ex-Christians”, we might call them. I would be delighted if I might say something that deters somebody from taking that step. To have found, only then to give away, the “pearl of great price” (Matthew 13:45-6) is truly tragic.

Why does this happen? There are various possible reasons, one of which applies particularly to the people in John 6: they found the teaching of Jesus more than they could stomach – “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” (verse 60).

I remember once reading the verses about “eating my flesh and drinking my blood” at a communion service, only to be confronted at the end by a regular worshipper who seemed part-angry and part-puzzled. I think he thought I must have “gone Catholic”! Certainly, a little more explanation on my part might have helped (the meaning of certain Bible verses isn’t always immediately obvious). But Jesus doesn’t seem to have provided that in these verses; that comes in other parts of the New Testament. He seems content – or perhaps I should use the word “willing” – to let these people go.

It's hard not to have a certain respect for people who stop following Jesus because of genuine intellectual difficulties, however unnecessary they may be. But my impression is that such people are in quite a small minority of people who “fall away”, and I think we can only leave them in the hands of God, who knows every heart and always judges justly.

A second type of person who falls away from Christ can be found in the example of Demas who, says Paul, “has deserted me because he loved this world” (2 Timothy 4:10). Is this the same Demas as the one mentioned in Philemon 24? – if so, it gives us hope that he was eventually restored to his former position as companion to Paul. But we can’t be sure.

Whatever, we are reminded that following Jesus involves a serious choice, the choice to love Christ rather than the kingdoms of this world. And this is a challenge all of us must face up to, no matter how sincere we have been in our discipleship, or how long we have been followers of Jesus.

I suspect that the most common reason for falling away is exemplified in the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:1-23), where Jesus in effect warns us to expect it to happen in certain cases. He speaks of the seed that falls “on rocky ground”, representing “trouble or persecution” – people who start as enthusiastic followers of Jesus, but turn out in the longer term to be essentially rootless and to have no staying power; and of seed sown among thorns, people who are undone by “the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of riches” (verses 20-22).

The parable as a whole gathers up just about every possible reason why a man or woman might fall away - everything from a dramatic, headlong “fall from grace” (witness the various celebrity pastors, much loved by their congregations and greatly used by God, who end up in the headlines for all the wrong reasons), right through to a slow, steady process of what we might call spiritual atrophy, the tragic daily dying of a  once-vibrant faith. The devil is unlimited in his resources and methods.

Many people who fall away probably never make a decision to let that happen; it just, well, does. The pearl of great price somehow loses its lustre and its beauty. And so the warning Paul offers to the Christians of Corinth applies to every generation of Christian people: “So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12).

A word for me? Certainly, yes. A word for you too?

A final warning…

As Jesus and the disciples watched their former companions drift away, Jesus asked a rather pathetic-seeming question: “You don’t want to leave too, do you?” And Simon Peter gave what I think is a wonderful reply: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life…” (verse 68).

Yes indeed! Who else will you go to! To Buddha? Or Mohammed? Or Karl Marx? Or Hare Krishna? Or simply to the world’s multiple false gods – the idols of success, earthly happiness, sex, indulgence, power, money, pleasure?

Of one thing we can be sure: the person who gives up on the one true God will, before long, be worshipping another - and it will be a god that is no god, a god who may seem to promise much but who in the end delivers nothing.

Hold on to Jesus as he holds on to you!

Father, I know my own weaknesses and frailties, my fickleness and proneness to wander. Please hold me firm, I pray, so that by your grace I may hold firm to you through thick and thin. Amen.

O to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be!/ Let that grace, Lord, like a fetter bind my wandering heart to Thee./ Prone to wander – Lord, I feel it – prone to leave the God I love;/ Here’s my heart, O take and seal it, seal it from Thy courts above. Amen!  Robert Robinson (1735-1790)