Our Beliefs about Healing
- God is love (1 John 4:16). Healing is a gift of love that flows directly from the heart of our Father in Heaven.
- It is God’s will to heal. There was no sickness in the Garden of Eden, and there is no sickness in God’s Kingdom. Sickness and death entered the world through the sin of Adam and Eve and are direct consequences of the Fall. God did not, therefore, create sickness, nor does He will it on his children. But God can bring forth blessing from sickness, just as God brought forth resurrection and life out of Jesus’ death on the cross.
- God desires healing for the whole person – body, mind (emotions) and spirit.
- Jesus is the healer, and we receive healing in His Name through the power of the Holy Spirit. The reason Jesus came to earth was to bring salvation and healing (Gk: sozo) to the world and to destroy the devil’s work (1 John 3:8).
- Healing is a visible and tangible sign that 1. the Kingdom of God has come near and 2. the kingdom of Satan is being destroyed. When people are healed, the Kingdom of God is made manifest on earth.
- God intended healing to be a normative experience in the life of His Church. Healings, miracles, signs and wonders did not cease, as St. Augustine himself discovered (City of God, Book XXII.8), with the age of the Apostles.
- Jesus commanded his followers to continue His ministry on earth (John 20:21-22; Mt. 28:18-20). He personally modeled for His followers how to pray for healing, and then gave them the power and authority through the Holy Spirit to do so. He first empowers the 12 and then the 72 for the ministry of healing (Matthew 10:1-7; Luke 10:1-9), and then empowers all believers when He sends the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 2).
- Through the Holy Sprit, EVERY Christian can pray for healing. There is only one Holy Spirit. Christians have received the very same Holy Spirit that Jesus received when he was baptized. Therefore, Christians have access to the same love, power and authority as Jesus had.
- Healing is a powerful evangelistic tool given by God to the church for the purpose of growing His kingdom. Healing is also an essential pastoral tool given to strengthen and build up the body of Christ.
- Healing is a mystery. Not all appear healed when we pray, but something always happens when we do pray. Our responsibility is simply to pray and then leave the outcome up to God.
