Bulletin Number 171 ( 12th Aug 2009 )
The Lord helps those who …

I read with some interest the article in The Times recently entitled “Christian couple ‘murdered daughter by prayer’”. “An American couple face a 25-year jail sentence for praying for their dying daughter’s healing instead of calling a doctor.

Dale Neumann was convicted at Marathon County court, Wisconsin, on Saturday for the second degree murder of 11-year-old Madeline Neumann. His wife, Leilani has already been found guilty on the same charge. The Neumanns had prayed at Madeline’s side after she had collapsed from undiagnosed diabetes and did not call an ambulance until she stopped breathing. Former Pentecostal Bible college student, Neumann said he believed God would heal his daughter. The couple will be sentenced on 6 October.” (Times Online August 2nd 2009)

Neumann believed that God promises in the Bible to heal, he said. "If I go to the doctor, I am putting the doctor before God," Neumann told the court. "I am not believing what he said he would do."

I can already hear readers thinking, ‘this could only happen in America’. But I find that this approach to healing is also common amongst Christian in this country too. I am often asked to speak on the Alpha session entitled ‘Does God Heal Today?’ and I explain the two polarised views people have about healing and prayer in general. In fact the polarised views are not about healing and prayer so much as about peoples’ view of God.

The first view is what I call the ‘genie in the lamp’ approach to God. It reasons that prayer is like rubbing the lamp. After a while, out pops God in the form of a genie and grants the answer to the prayer. This reduces God to nothing more than a domestic pet. The second view is the ‘absentee landlord’ approach to God which suggests that God created the world, put humankind in charge and left us to get on with things on our own. This view is hinted at in the prayer of Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) when she said, ‘Christ has no body now on earth but yours…’

The first view is reinforced by quotations of Jesus like the one I alluded to in my last bulletin “Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” (Mark 11:23,24). Also in Luke 8:25, Jesus rebukes his disciples for their lack of faith for not believing he could calm the storm.

I once read an article about the fire which destroyed the Epworth Manse on 9th February 1709. A young John Wesley was trapped in an upstairs bedroom. This report suggested that the Wesley family held a prayer meeting while neighbours grabbed ladders and climbed up to rescue John from the inferno. This rather cynical account conflicts with other more reputable accounts and I think the truth lies somewhere in between. But we must guard ourselves against the danger of being ‘so heavenly minded that we are no earthly use’.

Returning to the theme of healing, as a macho male, I know how reluctant I am in going to the doctor when I have an ache or pain. I also suffer from anxiety when I don’t go because we have a family history of cancer. Finding the right balance can be very difficult at times.

So can we simply conclude, as the title of this bulletin suggests, that ‘The Lord helps those who help themselves’ or do we take notice of Luke 8:25 and, as one Sunday School song years ago suggested, ‘expect a miracle everyday, expect a miracle when you pray’?

Whenever I run faith sharing courses, I am often taken aback by how many stories of God’s miraculous intervention come to the forefront – stories which Christians are reluctant to share in the normal course of conversation. But I am also painfully aware of how unpredictable healing miracles are and how we need to see God at work through the skills of the medical profession without ruling out the possibility of God’s miraculous healing touch through the faithful and persistent prayer of the Christian community.

For more information on these bulletins and other matters relating to evangelism in the Nottingham and Derby District, contact Roger Johnson on 0115 923 5221 / 07913 252541 or email dee@ionian.co.uk