We believe that God is still healing people today.
Probably every Christian church would agree with that statement, but the means by which they believe that God delivers healing would vary widely. Some churches would say, "Sure, God heals us through modern medicine and doctors who care for us well." That is certainly true. I met with my doctor yesterday and he lovingly and carefully went over test results for me and helped me get a plan of attack in moving forward in a healthy way. Other churches would say, "We pray for sick people and hope that they get lucky and God chooses to heal them." This is what I call the "lucky lottery mindset." Some believers find themselves begging God and fasting to see the sick healed - and sometimes they see results.
As a church, we believe in boldly coming to the throne of grace and asking an incredibly generous God to bring health, healing and strength to broken bodies, hearts, mindsets, finances, marriages, jobs and situations. We believe that God is always working and sometimes we don't have something simply because we have not asked him. There are no long prayers necessary to see God move, in fact healing prayers in the New Testament are all very brief. We are not afraid to pray multiple times for someone. Praying more than once doesn't mean we are manipulating God or making the person feel guilty for not seeing a result, it simply means that we take Jesus seriously when he told us that when we pray for others we need to keep asking, keep seeking, & keep knocking on the door of heaven (Mt.6).
There are some that say if you don't get healed - it means you don't have enough faith. That mindset doesn't square with my understanding of Scripture nor my experience of seeing God move and heal even when my faith is challenged and the person praying has little to no faith either. If you have faith the size of a mustard seed you can see God do great things.
Small faith can be gained by hearing the testimony of what God has already done for another person. This is why we are working harder and harder to share testimonies of God's faithfulness. How are you doing sharing your testimonies of breakthrough? I know I received a text message a few hours ago from someone in our congregation, which was a short testimony. She was talking about a small area of breakthrough where she felt like she obeyed God in a small way, and He rewarded her obedience in a big way to encourage her. Her message made my day. It built up my faith that reminded me again that God loves us and is still moving.
In all three of our worship services we had reports of backs, knees and migraines being healed on the spot. The people who received the healing were so happy and so were those who were praying!
May God bless you with a mustard seed of faith today to believe Him for great things!
Andrew Burchett
Lead Pastor