Discipled to Jesus, Session 2 notes from Pastor Bob
Mar 22, 2011
Discipled to Jesus
Four-Part Course Equipping the Saints to Minister in the Power of the Holy Spirit
Presented by Bob Oliver
Winter 2011
Session II – Called to the Ministry of Jesus
- Welcome, Prayer
- Questions to consider from the readings
- Mark 2,3,4; 10:17-31
- Reading from David Watson’s Called and Committed
- Reading from Jerry Bridges’ Engaging an Unseen Foe
- God desires to heal the sick
- Jesus reveals God’s heart
- Why the Biblical references to God’s emotions are so important to our understanding of healing and God’s desire to heal
- The Compassion of Jesus
- Healing the Spirit, (Power Healing, Wimber, pages 82-91)
IV. Protection and the Weapons of our Warfare
The Fight is real, (Called and Committed, Watson, pages 117-125)
- Direct attack
- Spiritual accusation
- Spiritual exploitation
- Spiritual counterfeit
- Spiritual temptation
V. What about sin? (page 89ff Power Healing. John Wimber, “God’s Freedom Fighters,” taken from Called and Committed, Watson, pages 122-125)
VI. What about Anger? (Anger is a Choice. Tim LaHaye. Chapt 4, “Anger and Your Health.” Pages 32-45)
- God desires to heal the sick
I have a little Greek mother in law name Kiki Mela Evangelatos. She hates to ask for anything. If she wants something, she’ll ask if someone else may want …this or that. If there are takers, she’ll pass the dish to them and then take a little too. You see, people have different ways of asking.
Christians ask for things differently. The differences go beyond style of prayer to our fundamental understanding of who God is and what God desires to do in the world. In other words, Christians tend to do their asking based upon what they believe the will of God to be. If they aren’t too sure, they might add this proviso to their asking: “Lord, if it be thy will…” Why this slogan? To take Jesus’ lead in asking prayers when you are obviously not Jesus often seems to border on presumption. At worst, it sounds like ordering God around. For other Christ followers who believe that one should take up Jesus style of asking, the “If it be thy will…” slogan seems laced with more fatalism than faith. (Empowered Evangelicals. Page 115-6)
“If it be thy will…” at times sounds as though the person praying thinks it may be proper to ask, but feels it would be presumptuous to expect any affirmative response from God.
The Bible teaches us to pray with the understanding that God acts in response to prayer he has inspired.
When Jesus instructed his disciples to “pray in his name,” he was urging them to pray as his representatives, as those who have an understanding of his will. Certainly it would be the height of resumption to do or say anything “in his name” without a corresponding conviction that it just what Jesus would want in the situation.
Through prayer we become participants with God in His work in the world. In other words, prayer changes things. God doesn’t change, but we believe that God changes circumstances and changes us through the making of our prayers. Prayer makes a difference because prayer is a means God has provided to bring the influence of his kingdom. This reflects the fact that we are created to be partners with God; we were meant to represent him and his interests, to seek to understand his purposes and cooperated with them. Of course God remains God while we are only and forever his creatures. We will never, according to the false doctrine of Mormonism become little gods, ruling over our corner of the universe eternally procreating with our many wives.
In order to “pray in His name..” we have a responsibility to actively seek to understand his will. Too often the prayers of Christians is half-hearted because they lack conviction regarding God’s will in a given situation. What I have noticed is that the prayers in the Bible, rather than taking a tentative posture, are bold – even when they express frustration and anguish. (Ibid. pages 119-20)
Openly receiving healing for ourselves and confidently praying for others rests ultimately in our understanding of who God is. J.I. Packer wrote:
“God is ultimately not happy until all His beloved ones are finally out of trouble.”
If this is true, then we can expect God to desire our healing. Some don’t see God as the Bible and J.I. Packer portray Him.
- Jesus reveals God’s heart
The Old Testament and the New Testament writers understood God, not through speculation, but through his concrete acts in history, and now supremely through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. “In the pastGod spoke to our forefathers through the prophets… but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.” Hebrews 1:1,2). What God was communicat-ing through the Law and the Prophets is now focused in Christ.
Jesus is the self-revelation of the Father.
John 1
Here John speaks of Jesus as the LOGOS – as the Word of God who reveals the being of God.
