Reflection on Healing

http://www.poemsbymichelleyee.wordpress.com My latest blog - Healing is something that everyone will go through in one point or another of their lives. There are many different types of healing such as physical, emotional and spiritual. Some types of healing can be immediate while others take a longer time before total healing is achieved. The Bible gave us many examples of sick people being immediately healed. In the 4 Gospels, we see that every person who has been touched by Jesus got healed. From the Gospel of Matthew: The healing of leaper: 8:2-3 The healing of Peter’s mother in law: 8:14-15 The healing of the paralytic: 9:2-3 Other accounts of healing: 9:18-33 From the Gospel of Mark: Multitudes Healed: 1:29-45 The healing of the paralytic: 2:1-13 The Gerasene Demoniac: 5:1-13 Other accounts of healing: 5:21-43 From the Gospel of Luke: Many are healed: 4:38-44 Healing of the leaper and the paralytic: 5:12-26 Healing of the demonic: 8:26-39 Other accounts of healing: 8:40-56 From the gospel of John: No record of any healing performed. In all cases, the person with the sickness is the one who approaches Jesus for healing. In other words, healing is to be actively sort after. It is active not passive. Jesus always responds to the need of the individual and meets every one of them who approaches Him. In this blog, we will study about the following things – The different types of healing – Physical, Emotional and Spiritual The Healing Process God’s plan for healing We will first begin identifying the different types of healing and briefly discuss what they are. Physical Healing This will include all the common diseases such as cough, flu and fever, backaches, headaches, muscle pain, menstrual cramps, anaemia, hypertension. It also includes cancer, tuberculosis, diabetes, leprosy, heart diseases, high blood pressure and leukaemia etc. It refers to the bodily sickness which causes pain and discomfort to the person. Sometimes it also could be healing of legs that are of unequal length or even healing of colour blindness. Emotional/Mental Healing This will include the healing of past hurts due to trauma, abuse (emotional/physical), neglect or rejection. Emotional hurts will also result and lead to mental illness such as depression, anxiety disorder and panic attacks. Emotional healing includes also the healing of anger, bitterness, jealousy, un-forgiveness, rage, guilt, condemnation, Identity crisis. I would even classify the healing of broken relationship under this category, reason because a lot of emotional issues are a result of soured relationships. And of course, we also have Spiritual Healing The healing of the Spirit man is actually interconnected with the healing of the emotion. Man is made up of 3 parts – body, soul, spirit. The Body refers the physical being in which we operate in; the Soul represents the heart of man and the Spirit (sometimes called the mind) which is the eternal component of the man which connects us to the Holy Spirit. The differentiation of the healing of the soul and spirit is not very clear and therefore it is often easy to get confused between these two, and they are also among the most complex form of healing. Spiritual healing could also mean and include the casting out of demons from a person. I have earlier quoted some scriptures from the Gospel which tells us about Jesus healing a person from demons. Now that we have identified the 3 different types of healing, we will look into the healing process in general for all 3 together. The Healing Process (When healing hurts) In the opening statement of my blog, I’ve mentioned that some types of healing can be immediate while others take a longer time before total healing is achieved. I also shared from the Bible accounts when people were immediately healed when Jesus touched them. Some of the healing, that can be immediate are mostly the physical types such as pain in the right elbow, pain in the neck etc… These things are still happening in church today. I’ve witness God touching a person who has been wheelchair bound for many years and after the service was over, he left his wheelchair in church and walked out unassisted. God said to us in His Word, “I am the Lord, am your healer” (Exodus 15:26) Yet there are also cases when physical healing is a process, in cases like people who are suffering from cancer, they have to undergo long term chemotherapy treatments and this usually causes the patient lots of discomfort. Still, I have heard of cancer patients after being prayed for, their cancer cells suddenly miraculously dropped by a significant number, there are also cases of brain tumour sufferers whom after being prayed for, their tumour miraculously shrunk to the extent that operation is no longer needed. I hear such testimonies in church so frequently that I didn’t think it is impossible for anyone not to get healed, after all God already said that He is our healer. However, there are cases in which God did not heal them, such