Do you want to get well?

Do you want to get well?

Remember the story where Jesus approaches a man in need of healing and asks him, “Do you want to get well?” (John 5:6) I used to think that was such a strange question. Of course he wants to get well! What invalid wouldn’t want to get well? Yet one of the observations...

Compassion as a motivation

The passage below is often cited as an injunction toward evangelism, and rightly so. But we miss something important if we don’t quote the first half of this passage. What do you see as a lead-in to reaching the harvest? “Jesus traveled through all the towns and...

Four steps to uncovering the pain in your church

Why look for the pain? The point of pain is where the power of the gospel is at its strongest.  Only when we find the pain (and it IS there) can we move toward healing. Four steps to uncovering the pain: Listen. Prayerfully listen to what people are saying. What are...

The ministry power of the wounded

The Bible is full of stories of the wounded and how God works through them. Some make entirely unlikely heroes. Rahab was a prostitute in Jericho, but because she saw what the Lord was doing was willing to submit to it, she became a biblical example of faith and the...

A dream for the broken

I have a dream that God would heal the wounds of the broken, and that he would use us to do it. That the emotional wounds of the fatherless, the neglected, and the abused would be healed—that the effects of generational sin would stop here, cleansed by the power of...

Who Jesus healed

Another surprise for me as I looked through the gospels is the amount of healing taking place. As Jesus lived on earth, he did a whole lot of healing. Not everyone, of course, but there is a lot more healing than my non-Charismatic background is usually open to...

Recovery from wounds

How do you recover from the wounds received when people hurt you?  Too often people—including Christian leaders—let the wounds fester until they become infected.  Here’s a different strategy.  Although the medicine may taste bitter, it leads to long-term healing....