Praying for Healing

I have a friend who has been in chronic pain for a very long time. She's seen doctors, specialists even, and attempted a variety of treatments. Currently, she is at a crossroads. The specialist believes it is time to begin a new round of treatments that will cost thousands of dollars and may still lead to surgery. Earlier this week she called me. She said that after talking it over with her husband, she had decided to speak with her pastor and request that a team of elders in her church gather to pray with her and for her, for her healing, and she'd asked them to invite me because she knew I believed in healing, too.
I told her I would be there. And, then, I began to tremble.
Did I believe in healing? Of course, I believed in healing? What did it mean to believe in healing? What it immediately boiled down to was that I did believe God could heal, especially those who had the faith to ask believing, but I wasn't sure that I believed He would -- or that I had the faith to ask with confidence. Wow, that was so hard to admit.
Honestly, I kept picturing myself gathered in a room full of faith giants and prayer warriors in a scene out of the exorcist, only they had to stop the procedings and ask me to leave the room because one of them discerned my lack of faith which was hindering the healing. When I confessed this fear to my friend, she said, "Kristen! This is not a seance, for Pete's sake!" Even I had to laugh at myself that time.
In preparing for this adventure in prayer, I did two things. 1) I prayed. I asked God to remove my doubts and help my unbelief. 2) I read. I love me some www.biblegateway.com, and I wasted no time doing a couple of word searches on healing in scripture. I read many passages about God's healing, but the one that I kept coming back to was in James.
James 5:13-16 says, "Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective."
Was my friend in trouble? Yes. She should pray. Was she happy? Sometimes, and when she was she loved to sing songs of praise, but more often than not recently, the chronic pain she experienced hindered the happiness of other areas of life. Was she sick? Definitely. She should call the elders of her chruch to pray over her and anoint her with oil in the name of the Lord. So, she did. It was just that simple. Not magical or mystical, simple obedience that prompted this plan. I could handle that, couldn't I?
The gathering took place much like any other prayer meeting. We met, we heard about the need, we read the scripture -- wouldn't you know the pastor turned to James 5! And, we began to pray. Nobody prayed anything wacky or weird. Nobody hooped, hollared, or called out in a language I couldn't understand. They referenced familiar passages of scripture and prayed accordingly. They repeated the words of beloved praise hymns. They confessed confidence in God's sovereign goodness, his unchanging, unfailing character. They prayed for wholeness -- not just in her physical body, but in her spirit, in her mind, in her heart. They prayed that Jesus be glorified. We prayed. Although I began as a curious observer, it was not long before I recognized like-minded believers and entered into their fellowship before the throne of God Himself, and He was so kind and gracious to welcome us there, to offer us a sense of His presence among us, to direct and guide our prayers in line with His Word.
Many things about that evening cannot be described appropriately. Some times the presence of the Lord is too sweet to capture with words, and I would not want to take away from it by failing to do it justice. But, one lesson from the experience stands out clearly in my mind. As we began our time of prayer, the pastor said this. "Father, we don't know what you'll choose to do, and we leave all things up to your sovereign will. We don't know if you'll heal our sister in the way that we're asking you to, but we do know that we have not if we ask not, so we're asking." How many times do I wish for God to move in a certain way, but fail to ask Him for it? How much more might we see Him move if we faithfully gathered as His children and agreed together in His name for the desires He's placed on our hearts?