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

THE FATHER’S LOVE

What a wonderful love the Father has for His children. When we think of our own love for people how small it seems in comparison with His. How small and petty are some of the things that we allow to happen. Things that stops the free flow of our love towards someone else.

Do we deserve this great and wonderful love that God is offering to us? I think if we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that not one of us really deserves it. And yet He goes on loving us, goes on giving to us. However badly we behave, He goes on offering us His forgiveness and giving us another chance. Every time we meet another person it is an opportunity to spread God's love around the world. But before we can really do this we have first of all to accept this great love that God is offering to us. We cannot give out what we have not got.


This love He is offering to us is not a shallow kind of love. It is deep and true and abiding. It is all knowing. It sees and understands the good and the evil in every one of US. And in spite of this He still wants to welcome us into His Kingdom. If we accept this great gift of love that He is offering to us so abundantly and put it into action in our everyday lives we shall find that the whole pattern of our lives can be changed. Our whole outlook will be clearer; material things will become less important to us and will come into a right perspective, and we shall find ourselves becoming possessed of an abiding sense of peace; and this is when healing can begin in us.


But we ourselves have to do our part. We have to make room in our hearts for this great gift and this may not be easy as so many hearts are filled with feelings of greed, resentment, hate, criticism and unforgiveness. How then are we to set about clearing these things from our hearts?


First of all we need to take a long close look at ourselves in order that we may get to know ourselves. We find it very easy to see faults in other people. I read somewhere that one can only recognise something that we ourselves have already experienced; that we cannot recognise anything that we ourselves have not known. I find this rather a sobering thought. Perhaps when we feel critical of someone else we should remind ourselves of this. It should teach us tolerance and understanding in our thinking and our treatment of others.

We cannot know and understand others until we first of all know and recognise ourselves. Not the superficial face that we often show to the world, but the real self. We may not always like what we see but we must do this if we are to clear the way for God's love to enter into our hearts. When we really know ourselves we shall then begin to find that we know and understand other people, and this is when we shall be able to help them to open their hearts to that wonderful healing love that Jesus showed to the people who came to Him for help.


There is a natural power of healing in a person who loves, and it can be communicated in a special way through the power of touch. This flow of energy is sometimes felt by the person who is being prayed for. Even though no words are spoken. To touch a person can be a prayer in itself. Jesus sometimes used this method and only touched a person and said nothing. We read in Matthew 14 v 35 36 " And when the men of that place recognised Him, they sent around to all that region and brought to Him all that were sick and besought Him that they might only touch the fringe of His garment; and as many as touched it were made well.''


Healing does not always depend on spoken prayer. There are times when we cannot speak such as when in a hospital or other public place. If we had more trust in God we would not feel that we have to use words so often. God KNOWS the person's needs far better than we do, so we do not need to spend too much time in thinking of the right words to say. All we need to do is love them, and place them in the Father's care; trusting Him to do what He knows to be best for them. All healing depends on God's perfect understanding of the situation, not on ours, because we cannot see the whole picture. Many sicknesses are the result of wrong relationships both in the family and in the larger community outside the family and it may be that God wants us to deal with these before physical healing can come to us.


To dream of an ideal world sometime in the future is not enough. We must do something NOW to help bring it about. It cannot be left to Governments and all the other groups of specialists that keep rising up. We need to build up a relationship between God and people. People like ourselves; just ordinary people remembering that each one of us, however simple, is precious in God's sight.


During the last war the Cathedral at Frankfurt was badly damaged, but a figure of Christ came through it unharmed except that the hands were missing. When the Cathedral was restored the figure of Christ was put back but the hands were not replaced. Instead a plaque was set across the base bearing these words. "Christ has no hands but ours!" God needs our hands; needs us to do His work here an earth.


Many ailments that are not healed are really a cry for the healing of our personalities and some sicknesses will only be healed when we stop sinning. Every time we open a newspaper or switch on the radio or television we see evidence of the amount of greed and selfishness and intolerance that is in the world today.


Jesus said "You shall love the Lord Your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind, you shall love your neighbour as yourself." (Matthew 22 v 37 39). This is what healing means. To love your neighbour as yourself. It means loving the whole Creation and living in harmony with it. To bring healing is to bring harmony out of disharmony; to bring order out of disorder; to bring peace out of strife.


Every time we have feelings of envy, hate, criticism or resentment towards any other person (even if we think it is deserved), we are bringing disharmony and disorder into the world. We are taking away that peace that Jesus tried so hard to leave with us. You remember His words in John 14, when He was telling the disciples that He would not be with them much longer. "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you; not as the world gives do I give to you." (V 27).

Whenever I hear or read those words I feel that peace stealing into my heart. Try it for yourselves. Any time you feel angry or resentful towards some other person try sitting quietly down and saying those words to yourself. Open the door of your heart and let them sink down right into it. The problem will still be there to be dealt with but you will find yourself much better equipped to deal with it. You will be able to think more clearly and to get it into the right perspective. You may even find that it is you yourself who is partly in the wrong; because you did not give the other person a chance to explain his point of view.


Let us look a bit more closely at this thing called "peace". What exactly is it? If someone said to you "What is peace?" how would you describe it? You could say that it is the opposite of strife. That is true up to a point but it does not go far enough to explain the real meaning of the word. Neither is it just the absence of noise. I asked several of my friends how they would define "peace," but none of us felt that we could do it adequately. The nearest that I personally can get to it is that "Peace is a deep inner contentment that only comes when we have a complete trust in God. However I decided to turn to my hymnbook and see what some of the hymn writers had to say about it and I found a hymn, which was written in 1359 by an anonymous writer. Let me quote it to you.


