Category: Answers from the Pastor’s Pen

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Answers from the Pastor's Pen

Is Healing for Everyone?

A lady came into my office who was suffering from chronic sickness. She asked me if God’s healing is for everyone. I assured her it is. We had a good discussion about spiritual warfare, the differences between Heaven (where God’s perfect will is fully demonstrated) and Earth (where various influences impact our lives). In that discussion, though, I told her that understanding that God is for her is fundamental to our faith. After she left, I thought a glimpse into our discussion might be meaningful to you in the form of a blog. So here is what I told her.

  1. Read the Will

If we want to know what is in a person’s will, we read their will. If we want to know God’s will on any subject, we read his will. The Bible contains God’s will in which he bequeaths to us all of his blessings of redemption.

But unless we ensure that a will is carried out, other influences might prevent it’s fulfillment. I see that happen to people every day. God has provided great benefits for them, but they either don’t know about them, or don’t know how to obtain them, and are therefore missing out on the benefits that God intended for them.

So the first thing we all need to do is read the Bible, God’s will, and grow in an understanding of God’s will.

I told the woman in my office that I have read the Bible, for myself, and regularly attended church all of my adult life. Then I described for her our one-hour, discussion format Bible study that meets every Wednesday night. I emphasized that I always learn from these studies, and so do the others who attend. I told her that this one-hour investment in learning the Bible each week would give her rich dividends. She agreed to start attending.

  1. Determine what God’s will is for YOU!

Once we know God’s will as revealed in the Bible, we have to determine what portions of it apply to us. The Bible describes several instances where Jesus healed everyone present, but we must determine if these accounts revealed his will for those particular situations, or if they are a revelation of God’s will for us.

Hebrews 10:7, Jesus is quoted as saying, ‘Look, I have come to do your will, O God— as is written about me in the Scriptures.’

And John 6:38 quotes Jesus saying, “For I have come down from heaven to do the will of God who sent me, not to do my own will.”

Jesus demonstrated that God’s will for us is clear.

Matthew 12:15 says, . . . many people followed him. He healed all the sick among them,

Matthew 14:36 says, They begged him to let the sick touch at least the fringe of his robe, and all who touched him were healed.

Luke 6:19 says, Everyone tried to touch him, because healing power went out from him, and he healed everyone.

And, Hebrews 13:8 says that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Mark 1 gives us an account of a leper coming to Jesus for healing wondering if it was his will to heal him. Mark 1:40-42 says,

A man with leprosy came and knelt in front of Jesus, begging to be healed. “If you are willing, you can heal me and make me clean,” he said. Moved with compassion, Jesus reached out and touched him. “I am willing,” he said. “Be healed!” Instantly the leprosy disappeared, and the man was healed.

Here we see God’s will at work. And this healing didn’t stop happening when Jesus ascended to the Father. The Book of Acts gives us numerous examples of people being healed in the church. And James states in James 5:14-15,

Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well . . .”

God’s will is healing. Earth’s reality is sickness and disease.

In Heaven, everyone is well. And since we have become God’s people, no longer of this Earth, our prayer is,

Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Jesus never made people sick or diseased. Instead, he healed them. Now, as a reflection of God’s character and will, the church also heals people. We as a church hate what sickness and disease do to people, and we delight is seeing people well.

Just as God is against people having to pay the price for their own sins, so God is against disease and sickness being part of our lives. When it comes to the benefits of God’s will, they are available to us in a variety of ways. God wants us well, and he uses a variety of methods and channels to help us get well.

He is still “willing” to heal as he was with the man with leprosy and the multitudes who followed him. 

  1. Pursue what God has for you, and resist everything else.

Matthew 8:16-17 says, That evening many demon-possessed people were brought to Jesus. He cast out the evil spirits with a simple command, and he healed all the sick. This fulfilled the word of the Lord through the prophet Isaiah, who said,

“He took our sicknesses
and removed our diseases.”

That was God’s will then, and it continues to be his will today.

God is against sickness and disease, and we are too. God is for all of us being as healthy and strong as possible, and we are too. As a result, Christians have done more to fight disease than any other single group in the world. We resist sickness, disease, emotional suffering as well as spiritual darkness everywhere we have influence. We build hospitals and provide health care all over the world with an emphasis on resisting every kind of ailment. We encourage research and promote innovative techniques that prevent disease, heal, and improve nutrition. And, of course, we pray for the sick, believing God’s will is that they be healed. Certainly we know from our Christian experience that not all are healed this side of heaven today. Nonetheless, we know it is God’s will that all would be healed, so we keep praying and doing all we can to encourage healing as we represent him on the earth.

 

 

This and other blogs by Pastor Ted Haggard are available at http://www.tedhaggardblog.com as a ministry of St. James Church. If you would like to strengthen the ministry of St. James Church and Pastor Ted Haggard by giving, please use the “give” tab at http://www.saintjameschurch.com.

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Everything Influences Everything

Several months ago I was teaching a class on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): Techniques for Retraining Your Brain. One of the core foundations of CBT is the biopsychosocial model, which is a new word that combines our biological, psychological, and social lives. Typically we diagram this as the CBT triangle with our biology at one point, our psychology at another, and our social relationships at the third point. The premise of the triangle is that everything influences everything else on the triangle. In other words, our biology influences our social and psychological selves, our social lives influence our biological and our psychological functions, and our psychology influences our social and biological functions. There you have it. You are a biopsychosocial person.

When I teach this triangle, I can see the lights come on in people realizing that they may choose from a great number of options to improve their lives. For example, they can strengthen their mental heath through physical exercise, or improve their biological functions by thinking more positively about their lives, family, and work conditions. Everything influences everything else. Then I tell them what I think—that this model is right, but still incomplete. After all, we are spiritual beings and our spiritual lives play a dominant role in our lives, whether we realize it or not.