Greek – “made Him known,” = exegesis. Jesus is the only exegesis of God. He alone explains the character and being of God. He uniquely reveals the inner life of the Father. Jesus is as essential to God’s self-communication as words are to our self-communication. A revelation of the Father without the Son would be like speaking without words, (Authority to Heal. Blue, pages 72-73)
Jesus himself said, “The Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” (John 5:19)
Jesus is not only dependent upon the Father’s will but also faithful in accurately revealing it. Ken Blue in his book Authority to Heal writes:
“It is in this light that we should view Jesus’ healing miracles. They reveal something essential about the character of the Father, in particular, his consistent and unambiguous hostility towards sickness and his desire to heal it.” (page 73).
When I was growing up in
“Lord Jesus, you healed people in the Gospels. You opened blind eyes, you raised up cripples and straightened shriveled hands, you even called forth the dead and they came forth. Our dear Brother is at the point of death, as you healed in the past, so heal now! I pray that the disease afflicting our Brother would stop it now! Amen”
What we learn in the Gospels is that Jesus reveals that God is concerned even for our relatively trivial pains. The shortage of wine at a wedding in
In more important matters Jesus revealed that God is so concerned to heal our sicknesses that he may not even take into account the sins which caused them. One theologian commenting of the miracles of Jesus said:
“The important thing about the people in Jesus’ miracle stories is not that they were sinners, but that they were sufferers.” (Karl Barth. Church Dogmatics. Page 223)
I love it about Jesus that he didn’t just look at their past, and then at their tragic present in light of it. Often He doesn’t ask about their sin. Now, on one occasion the disciples did; “Who sinned this man or his parents?” Jesus answered, “Neither, but that the glory of God might be revealed…”
Jesus didn’t denounce the people because of their sin. He doesn’t hold it against them. He creates for them a new future, “Go and sin no more.”
As we have seen through the pages of the Gospel of Mark, the deep sympathy of Jesus for men and women, with their wrecked lives, their physical and mental sufferings, their heart-rending sorrows, the tragedy of their sins. Jesus is determined to bring the rightness and the wholeness of His kingdom to their lives.
- God’s emotions
Some don’t think of God as being emotional. The Bible reveals God as deeply feeling and caring. God’s attitude towards us and his activity in history are not rooted in divine wisdom and will, but spring from an emotional life, deep within his being. Some Christians believe that God is not caught up in feelings for our hurts. God is emotionally removed fro our suffering. If this is the perspective of who God is then our prayers follow in kind. We may have hard someone pray, “Lord, if anyone deserves healing it surely is Bill.” Then they go on to list their upstanding works. The prayer takes the form of a legal argument.
So we must argue for Bill before God. Build a case for why God should heal him.
Sometimes our praying has the tone of begging or bargaining with God. God doesn’t really care and he is not moved to tears but perhaps He will be
prompted to move by ours.
This is not the God who was in Christ that the Bible reveals. The God who is in Christ cares deeply about our pain so much so that he experienced it. God was fully present in the flesh of Jesus of Nazareth as that flesh suffered hunger, thirst, weariness and as it was pierced and torn on the cross of Golgotha. He not only is concerned about the pain caused by the world’s sin, he has personally experienced that pain.
D. The Compassion of Jesus
The Gospels record God’s identification with us in all types of suffering and also show his resolve to heal that suffering.
Greek word for compassion – splanchnizomai.
This word is testimony of God’s caring for our pain and his determination to alleviate it.
The word comes from the word for “bowels” or “viscera.” It carries the idea of intense feelings of close natural bonds, such as that of mothers for their children, and words that refer to the belly or the womb.
It is the word that is used to describe a person’s involuntary gasp that is wrenched from a man overwhelmed by a great sorrow or a groan of a woman racked with labor pains.
Matthew 14:14 “When Jesus saw the large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.”
Jesus works of healing and deliverance rose up out of this deep compassion.
Matthew 9: 35:36 “…When he saw the crowds he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”
In Mark 8: 1-2 Jesus is moved at the sight of a crowd without food.
“Since they had nothing to eat, Jesus called his disciples to him and said, ‘I have compassion for these people; they have already been with me three days and have nothing to eat.”
Mark 1:40-41 here we find a man who embodied all the physical, social and spiritual disintegration of a sinful world. AT this sight, Jesus is overwrought with compassion.
“A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, ‘If you are willing, you can make me clean.’ Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched him.’I am willing,’ he said, ‘Be clean.’”