We bless Thee for Thy peace, 0 God,
Deep as the unfathomed sea,
Which falls like sunshine on the road
Of those who trust in Thee.

We ask not, Father, for repose
Which comes from outward rest,
If we may have through all life's woes
Thy peace within our breast;


That peace which suffers and is strong,
TRUSTS WHERE IT CANNOT SEE,
Deems not the trial way too long
But leaves the end with Thee.


That peace which flows serene and deep
A river in the soul,
Whose banks a living verdure keep,
God's sunshine o'er the whole.


0 Father, give our hearts this peace,
Whate'er the outward be,
Till all life's discipline shall cease
And we go home to Thee.


I think the middle verse is the whole crux of the matter. "Trusts where it cannot see''   that is what we must do. We must trust God more and leave the result with Him. So often when we pray to God, we tell Him what to do. We tell Him what we want; how we think He should answer our prayers, and when it doesn't happen we wonder why. We begin to have doubts and to lose our trust in Him. We forget that ONLY HE can see the whole situation. Our own vision is limited to our own part in it. Only God can look into the past and also into the future and so we have to place our trust in Him, leaving the outcome completely in His hands. And when the outcome is not what we expected or hoped that is the most crucial time of all. That is the time when our trust is most important; the time when we find out how much we really do trust Him. I know from my own personal experience that this is so.


This trust has to be absolutely unconditional. We cannot say to God I will do so and so if only You will heal me. We cannot make a bargain with God. Or perhaps I should put it the other way round and say that God will not make a bargain with us. There are times however when it does look as though He has accepted a bargain with us. I heard the story of a lady who was sick. She was not a Church-goer, and had never been interested in religion. There came a time however when her interest was aroused and she began to pray to God for healing. She promised Him that if only He would heal her she would go to Church regularly and would start working for Him. She would begin by going round to different Churches to find out which one she would join. She began to do this and the time came when she was healed.


When I heard this story being told I thought No! There is something wrong here. Something that doesn't fit. We should not try to make a bargain with God; yet on the face of it, it looks at though this was a bargain that God accepted and kept. But was it? Let us look at it a bit more closely. What did this lady do? She did not just sit back and wait for God to carry out what she had asked for. She set to work to do something about it herself. She began to prepare herself. She followed one of the commands of Jesus when He said, "Seek and ye shall find", and by doing this she opened the door of her heart, and God was able to enter in and bring healing to her. This was no "bargain" that God entered into; even though at first appearance it may have looked like it.


So where do we go from here? What do we do when we or someone we love falls sick? First of all we have to accept the fact that the sickness is there. It is no good closing our eyes to it and pretending that it is not there. We must do something about the physical side of it such as going to the doctor and following his advice. We must make use of his God given skills.


There is much talk these days about "positive thinking" but do we really know what we mean by it? To many people it simply means doing what I have just mentioned; simply by sitting back and not admitting that the trouble is there and hoping that it will go away. But this is not really "positive thinking". I would rather call this "wishful thinking". In many of the healings of Jesus He told the person concerned to do something. The 10 lepers He told to show themselves to the Priests (Luke 1 7 14) The man with the withered hand He told to stretch it forth, (Matthew 12 v 13). The lame man to take up his bed (John 5 v 9), the blind man to wash in the Pool at Siloam, (John 9 v 7). There are times when the sick person is unable to take action for himself and this is when someone else can do it on his behalf, like the paralytic man who was let down through the roof by his friends. (Luke 5), and the Centurion who sent to Jesus an behalf of his servant (Luke 7) and the deaf and dumb man who was taken to Jesus by his friends. (Mark 7). If we just sit back and do nothing we are being passive and not positive.


So having accepted the situation that has arisen we have to decide what we are going to do about it. We must co-operate with it and make it work out for the good of all concerned. We must handle it in such a way that it will bring as little distress as possible to ourselves and those around us. This is "positive thinking".


This is also the time when our trust in God is so important because so often we cannot do this in our own strength. We need to have a simple faith and trust in Him, a belief in His good will towards us and in His power to help us. And we can only do this by getting to know Him and by opening up our hearts to Him so that He can speak to us. We have to believe that "He cares'' for each individual one of us and that He and He only knows what is best for us. It is only when we can accept this fact right deep down in our hearts that we can place our full trust in Him and so become open to receive His help.





TEACH US TO LOVE.


O Father God, You who are love; show us what this word really means. Too often we have been content to love only those people we like, or to let love be sentimental and not practical. We have forgotten that love, as YOU know it, is something far deeper and more costly than an easy affection for nice and pleasant people.


Your love is for everyone; for Your enemies no less than for Your friends. (It cost You the agony of seeing Your Son Jesus Christ on the Cross in Your longing to seek and to save us.) Teach us something of that kind of love. Help us to bring it into our lives. Make us willing to suffer with You in Your care for the lonely and despised, not heeding what others think of us, so long as we are showing Your love to them, as Christ would show it were He here on earth now.


Make each one of us a centre for Your love here in the district where we live. Take away from us every unkind thought and keep us so in touch with Yourself that Your love flows through us all the time to those around us.


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)