So I modify the CBT triangle into the Haggard Diamond. I draw a diamond with our spiritual lives at the top, then the other three dynamics at the other three points, pointing out that everything influences everything else on the diamond. In this discussion, I explain that there are professionals that advocate that any one of the four can individually heal us, but it’s not true. Everything influences everything.

Jesus was hinting at this same idea when he said in Matthew 22:37-38,

‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.

To me, this is why our repentance has to be thoughtfully applied to every area of our lives to produce total change. A repentant thought life improves not just our thinking, but also our physical lives, our social lives, and our spiritual lives. When we apply repentance to our bodies, we treat our bodies increasingly like they are temples of the Holy Spirit, which ultimately strengthens our clarity of thought, our social lives, and our spiritual lives. When we apply biblical principles to our relationships, our spiritual lives grow, our bodies become healthier, and our thinking improves. And finally, the obvious—repentance is fundamentally the spiritual decision that influences everything else in our lives—resulting in the other changes, or should I say, improvements.

This is why we are never trapped—we always have hope. This is why I believe:

  • Repentance is the most positive word in the English vocabulary. 
  • Repentance is the most hopeful idea in all of humanity. 
  • Repentance causes some of the most positive feelings anyone can experience.

Repentance is a gift God gives us to improve every area of our lives. He made us so everything in our lives impacts every other area of our lives. Let’s begin again today.

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Is Trump the Antichrist?

I received an e-mail from a journalist asking, “Ted, do you think Donald Trump is the anti-Christ?”

I chuckled thinking that in my lifetime someone, somewhere has accused every President and Pope of being the Antichrist. And now, with fear being generated from terrorism and political confusion, it’s inevitable that people will start thinking in terms of the end times again.

In my response to the journalist, I explained that there are many antichrists, and then gave him four Scriptures to examine:

  • “Dear children, the last hour is here. You have heard that the Antichrist is coming, and already many such antichrists have appeared. From this we know that the last hour has come” 1 John 2:18.
  • “And who is a liar? Anyone who says that Jesus is not the Christ. Anyone who denies the Father and the Son is an antichrist” 1 John 2:22.
  • “ But if someone claims to be a prophet and does not acknowledge the truth about Jesus, that person is not from God. Such a person has the spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard is coming into the world and indeed is already here” 1 John 4:3.
  • “ I say this because many deceivers have gone out into the world. They deny that Jesus Christ came in a real body. Such a person is a deceiver and an antichrist” 2 John 1:7.

Undeterred, the journalist pressed further saying he wanted to know if Trump could be the one Antichrist referred to in the book of Revelation (see Revelation 19 and 20). I told him that certain Christian Bible teachers continually point to current events believing they prove that the return of Christ is imminent; yet many of their predictions have not come true. Then I told him that Jesus’ comment in Matthew 24:14 makes me think we have more work to do here on the earth before the Antichrist will surface.

Jesus said,

‘And the Good News about the Kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, so that all nations will hear it; and then the end will come.”

This verse has been taught two different ways:

One emphasizes the word “nations” could also be translated “people groups” or “ethno-linguistic groups,” which are groups of people who have their own ethnicity and language. In other words, for this Scripture to be fulfilled, there has to be a witness for the Gospel within every people group on the planet, and then the end will come. As a result, many strategic churches and missions organizations have made lists of the remaining unreached people groups and identified them for focused prayer, evangelism, and church-planting. Because of these efforts, the list of unreached people groups is getting smaller. But there are still unreached groups.

Another interpretation of this verse is that the Gospel will circle the globe, and then the end will come. Advocates of this position emphasize how the Gospel launched in Jerusalem, spread throughout the Middle East, then expanded to Europe and portions of Asia and northern Africa, then to the Americas, the rest of Africa and Asia, and is currently growing rapidly in China and India, with the expectation it will return to Jerusalem through Chinese and Asian missionaries. Thus, the Good News about the Kingdom will be preached throughout (around) the whole world.

The modern Sunni – Shia conflict in the Middle East that is terrorizing the region and much of the world is a strong geographical, political, and theological barrier between the Chinese and Asian Christian missionaries and Jerusalem. If this interpretation is correct, it would highlight the significance of this conflict as an attempt to slow or block the completion of this biblical prophecy.

Both of these interpretations are closer than ever to being fulfilled. However, today neither of them are complete. Thus, it’s my guess that the end times figure, the Antichrist from the book of Revelation, is not currently on the scene. As a result, for this and many other reasons, I don’t think Trump is the Antichrist.

I concluded my email exchange with a dissatisfied journalist. Just as many friends of mine have been disappointed that the Lord has not yet returned, so this journalist seemed dismayed that his story idea lacked foundation. (I hope he doesn’t find someone that will agree with him about Trump and use his material as a basis for an upcoming article.)

I do believe that we are in the last days, and that the return of Christ is closer than it’s ever been. I also believe that we don’t know everything about the second coming of Christ, just like the first century Bible scholars who didn’t recognize Christ the first time. Thus, my admonition is that we all need to live our lives as if Jesus is returning today, but plan our lives as though he will not return in our lifetimes. That way we will conform to Jesus’ command to always be ready, while avoiding foolish speculations that keep us from fulfilling our present duties.

(All of the italics and bold emphases in above Scriptures are mine.)

 

This and other blogs by Pastor Ted Haggard are available at http://www.tedhaggardblog.com as a ministry of St. James Church. If you would like to strengthen the ministry of St. James Church and Pastor Ted Haggard by giving, please use the “give” tab at http://www.saintjameschurch.com.