questions are hard to answer but it nevertheless doesn’t change the fact that God is a healing God. For those that did not get healed by God, I personally choose to believe the reason is because of this verse ‘at present we do not see everything subject to Him” (Hebrew 2:8b). We are living in the physical world where Satan is still roaming about with his angels and until Jesus comes back, Satan still has some “power” over the world. While some healing is immediate, some take a longer process before healing is attained. Emotional healing for instance is the best example to illustrate this point. I heard my pastor once said that the emotional healing process is like an onion. God has to take us through the healing process one step at a time. As I have briefly discussed in the earlier part of my blog, emotional healing includes healing of past hurts due to trauma, abuse (emotional/physical), neglect or rejection. It includes also the healing of anger, bitterness, jealousy, un-forgiveness, rage, guilt, condemnation and identity crisis. I would even classify the healing of broken relationship under this category, reason because a lot of emotional issues are a result of soured relationships. A lot of the emotional pains that we are experiencing in the present have a lot of times got to do with our past. Some of the events could have taken place as long as 20 years ago. Within 20 years, there might have been other incidents which will add on to the hurt that has been done 20 years earlier. As a result, this person would have about 20 years of accumulated hurts of which he/she must be healed from. And the pain of 20 years cannot be healed overnight. In such instance, the healing process will automatically be more complicated and more time consuming. Let me show you an example to illustrate my point more clearly. Sarah is a 30 year woman, who was raped repeated by her stepfather when she was 9 till she was 11. She later met her ex-boyfriend Tom who had been with her for the past 3 years, who also abused her sexually in several occasions. After many years of having been sexually abused, Sarah would naturally have sense of bitterness and resentment towards men, she might also feel shameful and withdrawn thinking that she is dirty because she has been violated. Sarah has gone through many years of emotional and physical pains until she met this current God-fearing boyfriend John who unlike the other man in her life treats her with respect and dignity and by his gentleness slowly won Sarah’s trust. Sarah started attending church with John and one day she met God and that started the whole healing process. The first thing that God did, was to bring her back to the incident when she was repeatedly raped, first by her stepfather, later by her ex-boyfriend. Sarah had to come face to face once again with her painful past and the whole rape scene was replaying in her mind. The pain was so real and so unbearable that she cried for hours during the ministry. The first session of healing lasted 3 hours. She could have stopped the healing process and ran out of church in the middle of ministry, but she pressed on. She is only at the beginning stage, she has slowly started to open up her heart and God is slowly dealing with her teaching her to let go of her bitterness and resentment. She has to learn how to speak forgiveness on a daily basis and this is an on-going process. Every day, she has to read God’s word and fill her mind with the love and truth of God, and the eventual healing comes only after she has found and restored her self-worth and self-image in Christ and knows that the past no longer has an effect on her. The healing of emotional pains is usually a painfully long process and a lot of people do not get healed completed because they refused to go through the pain of healing. When the pain becomes too much to bear, they choose to give up instead of trust in the Lord’s strength and grace to help them get through. The Bible says, “My grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in your weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9). God is a gentle God and knows our limits he does not allow us to go through more than what we are able to bear. “No temptation has overtaken you , but such as is common to men, and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation, will prove the way of escape also that you may be able to endure it.” (1 Corinthians 12:13). Even though this verse talks about temptation, I believe this is also applicable to the healing process. Because God knows how much pain we are able or not able to endure at one go, he will not push or press us through the healing process, but He will take us through step by step. When we are ready to proceed us to the next level of healing, He will go through it with us. The healing process for emotional wounds, as we have just discussed is more complicated and takes a longer time to heal as compared to physical wound, but healing will eventual take place. We must