Do I Have Enough Faith?

Imagine that you are walking along a dirt path in the woods admiring nature and communing with God. As you are enjoying God's presence, you see in the distance that a large tree branch has fallen across the path ahead. You reach the branch and realize that there is no way to pass unless the branch is moved. Thus, having the faith that God has the power to move mountains (let alone a tree branch), you fall to your knees and plead that God would remove the branch so that you can continue on your walk and get back to enjoying God's presence without hindrance. After a few uneventful minutes, you recall the story of the widow and the unjust judge (see Luke 18:1-8), and you decide that it is God's will for you to persevere in prayer until He answers. So you pray for 10 minutes. 30 minutes. 1 hour. 10 hours. ...

Wii Resurrection

For our 4th anniversary (a couple weeks ago), we took a small vacation to a house on the lakeshore of Lake Michigan. We brought our Nintendo Wii along as part of our vacation experience. On the last day of our vacation, there was a thunderstorm that led to a power surge throughout the house. We had our Wii plugged directly into the wall outlet at the time of the power surge. An hour or two later, we attempted to turn on our Wii so that our son could play for the remaining time while we packed up our stuff. But the Wii would not turn on. In fact, the LED indicator was completely black. (The LED is usually red when the Wii is plugged in.)

In the Face of Uncertainty

Josh and I prayed for healing for a childhood friend of Josh's a couple days ago who has been told by doctors that he has 1 year to live. As we prayed, we felt "electricity" flowing through our hands and forearms (with various intensities throughout the session), and Josh's friend experienced shaking on the left side of his body for a portion of the time. We commanded evil spirits and sickness to go in the name of Jesus after taking Josh's friend through some prayers to release negative emotions (unforgiveness, bitterness, resentment, fear/anxiety, etc.). There are several visible abnormalities due to Josh's friend's condition, but we have not yet seen any visible improvements of these.

More Thoughts on Healing

So... is it God's will to heal the sick, or not?

This question stirs up a lot of unnecessary controversy simply because people have different ideas of what the question actually means. [I'll leave that discussion for another post.] But for now, I think we can focus on another question in the neighborhood that has profound implications for our daily lives: Is it God's will for us (born-again followers of Jesus) to heal the sick?