A vast majority of our church's prayers are for someone's physical healing. From winter sniffles that won't go away to stage 4 cancer, our Sunday morning prayer times overflow with heart felt requests for God to heal. Now many of these requests are not for people present at church, our church is small. Many times the folks needing the healing are not even present, but are being prayed for by friends. We celebrate all sorts of cures as from God through medicine or immune system, and God could have been involved in all of these. As I look at the Bible's accounts of healing in preparation for a sermon on James 5:13-20, the successful healing don't look like what we do. Let me lay out what we do.
1) Someone in our group hears from a friend who is sick.
2) They may or may not offer to pray for that person's healing.
3) They come to church and we offer a time to publicly praise God or ask for prayer.
4) The someone in our group asks for prayer for the sick person, who may or may not be present.
5) We offer prayer for this situation for one or two weeks.
Here is the flow I see from the Bible.
1) Someone is sick.
2) They find out about God's representative, Jesus, the apostles, the elders and come to them for healing.
3) This representative prays for and/or sets up the faith conditions for healing.
"Go wash in the pool of Siloam . . ."
"Dunk 7 times in the Jordan river . . ."
prayer and anointing with oil
4) God imparts healing in response to faith
Both Jesus and James bring up the idea of sin forgiveness along with healing. In Matthew 9 Jesus responds to the faith of the paralyzed man's friends, who tear apart a roof to get the man to Jesus, by forgiving his sins before healing him. In James 5 forgiveness of the ailing person is brought up along with their healing. In both cases the person to be healed is surrounded by close friends who know about their sins as well as their condition. A person's sin and guilt may be what is holding them back from physical healing.
1) Our flow is impersonal.
We may know of the person who is mentioned. Someone has likely talked with this person recently, but our prayers for this person are very generic. "Strengthen them." "Give the doctors wisdom" "Heal if you wish, God" There is not the personal laying on of hands and anointing with oil. There are not those present who can tell us about this person's spiritual state or relationship with God.
2) Our flow is expert based, rather than faith based.
Folks want the pastor to pray for healing publicly. Why, if they have been praying for their friend? I suspect the down deep reason folks want the pastor to pray publicly is that they for some reason feel that Pastor or someone in the congregation has likely got a better line to God, is more tuned into God's healing track and is likely to bring God's healing.
3) Our flow doesn't require any response from the person who is receiving healing.
We pray, God heals, we rejoice. The person may or may not understand if or how God was involved. It is up to their friend who started it all to bring God into the healing.
A more biblical flow in our day might look like this.
Person gets sick.
1) If the person has a church home.
a) They approach the pastor and other spiritual folks about prayer for healing.
b) They talk and pray through to find God's desire to heal and any sin that needs to be handled.
c) The involved elders and pastor lay hands on the person and anoint with oil for healing.
2) If the person does not have a church home.
a) The friend and person approach their pastor and other spiritual folks about healing.
b) The elders teach the sick person about Biblical healing in the Christian Era.
c) The elders explore the sick person's desire or the friend's desire to trust Jesus for healing..
d) Once faith is confirmed, the elders anoint the sick person and pray for healing.
God responds with his healing.
