God has ordained that the prayers of church leaders and anointing with oil in the name of the Lord, may be used to bring wholeness, healing, peace, to a troubled and sick soul. The anointing with oil is the outward and visible sign of the inward anointing of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer.

We are talking about healing in its widest application. Sickness may be physical: caused by disease or accidents; emotional: caused by temperament, abuse or traumas; relational: caused by conflict and rejection; and spiritual: caused by our own personal sin. God works through the prayers of the church, as well as the medical profession, through psychologists and counselors, to effect his healing. Prayer should surround and support the ministry of healing of the scientific medical community. There should be no conflict between science and Christianity on the subject of healing.

But scientific methods do not exhaust the possibility of healing. Jesus told his disciples to preach the Gospel, announce the coming of the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick (cf. The Ministry of Healing, A.J. Gordon). The Gospel of the forgiveness of sins is available to those who will confess their sins. Healing involves forgiveness. Only God can forgive. Jesus accompanied healing with declarations of forgiveness.

I began my ordained ministry at All Souls, Langham Place in London, which was known as the Doctor's Church, because it was surrounded by medical institutions: the Royal College of Surgeons, the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of Nursing, and was only a couple of city blocks from Harley Street where the leading medical specialists had their offices. On one side was the Middlesex Hospital and nearby was St. Edward's Hospital for Officers where the Royal family went for treatment. On the Sunday nearest St. Luke's Day (October 18th) we would hold a Doctor's Service for the medical community followed by lunch at one of the colleges. It helped that my boss, John Stott, had been raised in Harley Street where his distinguished father had been a physician to the royal household. In my church experience there was no competition between medical science and the church's ministry of healing.

Francis MacNutt, founder of Christian Healing Ministries, has this to say about the relationship between the medical community and the church. "Ordinarily God works through doctors, psychiatrists, counselors and nurses to facilitate nature's healing process....God works through the doctor to heal as well as through the prayer for healing - the doctor, counselor and the nurse are all ministers of healing. All these different professions, with their different competencies, go to make up God's healing team. Any time we disparage any person who helps bring about the healing of the whole person we are destroying the kind of cooperative healing ministry that the Christian community might have and are setting up false divisions between divine and human healing methods." (Healing p.148)

"In one 2004 national study of 1,100 physicians, 74 percent responded that they believed 'that miracles have occurred in the past,' while almost the same number, 73 percent, affirm that they 'can occur today.' The majority of physicians (59 percent) pray for their patients, and roughly 46 percent encourage patients to pray at least partly for God to answer their prayers. What might be the largest surprise in the survey, however, is that 55 percent of physicians claimed to 'have seen treatment results in their patients that they would consider miraculous." (Miracles, Craig S. Keener, p.721)

Statistics show that most Americans believe in miracles. Of people forty-five years of age and over, eighty percent believe in miracles, forty-one percent believe they occur every day, and thirty-seven percent claim to have witnessed one. Eighty-five percent of women believe, and seventy-three percent of men. Eighty-six percent of people with high school diplomas believe, and seventy-one percent with college degrees. (AARP: The Magazine, January/February 2009, pp.50-64)

"Richard Foster tells the story of his first experience with healing prayer. It involved a man who had led a mission of thirty-three men in World War II. They found themselves pinned down by enemy gunfire. He prayed all night for deliverance, but instead all but six men were killed. This experience left him a confirmed atheist. But since that day he had not been able to sleep. Foster asked if he could pray for the man, who agreed. The prayer was for emotional healing and included, as an afterthought, the ability to sleep through the night. The man returned a week later with this report: 'Every night I have slept soundly, and each morning I have awakened with a hymn on my mind. And I am happy...happy for the first time in twenty-eight years.' This experience convinced Foster that the healing ministry of Jesus is intended for the whole person - physical, emotional, mental and spiritual." (Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home, p.205 quoted by David Nystrom)

Some years ago when Antoinette and I were in Cornwall we visited the ruins of a 6th century Celtic Chapel at Madron, which had a holy well used for baptisms and was known for its healing qualities. I had been suffering from an injured knee which was giving me considerable pain. My desire to be healed overcame my prejudices and I splashed some of the water from the well over my knee and asked for healing. A short time later I noticed that I wasn't aware of pain in my knee any more. I had experienced a miracle of healing. I thanked God for the healing power of his grace.

What are the greatest hindrances to healing, to wholeness? Jesus said that it was unbelief, lack of faith. Today, our Western intellectual culture is anti-supernatural in orientation. There is a built-in skepticism about the possibility of miracles. The majority of the world has no problem with miracles. Asian, African and Latin American churches see God acting in miraculous ways much of the time. We also suffer from the sin of independence - the unwillingness to admit that we need the prayers of others. We have no problem with praying for ourselves, but we are reluctant to ask others to pray for us. This reluctance comes from our desire to avoid being seen as deficient in any way, and our egotistical need to feel that we are self-sufficient, that God and us can handle anything by ourselves. The truth of the matter is that all of us are deficient - we are all sinners in need of forgiveness - and we are not self-sufficient - we need the community of believers - the church. That is why God has provided for us the opportunity to be prayed for, to receive the laying on of hands and anointing with oil, so that we might experience the healing we need, and which God wants us to have, whatever it is.

Where there is provision for being prayed for, to receive the laying on of hands and anointing, in your worship, you need to overcome your reluctance and avail yourself of the opportunity.

Miracles do not always occur, they may be rare, but that should not prevent us for seeking healing. Surgery does not always succeed but that doesn't prevent you from taking the risk that it will. Miracles are signs of God's working in our lives. They function as promises of a better future. They foreshadow the hope that lies beyond this world.

Sometimes we are reluctant to pray for healing because we don't want to be disappointed. Jesus chided his hometown neighbors for their lack of faith. "He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. And he was amazed at their lack of faith." (Mark 6:6) When Jesus saw the invalid at the pool of Bethesda he asked him, "Do you want to get well?" (John 5:6) What about you? Do you want to get well? Are you willing to seek prayer for healing? How is your faith in the Healer?

Thine arm, O Lord, in days of old was strong to heal and save;
It triumphed o'er disease and death, o'er darkness and the grave.
To thee they went, the blind, the deaf, the palsied, and the lame,
the leper set apart and shunned, the sick with fevered frame.

And lo. Thy touch brought life and health, gave hearing, strength and sight;
And youth renewed and frenzy calmed owned thee, the Lord of light: And now, O Lord, be near to bless, almighty as of yore,
In crowded street, by restless couch, as by Gennesaret's shore.
Be thou our great deliverer still, thou Lord of life and death;

Restore and quicken, soothe and bless, with thine almighty breath:
To hands that work and eyes to see, give wisdom's heavenly lore,
That whole and sick, and weak and strong,
may praise thee evermore. Edward Hayes Plumptre (1821-1891)

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