be patient with ourselves and with God as healing cannot be rushed through; it has to be very thorough in order that healing is complete. The question to ask is – Do you wish to be healed? Some just choose to dwell in self-pity and never really attain the healing that God intended for them. It is not that God doesn’t want to heal them, no, but they themselves just gave up on their own healing and choose to “accept fate” and continue to live in their pain and misery. Just I’ve mentioned earlier, healing is to be sought after, it is active and not passive. As healing is a continuous process, we have to be in constant co-operation with God in our own healing. On our own, we must continue to read the Word and feel our mind with the love and the truth of God, forgiveness must be deliberate. Forgiveness does not pardon the wrong doer of their action, it just realises you from your own prison of misery and pain. Forgiveness is for the strong not for the weak. Now that we have just discussed about physical and emotional healing, we will continue our discussion next and talk about spiritual healing. As I have mentioned earlier, the healing of the Spirit man is actually interconnected with the healing of the emotion and the body. Man is made up of 3 parts – body, soul, spirit. The Body refers the physical being in which we operate in; the Soul represents the heart of man and the Spirit (sometimes called the mind) which is the eternal component of the man which connects us to the Holy Spirit. The differentiation of the healing of the soul and spirit is not very clear and therefore it is often easy to get confused between these two, and they are also among the most complex form of healing. Spiritual healing could also mean and include the casting out of demons from a person. I have earlier quoted some scriptures from the Gospel which tells us about Jesus healing a person from demons. First we need to identify how demons can enter the person. 1) Sin (dabbling with the occult) 2) Fear 3) Un-forgiveness 4) Bitterness/Anger When we dabble with occult such as practicing of witchcraft, it opens up the door for the evil spirit to enter into your lives. Fear, un-forgiveness, bitterness and anger can also lead to the same thing. Fear, un-forgiveness, bitterness and anger are themselves spirits and when we choose to dwell in that for a long time, refusing to let go, we give permission, allowing them access to your life. The healing of a demonised person will usually take place as a result of renunciation of the following items above and through the confession of sin. It is also done through the ministry of prayer and in worship. Since demons cannot stand in the presence of worship, they will have to flee when worship takes place. In the examples given from the bible, we learn that some of the diseases are spirit inflicted, when the spirit left them, the illness also leaves their body. (Mark 5:1-15). As the person is healed in the spirit, the emotional part of the man is also dealt with, because they have to be deliberate to give up their un-forgiveness, bitterness and anger which could be caused by some of the things that happened in the past. That is why I said that the healing of the emotional is interrelated to the healing of the spirit and the body. God’s plan for healing (Apapted from Seminar on “Healing” by John Wimber) **The Hebraic view of man sees him as an integrated whole. This came from the view of God because we are made in His image. The Lord (Yahweh – His person name) is one God (“Elohim”, a plural from of the word, “El”, a God). The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are so dynamically interrelated that their plural identity in reality is one God. In 1 Thessalonians 5:23, Paul saw man as one whole; an integration of body, soul and spirit. “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through, May you whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”. Realise that you cannot affect one part without affecting the whole. The total person is always involved in all that he does or in all that happens to him. Although sickness comes in through different dimensions of the human being (spiritual, emotional, physical) it always affects the other areas in one way or another. Therefore sickness should not be dealt within “isolation”. Often most deep seated problems of health will need treatment at many levels. Consequently, the focus should be on the healing of the person, not the “area of sickness”. ** In conclusion, healing – - Comes in 3 forms -1) Physically, 2) Emotionally, 3) Spiritually - Healing is done through many layers and through a long process. - It is sought after. - It is active not passive. - It is by choice. God’s plan for man is the healing of all 3 aspect of the person – Body, Mind and Soul. Therefore, when the spirit is made well, the body and emotion is healed and restored as well. God bless you

Serving with you in His kingdom with love; Princess Michelle- Beloved Daughter of the Most High King