Jeremiah 23

Well, finally I get to some of the 'nuggets' people mention from Jeremiah...

5 "The days are coming," declares the LORD,
"when I will raise up to David [a] a righteous Branch,
a King who will reign wisely
and do what is just and right in the land.

6 In his days Judah will be saved
and Israel will live in safety.
This is the name by which he will be called:
The LORD Our Righteousness.

A prediction of the coming Messiah, again from the line of David -- and God shows his tenderness to Israel again, confirming that the relationship is still in place despite all the discipline and consequences that the leaders and people must bear for their unfaithfulness to God.

29 "Is not my word like fire," declares the LORD, "and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?

And this is a verse we used in Son Dance the first year -- one of the verses of "It's God's Word" is based on the idea of God's word being like a hammer, and Kurt has used the illustration at other times as well. God's word purifies. God's word breaks lies into pieces. This verse comes in the context of the Lord chastising and condemning prophets who lie and make false claims about his word:

36 But you must not mention 'the oracle of the LORD ' again, because every man's own word becomes his oracle and so you distort the words of the living God, the LORD Almighty, our God.

The Lord will defend his word.

This brings me to an opportunity to think about the Prayer for Healing conference last weekend. It is a puzzler to me, and I really don't want to do what these false prophets did (take words of men and claim that they are the word of God). I don't wnat to see more than was really there in the events of the weekend and the stories Cynthia told about healing in India and USA that she has witnessed. But I don't want to discount or dismiss anything that might be your work, Lord. I guess that's the question I am asking: Are you doing something important here that we should pay attention to and receive as your work consistent with your word, or is this an instance of getting more excited about the gift than the giver, an out-of-focus view of what you are really doing in our lives, and a path that will just lead us away from the work you have called us to at Grace & Peace, making us tend to focus on ourselves, our wants/'gimmes', and feel discourageda about our unhealed ills rather than asking "Lord, how are you using this circumstance in my life to help me love you and others? How are you 'working all things togehter for good'?"

Points about the conference:
1. Cynthia is convinced. Cynthia seems to have scrutinized a number of healings carefully, participated in them, and come away believing that they are authentic. Her experiences with her mom and her self, coupled with things she's seen in her travels, have firmly convinced her that spectacular miraculous healings still happen today.
2. Cynthia presented anecdotes, not evidence. There were no 'before-and-after' pictures of significant healings -- spinal cords straightened, eyeballs changed, tumors gone. No doctor's reports and documentation. We did not see evidence ourselves, we simply heard Cynthia's story.
3. Nothing convincing happened at the conference to demonstrate this phenomenon. We prayed a lot, and there is the possibility that the one boy and Phyllis had some positive effect, but no clear proof as of yet. And numerous people were prayed for with no discernable healing, which is not to say the prayers went unanswered or unheard but that God has other things in mind for us.

I feel very cautious about the whole thing. My fears are enlightened a bit by this little exerpt from an article posted by Evelyn Tomlinson on her facebook page:

"Even good things can unbalance our loyalties, especially good causes. We can get so caught up in, say, pro-life activities that our loyalty shifts from Christ to the cause. Or we can put our hope in a political party or ideology and loyalty to that overrides our loyalty to Christ. We can even convince ourselves that they are one and the same."

I'm not saying that Cynthia or anyone else has shifted their loyalty -- but I think that it is a danger I want to be aware of as the interest in healing prayer continues to simmer at church, and as I continue to consider these things. It would be so easy to get the cart before the horse. Some people's misery runs so deep and their hope for healing is so fearfully gained.