The gospel writers state that Jesus healed people because he loved them. Look, he had compassion for them; he was on their side; he wanted to solve their problems.
May this same compassion compel us as we pray for sick people, hurting people, demonized people, hungry people. May Jesus’ compassion take possession of us!
The healing ministry of Jesus Christ and the healing ministry of His Church, His people, is rooted in compassion. It is our response to His love, His mercy and His compassion for us personally. As we express that compassion, we give evidence of the presence and advance of His kingdom.
E. Healing the Spirit
John Wimber in his book Power Healing in the fourth chapter, “Healing the Whole Person,” pages 81ff, references to two extreme attitudes towers modern medicine that he believes Christians should avoid:
1- Practising healing prayer only, always excluding help from modern medicine.
2- Limiting the way God heals to modern medicine alone.
Wimber believes that the nature of healing is such that when one area of our lives is affected, other areas will be healed.
Like John Wimber, I have also discovered that at times when I pray for people with a physical ailment, I discover that they have a serious sin in their lives. After they confess and repent of their sin, the physical condition disappears. The point being that physical illness often may be caused by spiritual, emotional or even demonic influences.
This approach to healing is called an integrated understanding of human nature. The implication is that as we pray for a person’s presenting condition to be healed, we should also pray for the person.
Note that Jesus never scolded anyone for their condition. He showed love and compassion as we learned earlier.
Hurting people often don’t “feel” deserving of healing. They carry shame for making themselves sick, in their opinion, especially if the condition is preventable if they say, stopped smoking, or stopped drinking or stopped overeating or stopped being so eaten up with bitterness and unforgiveness.
The point here is that God’s grace and compassion are given to people in order to heal certain conditions. The focus is on the whole person, which is not to be confused with focusing on his or her specific condition. This means that God’s love should always be communicated in love and gentleness, warmth and compassion, doing for others as we would want done for ourselves.
Our fallenness has issued forth in a Pandora’s Box of disease and infirmities. Some well-meaning Christians have produced a false hierarchy of healing, placing physical healing somewhere toward the bottom of the list along with social healing or social justice. At the top of the list is “spiritual healing” from the death sentence of God’s judgment for our sins. The argument goes something like this: Ephesians 2:1 teaches that humans are “dead in their trespasses and sins…” Our greatest need and the greatest healing therefore is “to made alive together with Christ through grace…” Ephesians 2:5.
Our spiritual death has broken our capacity to communicate with or have relationship with Holy God. To be born again is the ultimate healing.
I was speaking to a local pastor in the Whittier area who’s mother was diagnosed with terminal illness. He assured me that she was a wonderful believer and had been almost all her life. I asked if we could join him in praying for her, that I would bring a few people from our church to lay hands on her and pray for healing. His response was startling. He said, “Death isn’t so bad. Her body has been decimated by the disease and she is in constant pain. It would be better if she went home to be with Jesus, he said with little emotion.
It wasn’t long before that conversation that I held the same position and would have said something similar to those very words. Now my understanding of the ramifications of Adam and Eve’s sickness of spirit were great indeed. Social, psychological, emotional, environmental, and spiritual aspects of life were set on edge. The human race has never been the same since.
(Quote Martyn Lloyd Jones The Cross, from page 84 of Power Healing.)
Mark 2:1-12 describes how Jesus healed a paralytic. The man was brought to a crowded meeting by four friends. Jesus recognizes their faith and says to the man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” (v5)
After discussion with the teachers of the Law in the room who took umbrage at Jesus pronouncing forgiveness of sins, Jesus pronounces the man healed: “I tell you, get up, take up your mat and go home.”
Jesus understood spiritual sickness caused by sin. He forgave the man’s sins. That was his greatest need. That was the issue in the paralyzed man’s life. His condition was directly related to it.
John 5:1-15 is one of Jesus’ greatest miracles, the healing of the man at the pool of Bethesda. The man is embittered, lonely, and angry with life and with people in general. He is without hope (verse 7). Like many who suffer with chronic illness, he was full of unbelief, fuelled by years of failed healing attempts, (“he had been in this condition for a long time.”)
Jesus asked the man if he wanted to get well. If he wanted to turn away from his bitterness and anger as well as be healed of his physical problem.
The invalid answered by trying to shift the blame for his unbelief; “I have no one to help me into the pool…” While I try to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” (verse 7).
He believed that God could not heal him because of other’s failure to help.
