Prayer for Mature Christians

Alcides Moreno was a window washer on the towering skyscrapers high above Manhattan. He rode platforms with his brother Edgar high in the sky to wash the windows of those skyscrapers.

One day, disaster struck the family. As the two brothers worked on the 47th story of a high rise on the Upper East Side, their platform collapsed, and the Moreno brothers fell from the sky. As you might expect, Edgar died from the fall. But Alcides survived. By every law of physics and medicine, Moreno should have died.

Now Alcides Moreno didn’t land on a passing airplane, or catch his shirt on a flagpole, or have anything else amazing happen like you see in the movies; he fell the entire forty-seven stories to the pavement below. Yet somehow he survived. And, despite having plenty of scars and back injuries, Alcides can walk today.  He estimates that he operates at about 80% of what he was before the fall.  But 80% isn’t too shabby considering he hit the pavement at over 100 miles per hour.  Moreno’s physician has no explanation for it and says it was a miracle.

Do you believe in miracles? We desperately want to, don’t we?

In today’s Gospel some people bring to Jesus a man who was deaf and could hardly talk, and they begged Jesus to place his hand on him.

It’s interesting, Jesus didn’t heal this man in the way these people asked. Have you noticed that in your own life? God sometimes works in your life . . . but not exactly in the way you had specified. Jesus didn’t put his hand on the man, as requested. Rather he took him aside, away from the crowd and put his fingers into the man’s ears. Then he spit and touched the man’s tongue. Then he looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to the man, “Ephphatha!” (which means “Be opened!”). At this, the man’s ears were opened, his tongue was loosened and he began to speak plainly.

The question is, does Jesus still perform such miracles today?

Some very devout Christians say, “No.” They say the day of miracles is past. Both Martin Luther and John Calvin, two great leaders of the Protestant Reformation, were in this camp. And many other Christians believe this as well. They cite Jesus’ words that his miracles were but signs affirming that he was who he said he was. And that makes sense, too. We don’t have to witness his miraculous powers to believe he is the Son of God. We have our Bibles, which contain numerous eye-witness reports from people who were there when he healed the blind, the deaf, the lame, and the mute.

And we do have the wonders of modern medicine. People are already living nearly twice as long on average than they did in biblical times. But that doesn’t mean we will not still be at the mercy of forces that can destroy us. That doesn’t mean that many of us will not destroy ourselves.

Did you see the news report that the average life span of adults in this country actually shrunk in 2017 because of the opioid epidemic? The number of suicides continues to grow as well. And of course there are those lives lost to gun violence. Just because many people are living longer than ever doesn’t mean that we will no longer pray for God to intervene in our lives or the lives of those we love from time to time. But it does mean that we will not be as vulnerable to sickness and death as people were when Jesus was teaching and healing. And it gives us the opportunity to rethink the ways in which God answers prayer.

There are two things we need to recognize about miracles of healing. First of all, we need to get rid of the idea that the more faith you have, the more likely it is that you will experience a miracle. Recently a radio pastor gave an interesting response to the question of faith and healing.

A lady on the broadcast, who was obviously crying, said, “Pastor, I was born blind, and I’ve been blind all my life. I don’t mind being blind but I have some well-meaning friends who tell me that if I had more faith I could be healed.”

This was evidently causing this woman some distress. Not only was she blind, but some of her so-called friends were telling her it was her fault. If she just had enough faith, God would heal her.

The radio pastor then asked the blind lady, “Do you carry one of those white canes?”

“Yes I do,” she replied.

“Well, the next time someone says that, hit them over the head with the cane; then say, ‘If you had more faith, that wouldn’t hurt!’”

What a profound statement. Healing is not proportional to our faith. Too many Christians have had guilt piled on to their already suffering bodies because people have told them that if they had more faith they would be healed. It’s a lie! Some of the greatest Christians who have ever lived have suffered terrible deaths. And, of course, everyone is going to die sooner or later. Prayers are not answered according to the amount of faith we have.

We also have to recognize that most prayers do not lead to physical healing. Some of us don’t want to hear that, but it’s true.

Most of us have known at least one person who has lain at death’s door, and people have prayed and prayed for healing, but physical healing has not come. Most of us are mature enough to realize that prayer is not a heavenly slot machine into which we pour our prayers and automatically the answer we desire comes out. If we could do that, there would be no need for faith. Faith is belief in the unseen. “Now we see through a glass darkly.” But that doesn’t mean that our prayers are unheard and unanswered.

Some time back, sociologist and pastor Tony Campolo was challenged by a friend to add a ministry of healing to his work. Campolo decided to try it at a church in Oregon. On impulse at the end of the service he announced to any who wanted to remain that they would be having a healing service. He warned them that they should not expect too much, but he would be glad to pray with them and anoint them with some oil. Campolo was surprised when about thirty people stayed for the event. He prayed with each one individually, hearing all kinds of requests for deliverance, including many with physical illnesses.

Four days later he received a call from a woman who indicated that he had prayed for her husband at the service. Her husband, she said, had “had cancer.”

“Had cancer?” Campolo asked, wondering somehow if her husband had been cured.

“Yes,” she said, “He’s dead now.”  Disheartened, Campolo listened further to her story. She recounted how prior to this event her husband was quite angry with God and unbearable to be around. Since the night of the healing service, though, he was different.

“The last four days have been the best days of our lives together,” the woman said. Then she added, “He was not cured, but he was healed.”

What a great testimony. Those prayers did make a difference. Perhaps the anointing oil did as well. Healing took place even if being curing from cancer did not.

So never give up on prayer. God uses all kinds of means to offer help to His people just as Jesus used different means to heal people. Sometimes it’s the prayer of a pastor. Sometimes it’s just the presence of a loved one in a time of crisis.

Do you have someone who is experiencing a crisis in their life? Pray for them, but do it like a mature Christian, recognizing that God does not always work in the way we have specified. But God does work . . . and every once in a while a miracle occurs.