MORNING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/21/2026
8:53 AM
My
Worship Time Focus:
PT-3
“Jesus’ Power Over The Natural Realm”
Bible
Reading & Meditation Reference:
Luke
4:38-40
Message of the verses: “Then He got up and left the synagogue,
and entered Simon’s home. Now Simon’s
mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever, and they asked Him to help
her. And standing over her, He rebuked
the fever, and it left her; and she immediately got up and waited on them. While the sun was setting, all those who had
any who were sick with various diseases brought them to Him; and laying His
hands on each one of them, He was healing them.”
There is a little more at the beginning of this SD
that kind of goes along with what I was writing last evening, and so that is
where I will begin this morning.
We were discussing “faith healers” last
night and so unlike these modern faith healers, Jesus performed His healings in
public before huge crowds in various locations—not in the carefully
orchestrated and highly controlled surroundings of modern healing venues or TV
studios. Nor were His healings contingent of the faith of the one being healed;
most of those He healed were unbelievers, and hence unable to make a “positive
Confession” and claim their healing. So
unprecedented with Christ’s healing ministry that people exclaimed, “We have
never seen anything like this” (Mark 2:12; cf. John 9:32).
I have to mention a story that was
very upsetting to me while I was working at my job at Ford, in the casting
plant a lot of years ago. There was
always a nurse to go to if you had a problem and one of the nurses told me that
she was a believer. She had cancer in
her ankle and she went to one of these churches who believed in the kind of
healing that I have been writing about.
She told me that her faith was not good enough and so they had to cut
her foot off, and the part that made me so mad was that this is what her so-called
Pastor told her, as he said that if she had enough faith that she would have
been healed. I had to keep my feelings
to myself when she told me this story, but I had little if any respect for her
pastor.
MacArthur writes “The apostles (Luke
9:1), the seventy (Luke 10:1-9), and a few close associates of the apostles
(Barnabas [Acts 15:12], Philip [Acts 8:6-7], and Stephen [Acts 6:8]) were also
granted the gift of healing to authenticate them as the preachers of God’s
truth. Their healing was characterized
by the same features that marked Christ’s healing.
“The apostles healed with a word or
a touch. Peter merely said to Aeneas, ‘Jesus
Christ heals you’ and he was immediately healed (Acts 9:34). On the island of Malta after being
shipwrecked, ‘Paul went in to see [the father of Publius, who was gravely ill
with dysentery] and after he had prayed, he laid his hands on him and healed
him’ (Acts 28:8).
“The apostles healed instantly. As already noted, Aeneas was made will
immediately. When Peter and John healed
a man ‘who had been lame from his mother’s womb’ (Acts 3:2),’ immediately his
feet and his ankles were strengthened.
With a leap he stood upright and began to walk; and he entered the
temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God’ (vv. 7-8).
“The apostles healed totally. ‘Aeneas,
who had been bedridden eight years, for he was paralyzed….Immediately…got up’;
his paralysis was gone (Acts 9:33-34).
Paul encountered a man at Lystra who ‘had no strength in his feet, [was]
lame from his mother’s womb, [and] had never walked’ (Acts 14:8). But when Paul ‘said with a loud voice, ‘Stand
upright on your feet’’ the man ‘leaped up and began to walk’ (v. 10).
“The apostles were able to heal
anyone of anything. Acts 5:16 records
that ‘the people from the cities in the vicinity of Jerusalem were coming
together, bringing people who were sick or afflicted with unclean spirits, and
they were all being healed.’ After Paul
healed Publius’s father, the rest of the people on the island who had diseases
were coming to him and getting cured’ (Acts 28:9).
“The apostles healed organic
conditions, such as lameness (Acts 3:2-8), paralysis (Acts 9:33-34), and
dysentery (Acts 28:8).
“Finally, the apostles raised the
dead. God used Peter to bring Dorcas
back to life, and Paul to bring Eutychus back to life after he fell to his
death from a third-story window (Acts 20:9-12).
As a physician Luke, who was present [v. 8], was certainly qualified to
determine whether a person was dead.).
“The gift of healing in the New
Testament was not given to keep believers healthy, but as a sign to unbelievers
verifying the truthfulness of the gospel and the authenticity of its
preachers. To claim that healing is the
norm in the church undermines its unique role in authenticating Jesus and the
apostles as revealers of divine truth.
In keeping with that purpose, healings faded from the scene as the apostolic
era drew to a close. Paul (Gal.
4:13-15), Epaphroditus (Phil. 2:25-27), Timothy (1 Tim. 5:23), and Trophimus (2
Tim. 4:20) were all recorded to have been sick.
None of them were healed. Nor do
the New Testament Epistles, which define the life and theology of the church,
refer to a ministry of healing. There is
no evidence that the kind of healings seen in the era of Jesus and the apostles
was to continue beyond them (cf. 2 Cor. 12:12). Nor were such healings a
regular part of the purpose of God before them.
They are extremely rare in the Old Testament; for example, none are
recorded for the 750 years from Isaiah to Jesus Christ. God may choose to heal through the prayers of
His people, but not through miracle working men as in the case of our Lord and
His associates…
“While the sun was setting, signifying
the end of the Sabbath and its restrictions on travel and work, all
(Mark 1:33 notes that ‘the whole city had gathered at the door’) those who
had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to Jesus. Word traveled fast and when the Sabbath
ended, people could do what they were not permitted to do during the Sabbath—bring
their needy friends and family to the house in hope of healing. They were not disappointed. In keeping with His compassion and power to
heal anyone and any disease or condition, He was laying His hands on each one
of them and was healing them. No
one was excluded. The display of healing
on that one day may have exceeded all the recorded healings in the entire Old
Testament, and Jesus did such thing over the three years of His ministry.”
Spiritual
meaning for my life today: When I was struggling with this subject
soon after I became a believer the man who was tutoring me on the Word of God
said that God heals everyone every time with the exception of the last
time. In a sense God does heal you the
last time if you are a believer as He takes you to heaven.
My
Steps of Faith for Today: I am trusting the Lord to do His
perfect will in the life of my wife who has to make decisions on how to get
more treatment, praying that God will be faithful, as He always is in leading
us to where He wants us to go for her treatment 5/21/2026 9:59 AM
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