This man illustrates our problem, that our faith and expectations are limited.
John Calvin, “this sick man does what we nearly all do. He limits God’s help to his own ideas, and does not dare promise himself more than he conceives in his mind.”
Jesus responds to his litany of self-pity and unbelief by healing him.
What Jesus said is very important. He commanded him, “Get up!” (v.8)
With these words the man’s thoughts are jolted away from other’s failures and on to taking responsibility for his own life. Jesus then tells him to “pick up his mate and walk.”
This was a call to obedience and faith – obedience to Jesus’ words, faith in Jesus power. Jesus asked the man to believe that God could still heal. As the invalid acted on Christ’s words, he was healed.
What is overlooked in this story is what happens shortly afterwards. Jesus found the man in the temple and instructed him, “ See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” (v.14).
The root of the problem was spiritual sickness brought on by sin. God’s healing grace was abundantly given, but that guy still had to believe and turn from the sin that had held him captive for 38 years.
There is no hierarchy of healing. We have an integrated understanding of healing. Of course if a person is healed by the grace of God physically but refuse to surrender their life to the healing grace of the cross of Christ for the forgiveness of sins, they will die eventually in their sins, having once been physically healed by the kindness of Christ. We might pray for healing knowing that the person we are praying for is not a believer in Christ. Our prayers may issue forth in healing and open that person to the rest of the Good News. Healing prayers are for the whole person.
It is true that many Christians do go on sinning and suffer from the consequences of sickness of their spirits through yielding to sin that still dwells in their bodies, (Romans 6:12). If the old self is dead (Rom. 8:9-12), how does sin still live in our bodies? Our flesh. In our “flesh” ( Greek , sarx) is the “sin principle” at work in us and with which we are no longer identified as redeemed men and woman. This sin principle tries to affect and control our whole being, and needs to be progressively overcome. So there is a struggle to integrate our new nature with this reality.
We can and should expect the powers of the age to come and the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit to make huge changes in us to the extent that the struggle is lessened. For many the common reason for falling into sin is that they do not understand their true identity and purpose as Christians. In praying for people who claim to be Christian yet they are given over to the sin principle in an area of their lives and in need of further spiritual healing it is important to walk them through a five-step act of faith:
1- Confronting sin – Most people know their sins. When they agree with God that he is right and they are wrong they allow God’s healing access to their spirits, minds and bodies.
2- Confessing sin – confession goes a step beyond acknowledging that we have given sin power over our lives. It is a willingness to “repent” – leave the territory of that captivating sin, and renounce it’s claim to our lives and our “desire” for it.
3- Perform appropriate actions of repentance – This may require going to those they have wronged, getting rid of stuff, making restitution is something has been stolen, change of lifestyle (stop living immorally)
4- Receiving God’s forgiveness – Some do all of the above and do not believe God has forgiven them. They hold themselves in a prison of shame and guilt. They may try to earn God’s grace by going to work in the church, trying to be good. Forgiveness is something they will need help working through.
5- Forgiving others as God forgives – We will not hold over others their sins. Jesus said that as we have been forgiven, we forgive. God’s grace will dry up and we will develop sickness of spirit if we refuse to forgive others as we have been forgiven.
Next week we will learn a helpful tool related to walking people through forgiveness.
IV. Protection and the Weapons of our Warfare
The Fight is real, (Called and Committed, Watson, pages 117-125)
- Direct attack
- Spiritual accusation
- Spiritual exploitation
- Spiritual counterfeit
- Spiritual temptation
V. What about Anger? (Anger is a Choice. Tim LaHaye. Chapt 4, “Anger and Your Health.” Pages 32-45)
Tim LaHaye and Bob Phillips in the book Anger is a Choice, (Zondervan, 1982, pages 32-45), reference to a study called “The Relationship of Specific Attitudes and Emotions to Certain Bodily Diseases,” by W.J. Grace and D.T. Graham. They studies 128 patients in a hospital outpatient department. Most made a total of ten or more visits to the clinic. Twelve symptoms or diseases were studied. I’ll read the results (pages 36-38).
The conclusion is that there is a very complex interaction between the psychological and the physiological aspects of our being. This is because we are “integrated” creatures. LaHaye states, “I believe along with others, that a great many of the physical difficulties we face have their roots in unresolved anger.
