The Order of St. Luke The Physician in The United Kingdom Benevolent Society
Healing and a New Beginning
Christian Healing Ministry Pamphlets By Hilda M. Moore

JESUS THE MAN.

One of the things that being involved in the Healing Ministry brings is great joy. This is another of the things that Jesus tried to show us was God's will for us. I can never understand why so many people believe that a Christian has to go about with a long face. Real Christianity is a thing of joy, so why not show it?

Look at some of the Psalms of David, especially Psalm 98, where he says "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord all the earth; make a loud noise and rejoice and sing praise;" (verse 4) and also "Let the floods clap their hands and let the hills be joyful together before the Lord." (Verse 9) 1 love this Psalm and whenever I hear it I feel I want to sing my praises and thanks to God for what He has done for me personally.

Jesus must have felt like that too. He obviously wanted to share this great joy with His followers when He said, "These words have I spoken to you that My joy might remain in you and that your joy might be full." (John 15 v 11). What a wonderful personality He must have had. No wonder the children loved to be with Him. This is one of the delightful things about the people one meets within the Healing Ministry   this joy that shines from them.


Jesus also had that peace which passes all understanding which is so badly needed in the world today, and this also He bequeathed to mankind when He said "Peace I leave with you; MY peace I give unto you." (John 14 v 27) Those of us who are involved in this ministry have seen this peace working its way into people's lives time and time again, sometimes in the most unlikely situations.


Jesus used this word "Peace" many times during His ministry here on earth. There is the time when Jesus and the disciples were in a ship and a storm came up. Can you imagine the scene? Great waves breaking over the ship and the little vessel being tossed here and there quite out of control; the wind howling through the rigging and the ship gradually filling up with water. I can imagine also the mounting fears of all the men on board. And then they see Jesus asleep. Sleeping through all the noise and the tumult of the storm and the shouts of the men. I sometimes wonder if He really was asleep or if He was just quietly relaxing secure in the knowledge of His Father's love and care. And then they wake Him up and Jesus looks around at the storm and at their frightened faces. I could well imagine that this could be the point at which their fears would begin to subside  when they see His quietness and confidence in His Father. And we too can have that peace, but first of all we must learn to KNOW the Father. We must learn to know the source from which that peace comes. Jesus tried to show us this when He said "I am in My Father and you in Me and I in you." (John 14 v 20). He was giving us a key that would open the door and make access to the Father possible at all times. He was linking us with the Father through Himself.


The world today needs this peace and love more than it needs anything else, so let this peace for the world begin in you. Let it start in your own heart; let it be the controlling force in your life. Let your life be a small centre of peace so that when things around you are disturbed   your peace   and through you God's peace, will help to restore the balance and bring healing not only to yourself and your friends but also to the world.


But first of all we must be sure that we have this peace ourselves. In spite of all the difficulties and temptations that Jesus had He always had this peace to offer to mankind. We read of times when He went aside from the crowd. It may have appeared to some that He was running away, but we know that this was not so. He was stepping aside to spend a short time with His Father in order to replenish Himself for the work He was doing. In the 6th chapter of Mark we read "And He said unto them "Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place and rest awhile." (V 31) Jesus knew that the disciples had been working very hard and that they needed to replenish themselves for the work they still had to do. They needed not only physical replenishment but also spiritual replenishment. We also need to step aside in this way if we are to do our part in bringing healing to this troubled world of ours. We need to KNOW the God to whom we pray and we can only do this by meeting with Him regularly and often like Jesus did.


If we remind ourselves more often that Jesus was a man like us, with the same temptations and the same freedom of choice that we have, perhaps it will help us to become that small centre of peace which can spread out towards all with whom we come into contact. We shall then be helping to bring peace and harmony and healing not only to ourselves but also to our friends and to the world.


I have been asked this question. "Do you believe that there will ever come a time when there is no sickness in the world?" Let us take a look at the possibilities of this. First of all God made man in His own image, therefore He intended man to be perfect. He also gave man a body with built in tendencies to heal itself. He put herbs in the fields  also healing agencies, and He provided antidotes for poisons. He has trusted man with many wonderful and powerful things. God is all-powerful and can give or withhold any of these things, and yet He goes on giving them to us. Why? This indicates to me that He still believes in man; He still believes that man CAN use them properly.


When I think of the way in which mankind has used some of His gifts, His trust in us and His infinite patience with us never ceases to amaze me. Take opium for instance. This is one of the natural drugs that grow in the fields. The Medical Profession has used it for very many years and there are literally hundreds of people who have received relief from pain by its use. But on the other hand there are also hundreds of people who have used it for self indulgence. I remember the first time I read a description of an opium den in China. I was quite young at the time and it created a deep impression on me. Little did I think that only half a century later I would be seeing drug taking reaching the proportions it has now done in my own home town.


