Blog-Today

( A picture of Daddy and me. We were celebrating Christmas with the Miller's in Akron. The kind of friends you call family!)

Dear Family and Friends,

Again, many thanks for your prayers and cards. We do covet your prayers especially for God's work in our hearts to give joy and praise during this time. There are some who take the scriptures out of context and turn them into a healing/ positive attitude message, when, in fact there is abundant evidence for the Lord to take His own through the difficulties of various kinds of illnesses. Do we believe the Lord heals? Absolutely!!! But the scriptures are rife with instances of using medicinal forms of healing over a period of time. Granted the medicine was not the same kind as we use, but seemed to work just the same. And they were not just ceremonial! Furthermore, there are two words in the NT for healing. We get our English word therapy from the first one. It seems to be used frequently for the over-time healing, and the use of hands. It is also likely that God's name "Jehovah-rapha" (the Lord that healeth thee) is an early ancestor. The second is difficult to show in English, but I shall try. It would look like this-IAOMAI- and would be pronounced - he-ah-o-my. This word is most often used when referring to instantaneous healings. Jesus replaced an ear, stopped a flow of blood, and gave eyesight in this manner. The larger problem has to do with the "faith" of the person to be healed. There are still some individuals, who, in the name of Christianity, try to perform "healings" for the purpose of gathering crowds. This note is not written for the purpose of denigrating their character. The problem was, and still is, that quite frequently, if the candidate for healing did not"heal", then the healer would pronounce the individual as not having enough "faith"!! A sort of "heads I win, tails you lose" attitude. There are enough instances of Jesus healing someone without this kind of faith that it is unnecessary to reproduce them here. It is enough to say that many of God's dear people have been tricked into thinking its "their fault". Without dealing with any others, we only need go to the last four chapters of II Corinthians to realize that the Apostle Paul perhaps had several physical maladies which not only did not get "cured", but that he actually gloried in the problem because, as he said, " Most gladly therefore, will I glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me!" I hope this little treatise might have been helpful to someone. I received a note to the contrary and wanted to set the record straight, at least for me. Again, thanks for your prayers. I will not tell you I am enjoying this experience, but, I will tell you that I am getting to know the Lord better!!! And that's the important thing. I believe that He is working in my body so that I will have a measure of my strength back eventually.Only He really knows.

In His care,

Steve and Janice