This week I will explore the topic of healing prayer.  We will look at the many ways that God has healed His people throughout time. Out of His immense love for His people, God has given us the wonderful gift of Healing Prayer. 
So, how do we access this gift?  We must first believe that God loves us and is willing to heal us. In other words, we must come before God in faith for our healing and for the healing of others.
Friends, God has healed many people throughout time and with the exception of Jesus, has used ordinary people to accomplish miracles of healing. 
In the Old Testament, we have examples of healing. There was the example where Elisha, the prophet brought back to life a young boy who was the son of a Shunamite woman. The boy had suddenly died and the only person who the boy’s mother knew that could help was Elisha.
Sure enough, Elisha went back to Shunem and healed the young man by praying to God and then laying on the young man. 
Then, we have the story of Naaman, a commander of the king of Aram army.  Naaman had been stricken with leprosy. One of his servants, a young girl who ha been taken captive told Naaman’s wife about Elisha and his ability to cure the sick. Naaman went to see Elisha and was told to dip in the Jordan river 7 times and he would be healed.
After a bit of bluster, Naaman’s servant was able to convince him to do as Elisha had instructed. Once he dipped the seven times Naaman was healed of leprosy.
In addition, we have a story of Hezekiah, the king of Judah. Hezekiah had become ill and the prophet Isaiah came to him and told him to put his affairs in order because he would not recover and would die of the illness.
Hezekiah wept bitterly and cried out to the Lord for healing. While Isaiah was still in the middle court, the Lord spoke to Isaiah and told him that He, the Lord, had heard Hezekiah’s pleas and would add 15 years to His life. 
One key thing that all three stories have in common is that those who asked for healing came in faith and it was God who performed the healing. 
In the New Testament we have many examples of healings performed by Jesus and the Apostles. 
Two of my favorites among many are the healing of the centurion’s servant and the healing of the daughter of the Syrophoenician woman. 
In the first, Jesus was traveling through Capernaum when a centurion came to Him pleading that Jesus would heal his servant who was lying paralyzed at his home and was very tormented. Jesus said to the centurion, I will come and heal him.
But, the centurion answered and said, “Lord, I am not worthy that You should come under my roof. But only speak a word, and my servant will be healed. 9 For I also am a man under authority, having soldiers under me. And I say to this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”    
Jesus marveled at the centurion’s faith, saying that He had not seen such great faith in all of Israel.  Jesus indeed said the word and the centurion’s servant was healed. Mathhew 8, beginning on verse 5.
This healing of Jesus is one of my favorites because it took great faith for the centurion to trust that Jesus only had to speak. 
I remember when I was a fairly new Christian when I had an experience similar to this one.  My Father had been ill in the hospital and I had been to see him and prayed for him.
When he was almost better, he developed another issue.  I knew how much my Father wanted to go home and I wanted to go back and lay hands on him. But, I was on my way to a mandatory all day meeting that was going to keep me pretty late.
So, as I was seeking the Lord in my car, the Lord reminded me of this bible passage.  So, I right there in my car, I prayed that the Lord would heal my father as He had healed the centurion’s servant.
When I called my mother to inquire about my father, she told me that the issue he had was resolved and he was home. 
My other favorite passage on healing is the one regarding the healing of the Syrophonecian woman’s daughter. 
As was traveling in the region of Tyre, a woman whose daughter was demon possessed came after Jesus crying out to Him.
Jesus ignored her, then His disciples told Jesus to send her away because she kept making noise. 
Jesus then said that he was sent only to the Lost sheep of Israel.
The woman made her way to Jesus and fell at His feet. She said Lord help me. Again Jesus told her that it was not good to take the bread from the children’s table and toss it to the dogs. 
Dogs was a common slur used by the Jews when referring to Gentiles.  However, she was not deterred and replied, “Yes, Lord but even the dogs feed on the crumbs that fall from the Master’s table. Jesus was amazed by her faith and told her that her request would be granted, and her daughter would be healed.  At that very instant, her daughter was healed.
The woman had tremendous faith and because she humbled herself and remained strong in her faith, her daughter was healed of demonic possession. 
The Apostles healed people when Jesus sent them out two by two to the surrounding towns, they healed people after Jesus ascended to heaven, In the book of Acts, Peter and John were going to temple during the time of prayer and encountered a lame beggar. They Peter said to the man, “Siver or gold I do not have but what I do have I will give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk”
But does God heal today? 
Well, we have seen many healings in this church.  Some pretty big and some a little smaller.
There was the healing of a young woman who had an eating disorder.  It got to the point where she was unable to eat many foods. The church prayed over her and she got well.