Mercury is another thing that has healing properties when used in the correct quantities but it can also poison the system when used in excess. I read not long ago that some of the fish that are being sold for human consumption have been found to contain a dangerous level of mercury, which has been picked up by the fish while in the sea. Here again is another effect of the pollution, which is becoming so widespread a danger to mankind.


How slow we are to learn, and how wise is our Creator. He knew that we should only learn by our experience and our mistakes (mostly our mistakes). He gave man free will and with it He gave us the opportunity of learning how to co-operate with Him. God gave us freedom to use these things for good or ill. He also sent Jesus Christ to show us the way   the way of love   but He will not force us to take that way. We have to come to it of our own free will.


if God can still believe in man's ultimate goodness, in spite of the way in which we have used (or perhaps I should say misused) some of His gifts, then I can do so too, even though it may take many years to achieve the perfection of behaviour that can bring perfect health. It is for each individual one of us to do our part in bringing this about. What a great responsibility this is that God has placed upon us.

By giving this free will to us He has tied His own hands. We can say "no" to Him time and time again and there is little He can do about it. He can influence us in various ways such as through the prayer of other people; through their deeds or their words; through the beauty of nature, through art or through music. But this is all He can do. Having given us this freedom of choice He will not take it away from us.

How God must feel at times when He has to stand by and see us floundering about among our mistakes. But this is the only way in which we shall learn; the only way in which we shall grow and develop and so become co workers with Him. If God intervened every time we found ourselves getting into difficulties we should never develop our own character and would soon become nothing more than machines.


Jesus Christ came to show us the way, but sometimes when I have been talking with someone about Jesus I find myself wondering how well do we REALLY know Him. Many people look upon Him as a man set apart   a man who was the Son of God, and was of such goodness and purity that it was not possible for Him to sin; that it was easy for Him to do what was right. Is this a true picture of Jesus? WAS it easy? Are we forgetting that He was made in the image of man? He was exposed to all the bodily discomforts that we are. During the course of His ministry He must have walked very many miles often through dry and dusty places and must many times have arrived at His destination hot and tired and dusty, and possibly hungry as well. Also He was given the same freedom of choice that we have been given. I think this is something that we sometimes overlook.


He knew that He was the Messiah and that He had been sent into the world to show men the way to God, but He had to choose the way in which He would do this.


When we read the Old Testament we find many records of people fighting against each other even then, and this is the kind of world that Jesus came into. There existed in the minds of people at this time a picture of a Messiah who would come as a conqueror of Rome and as a liberator of the Jewish people. A man who would call the people to arms and who would fight with the sword. Jesus had to make the choice as to the kind of Messiah He was going to be. Was He going to be the Messiah the people wanted and so fulfil their expectations and gain their support, or was He going to be the Messiah the Prophet Isaiah visualised when he said "He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” (Isaiah 53 V 3)

This struggle must have gone on in the heart of Jesus all through His life. The first time we see it is when He goes into the wilderness for forty days. He went there to be alone so that He could think out this problem, and it was there that the first temptations came to Him. The Bible records three temptations which were put to Him at that time, all of which He resisted, but the most subtle of all was the way in which the story tells us the tempter started by saying. "IF you are the Son of God.” He was trying to sow doubt in the mind of Jesus; to make Him distrust Himself; to make Him doubt His own call from God. This crops up again when Jesus is on the Cross and His enemies say to Him "IF you are the Son of God come down from the Cross." There is nothing so undermining to the personality as doubt. These temptations which came to Jesus were that He should use His power selfishly. That He should put material benefits first; that He should use spectacular and sensational means to draw attention to Himself, and that He should distrust Himself and doubt His call and abide by the traditional idea of a Messiah who would come as a fighter and as a conqueror.


Jesus made His choice. He deliberately put aside the way of might and power and chose the way of the Cross. He tried to show us that sacrificial love can do what conquering might and power can never do. And how much of this lesson have we learned? We still have the same freedom of choice that Jesus had but what are we doing with it? Around 2,000 years have gone by and nations are still fighting with each other and plotting against each other. There is disorder and drug taking, and more broken homes and broken marriages and separated families than ever before. People are still grasping for power and more power, money and more money, and we sometimes ask ourselves where is it all going to end? This is what Jesus was warning the disciples about when He said "Whoever would be great among you must be your servant and whoever would be first among you must be slave to all." (Mark 10 V 43 44) And then He goes on to remind them that this is what He Himself was doing when He said "For the Son of Man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.” (V 45)


Those of us who are involved in the Healing Ministry are trying to serve in this way but there is much more to it than just praying for the sick to be healed of their bodily ailments. We need to show people a new way of life   the Jesus way   the way of love, and until the nations of the world learn this way they will continue to fight and quarrel among themselves. Jesus knew when He healed people that unless they mended their ways and followed God's laws they would fall sick again. This is what He had in mind when He said "Go and sin no more".

