Be healed!

This week I encountered a side of God that I didn't think still existed. At some point in my life I came to the conclusion that the part of God that deals with healing people was no longer applicable to our modern society. I guess I figured that if God gives all people a job to do, maybe that was why God created doctors. It wasn't that I didn't trust God, or even God's ability to heal a person. More, I just thought God gave certain people the gift of healing...and those people became doctors, and God worked through the doctors to accomplish human healing.... that is until Saturday when my little theological bubble burst and my eyes were opened to a radical new side of God!

Jr. High snow retreat, a.k.a "Jr Highers don't sleep and neither do their leaders camp" happened about a week ago. We had a blast, but I got the flu. And a fever that lasted the entire week after we returned home. It was Saturday (a week after "sleep is overrated camp") and I still had a 102 degree fever. I was tired of staying inside, so my friend Brian and I decided to go to church. The pastor, Tim, was talking about John 5 where Jesus asks a man who had been unable to walk if he wanted to be healed. The man says yes and Jesus tells him to pick up his mat and walk. So he does. Then Tim gave the congregation the opportunity to be prayed for... and I figured if God didn't use a doctor to make the man walk, maybe God alone could heal a fever. So I went up and Tim prayed and God made my fever go away. I walked back to my chair absolutely in shock that God decided to remove the fever, but more in shock that God healed. I went home and immediately grabbed my thermometer thinking that I had been one of those "power of positive thinking makes you feel better and masks your illness" type of people. Thermometer read 98.6 on the money! Apparently God did indeed remove my fever. But the story gets better.

Monday comes around and I have the opportunity to take a great but kind of grumpy kid out to coffee. The girl says that she's sick (hence the grumpy exterior)... and I said to her... "Do you want to become well?" I figured if Jesus used those words, the question was fair game. She said "yes" and looked at me quizzically. I said, "Then we should pray because the Bible says that we can pray about being sick and sometimes God gets rid of our sickness." So we prayed... not joking... she went from horse to talking...and from being grumpy to being in awe of God...and she said verbatim, "I didn't think God still did that....but he does." I said, yep he does!" And I laughed inside at the irony and sweetness of the whole thing.

God heals our hearts. God heals our minds. God heals our bodies. God heals our souls. God's healing power is active, and very much alive today. Do you want to be well? Bow down an pray, then stand up and be whole!