Healed

Our God specializing in restoring what has been broken.  Jesus died on a cross so that we could be in right relationship with Himself.  And, He wants to express His love and power in every area of our
lives, including the physical. James 5 states:
14 Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.
15 And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.
16 Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.

Our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and we can call upon the Lord and ask Him to restore those physical bodies.  Throughout the Church, people gather together to pray for those afflicted with a variety of diseases, and it's important that we agree together in order to see God work.  We have an incredible opportunity to testify to the power of God as we come into agreement and intercede fervently and regularly for those affected by the COVID-19 virus.

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In Exodus 15, we find that God spoke through Moses to the children of Israel; we can read that Moses...
25 ...cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree. When he cast it into the waters, the waters were made sweet. There He made a statute and an ordinance for them. And there He tested them,
26 and said, "If you diligently heed the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in His sight, give ear to His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have brought on the Egyptians. For I am the Lord who heals you."

The year was 2010, and there was quite a bit of excitement that long-time television and radio host John Tesh was going to do a Christmas concert in Montgomery.  Tesh, not only known for his stint on Entertainment Tonight, had also ventured into Christian music, and was leading worship and recording worship songs.  The concert was certainly a wonderful event and was a total sellout at the Montgomery Performing Arts Centre.

Five years after that, John Tesh's life took a dramatic turn.  According to a new Christian Post article, in 2015, Tesh "had been diagnosed with a rare form of prostate cancer and given just 18 months to live."

He experienced complications from his first surgery and his body was "shutting down." The article quotes Tesh as saying, "One day, I looked at my wife with tears in my eyes and said, ‘You have to kill me.’” He couldn't shake the nausea from chemo. And, he lost sight of God's faithfulness.

Tesh relates:

“I was crying out to God, asking, ‘Why have you done this to me?’ I was starting to feel like Job. The devil comes to steal and destroy, and I began to act like a cancer patient. I wasn’t in a place where I was connected to the Word of God; I couldn’t see that I could have abundant life.”

And the cancer spread.  Finally, John and his wife Connie dove into the Scriptures and discovered what God had to say about healing.  The Christian Post story says that after being told that he would have to endure 62 radiation treatments over three months, they made a dramatic concession:

“At that moment, my wife and I looked at each other, and faith was born," he said. "We realized we were done with treatment.”

Today, the Grammy-nominated composer and concert pianist is completely cancer-free — a miracle he attributes to both his Christian faith, his wife of 28 years, actress Connie Selleca, and the wisdom of doctors.

“If it had not been for my wife, Connie, I probably would’ve taken myself out,” he admitted. “When faith was born, I was healed of not just cancer, but arthritis as well. I realized, for the first time, the difference between faith and unbelief.

Tesh writes about his experiences with cancer and tells his life story in a new book called, Relentless: Unleashing a Life of Purpose, Grit and Faith.

God wants us to be whole.  Sometimes he will heal - miraculously - sometimes he will not.  But, in all things, He desires to express Himself.  And, there are spiritual exercises, as well as physical, in which we can participate in order to release God's power.

There are prayer requests that we will encounter regularly, and we can be challenged to think: When we pray for someone to be healed, are we doing it because it's a name on a list, or do we pray in faith, with the Word?  We are called to pray in faith.
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I think it is entirely appropriate to pray for healing, and that is critically important in this time of COVID-19: pray fervently for those who are afflicted by the disease, that they would recover.  Pray for those who work in the health care field, that they might have wisdom to give just the right treatment and that they would be protected from the disease.  And, we can pray for the protection of our communities.  Exodus 15 reminds us that God is the One who heals.