People today are still labouring under the same temptations that Jesus did. And the answer to it is still the same. When Jesus was faced with these temptations His first thought was to take His problems to God His Father. But the difficulty here is that many people who come to us for healing do not know the Father well enough for this. So one of the best ways in which we can help them is by showing them the Father. This we can do not only by talking with them, but by the way in which we follow the teachings of Jesus in our own lives. The way in which we carry on the work that Jesus started during His ministry here on earth.


You will remember how the scribes ask Jesus "Which commandment is the first of them all?" (Mark 12 v 28). And He answers "Hear oh Israel the Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord our God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength" And then He goes on to say. "The second is this, you shall love your neighbour as yourself". (V 31) Here again we have the double message with a second half that is so important, the part that we so often overlook. Jesus could quite easily have said, "Love thy neighbour" and left it at that, but He doesn't He added, "as thyself" making it that bit more difficult to do   making us go the extra mile. Often it is not too difficult to offer our neighbour a certain amount of love, but we all have a great love for ourselves and it is not easy to offer that much love to someone we may not like very much any way.


But who is our neighbour? The lawyer asked Jesus this question and He answered it by telling the story of the Good Samaritan. (Luke 10 v 29 37). Our neighbour is not necessarily the person who lives next door; it is anyone to whom you may have the opportunity of helping, and this covers a very wide field. If we look at the life of Jesus we see many instances where He showed neighbourliness to someone. Zaccheus was not a very nice sort of person and no one liked him very much, but this did not make any difference to Jesus who showed him love by having a meal with him. Would we do, as much for someone we do not like? How much do WE show love to our neighbour? There are many times when we fall short in this respect, and if we who look upon ourselves as Christians do not do it how can we expect other people to do it? When we do not like a person on first acquaintance we tend to avoid them   to pass by on the other side   and when we do find ourselves meeting up with them we look at them critically and notice all their faults. How much better it would be if we would act more like Jesus and look for their good points instead; if we would look at them with eyes of love. These then are some of the lessons to be learned from the life of Jesus; lessons which mankind needs to learn before sickness can be abolished from the world.


THE HUMAN CHRIST.

You were so human, Lord, You understand
My frequent falls and all I fail to do.
I feel the gentle pressure of Your hand
Guiding my footsteps through.

You walked the world with countless men like me,
Sharing with them the fever and the fret.
You strove with many a storm on Galilee,
And You will ne'er forget.

You bore the heartaches of our earthly day,
The gathering clouds, the dawns that broke too soon,
The treacherous blows that smote upon the way,
The weariness at noon.

Saviour Divine, pierced by our sorrow's sword,
You knew the heights of Heaven, the depths of hell,
Oh, God of Very God! I thank You, Lord,
That You were man as well.

MAC.


A PRAYER OF THANKS AND CONFESSION.

We thank You Father, for bringing us together again in fellowship with one another and with You. There are many things we would thank You for but most of all for sending Your Son Jesus Christ to live here an this earth. We remember how He lived a simple home life at Nazareth and how He learned by this to understand all the temptations and the difficulties to which we are exposed. We remember also how He taught us that; You are a God of love and that You are ever ready and willing to help those who call upon You. We thank You for this Father and for the privilege of prayer by which we can make our needs known.


We confess with sorrow how often we have strayed from the right way, how often we have done those things that we ought not to have done and how often we have omitted to do those things we know we should have done. Hear us now as we ask Your forgiveness for all our shortcomings and our ingratitude. Give us the courage and the will to try to live up to the pattern set for us by Jesus Christ. Help us to use whatever gifts and whatever strength we have to help others to do this also. We know You will never ask from us anything too hard for our strength, and that You are ever ready to hear our prayers for guidance.


Help us this day to feel a sense of gladness and joy, that like Mary in the Garden, we may hear the voice of the angel saying, "He is risen.''

In the name of Jesus Christ we pray.
They crossed the lake and came to land at Gennesaret, where the people recognised Jesus.

So they sent for the sick people in all the surrounding country and brought them to Jesus.

They begged him to let those who were ill at least touch the edge of his cloak; and all who touched it were made well.

Matthew 14- 34,36
“But the greatest of these is love.”  (1 Corinthians 13 v13)