The second was a young man who came down with cancer. The prayer teams gathered and a team would pray for him every day. 
He finished the chemo and is well today. 
Does God always heal when we ask in faith?  No, not always.  God is sovereign and He knows when it's our time to be called home.  Our final bodily healing will be at the resurrection when all things will be made new including our physical bodies.
As prayer ministers, we must allow ourselves to be led by the Holy Spirit and know when someone is not going to get better.  That is one reason we have a rite called Prayer for the sick and dying which we administer when the person is not going to recover.     
In the interim friends, we must have faith that God heals today. He has made healing one of the gifts that the Holy Spirit imparts upon us. He gave the church that gift because of His immense love for us. 
In the Book of James it says, “Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up.”
When you’re ill come to the church elders and have them pray over you for healing, be anointed with oil in the name of Jesus. 
When the anointing is done in Jesus’ name and the prayer is lifted up in faith, we are told the sick person will become well. 
And if the person is not healed in this life, the Lord will raise them up in the last days. 
So pray for the sick in faith and with anticipation that the Lord will do what’s best for the person.

“I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.  No one comes to the Father except through me” John 14:6

Joy in the midst of suffering. Comfort in the midst of pain. Hope in the midst of despair. Some who read this, may think, that makes no sense. Well that’s just because the attitudes mentioned above are so contrary to our way of thinking. 

We look at things around us and we can very easily fall into despair as answers to some of the pressing question of the day seem to allude us. No one can seem to agree on how to prevent school shootings, teen suicides, the opioid crisis.  The answers allude us because we are looking in all the wrong places.

People intuitively look to the government, some go the social media and create a #hashtag movement, some will appeal to various pundits but the answers still allude us and we simply fall into despair.

The reason we fall into despair is that we have forgotten or dare I say rejected our main reason for being here. We look to self help gurus, engross ourselves in our jobs, trying to find the secret to living a life of joy.  According to Jack Palance in City Slickers, it’s the one thing.  Well, in reality, he almost got it right. 

In the Gospel of John, Jesus was preparing His followers for his departure. A departure that would be cruel as He was betrayed, arrested, wrongfully accused, and sentenced to die on a Roman cross. The world of Jesus’s followers would be rocked. You see they expected an earthly King, but no matter how much Jesus told them otherwise, they were simply not convinced. 

So, in the passage from John 14:6, Jesus answers a question asked by one of His followers, the Apostle Thomas. Jesus had explained that He was going away to prepare a place for them in His Father’s house and that they would know the way. So, Thomas always the pragmatist, says but Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way. 

This made perfect sense. Even if they had a GPS, they wouldn’t be able to find out where Jesus was going to prepare a place for them.

So, then Jesus answers Thomas by telling him that it is He, meaning Jesus, who is the way the truth and the life. 

Jesus was not giving Thomas directions to a place. Jesus was telling Thomas about a way of life. In other words, if Thomas and Jesus’ disciples wanted to find their way to the place in the Father’s House that Jesus was preparing for them, they would need to follow the example that Jesus was setting for them. They would need to follow His teachings and find their life through Jesus.

You see it was by following the way of life that Jesus had taught them that they would find their way to eternal life. The road that they would travel was a narrow road with difficulties along the way. But it was that road that would lead them to eternal life. 

The code by which they would live and teach others to live was a code of Loving and obeying God with all their hearts, minds and strength and to love their neighbors as themselves. That would mean that they would have to put God first in their lives and also to look out for their neighbors and to love them. 

Following Jesus, my friends, is not all doom and gloom. No, there is tremendous joy in that life. There is tremendous joy in living a life that is pleasing to God. A life that is selfless and loving.   
The “one thing that is the secret of life” is Jesus.    

The reason that our world is in so much turmoil today is that we have forgotten the one thing. We have denied the very existence of Jesus. We have mocked truth as something that is old fashion and we have followed our own way.

Our way has been harmful to our children and grandchildren. Anxiety and stress are increasing in our younger generation. Moral relativism, which has been taught to our younger generation, has given them nothing that will guide their lives and like ships trying to navigate a rocky port without a lighthouse, their lives will only crash on the rocks of self-destruction.  

God planned a different way. He created us and loves us. His desire is for us to choose to live our lives in accordance to His ways because His ways are perfect.

     Robert Frost wrote, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

    Which road will you take? The one less traveled leads to eternal life. Will you take that one or will you continue on the road of self that has already failed so many?