Of course a person can be ill without being angry. But in our integrated approach to healing prayers we understand that a lot of illness is caused by repressed anger and hostility. Much sickness is made more severe by hidden hatreds, grudges, fears, and an unforgiving spirit.
VI. The Five Step Model and Healing Procedure
(These steps are best done in teams of two. Taking turns praying while the other prays and listens to the Lord, at times making suggestions or stepping up to interject prayers)
- The Interview
Answers the question: Where does it hurt?
This is conducted on two planes:
- Natural – information derived by natural senses and information gathering from the person who is explaining the presenting problem
- Supernatural – information from God
What the interview is NOT:
- It is not a medical interview
- It is not a counseling session
- Diagnostic Decision
Answers the question: Why does this person have this condition?
- Physical realm
- Emotional realm
- Spiritual realm
- Sin
- Unresolved anger
- Unforgiveness
- Prayer Selection
Answers the question: What kind of prayer will I need to pray to help this person and see healing come?
- Prayer for physical healing
- Invite the Holy Spirit to come in power to heal and lead you
- Lay hands on the area (if possible and appropriate)
- Bless where and what God is doing (pray with eyes open)
- Address the problem and tell it what you want it to do.
- Prayer of command (only if the Holy Spirit is directing)
Sometimes there is a “phenomenological response” to prayers for healing:
- Sensations of warmth, chills, electricity
- Movement (eyes will flutter, sweat, shaking, trembling)
- Pain may even increase
- Prayer for emotional healing
- Invite the Holy Spirit to come and minister the love, mercy and forgiveness, as well as power of the Father’s heart
- As the Holy Spirit to go deep to the source of the wounding and reveal it to you and to the person.
- Determine sinful protective actions that must be dealt with
- Judgments - done by them
- Vows - made by them
- Injuctions - (words or actions that bound them up or caused them to be hindered from being able to function healthfully) done to them
- Family sin – done to them
- Forgiveness is KEY! (Forgive us our sins AS WE FORGIVE OTHERS WHO HAVE SINNED AGAINST US)
Forgiveness: Giving up your right to continue to judge/accuse another for their apparent wrong doing. You set them free and are no longer bound to them. You set yourself free from your own bitterness, scorn, shame, hatefulness.
Pheonomenological Response:
Weeping
Laughing
Screaming
Shaking
No emotion/yet deep feelings of release or freedom
- Prayer for healing of the demonized
A definition of the Greek word – diamonizomai. Does not tell us who is acting or specifically how bad the condition is. Could be anything from harassment to totally possession. The person would be cooperating considerably by sinful choices or be someone innocent, sinned against or victimized.
- Invite the Holy Spirit to come in love and power to set free
- Rebuke or “choke off” the demonic antics.
- Bind – contain their power to harm or bring oppressive control
- Expulse – eliminate their presence
- Speak to them not with them
- Tell them what you want them to do (raising your voice is to be avoided)
- Fill them with Christ’s love and power by the Holy Spirit through repentance and cleansing prayers starting with the head, heart, body, sexuality, hands, feet. Prayer, “I surrender my body to your Holy Spirit. Cleanse my ….by the blood of Jesus.” Then “clothe” them with the Ephesians 6:10 ff armor of God.
- Walk them through forgiveness (this may be done during the process of expulsion or at this step. The point is to equip them in how to forgive. Unforgiveness is so destructive and a huge open door for demonization. Be sure to close that door.
Phenomenological responses:
Stiffening Convulsing
Unusual contortions Screaming
Confusion Falling asleep
Eyes rolling back Growling, hissing
Still, lifeless` Shaking
- Step four – Prayer Engagement
Answers the question: How are we doing?
a. Prayer/ministry should proceed while looking for effect, warmth, tingling, heat, muscle spasm, shaking, deep breathing, agitation. These are signs of power encounter.
1. When in doubt or at what seems a dead-end, ask questions
2. Build faith if necessary
3. Always keep an eye to God for information/direction
When to stop:
- The person tells you it’s over
- The Holy Spirit tells you it’s over or it’s over for now
- You cannot think of anything else to pray
- You have prayed for everything and it seems you have not gained any ground
- Step Five – post prayer direction
Answers the question – what should they do to keep their healing and continue on the road to wholeness?
- resources
- Obvious discipleship matters
- Personal responsibility for renouncing and repudiating old patterns of behaviour/and implementing healthful/faith abounding patterns of holy living.
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