I really love this guys response. He was trying to get his son healed. Jesus said unto him , If thou canst believe , all things are possible to him that believeth . And straightway the father of the child cried out , and said with tears , Lord , I believe ; help thou mine unbelief . Mark 9:24. What humility! This humility is rarely seen today, however. The modern mind claims it has evolved past such primitive needs for tearful prayers and desperate humility. The father in the above passage was man enough to know he had been poisoned with toxic unbelief and was in no shape to believe for the impossible. He desperately needed help, and he knew it. He also knew Jesus was Lord, even if he himself may have had doubts. But, rather than cave to the doubt, he prayed to the Lord. And his prayers were answered. Its amazing the form God-blaming takes these days. I have recently encountered three very different types of people who make the exact same claim that God says NO to the majority of our prayers of faith. The first encounter I had was with a staunch Calvinist who believed everything that happens is Gods express will, whether it be healing or affliction. God routinely says NO to prayers of faith for physical healing. The second encounter I had was with a well known writer who has emphatically renounced Jesus divinity altogether. Jesus, if He is God, fails us continually. More likely, He is not divine and His healing promises are powerless and empty. The third encounter I had was with a non-denominational Christian who just thought any expectation of healing was just bunk. He hasnt experienced it so it doesnt exist. Yet these three very different people nonetheless made the exact same arguments: 1) God answers the majority of our prayers of faith with a NO. Because children die every day despite the faith prayers of their parents, Jesus either cant or wont heal, even where faith is present. He clearly says NO the majority of time because, they claim, these anguishing parents all had perfect faith and it certainly didnt work for them. 2) They will not believe in God as a healer until they see evidence of it with their own eyes. Show them doctors reports proving cancer was there one moment and gone the next. Until then, they wont believe that anybody ever has been healed at any time in any place by any God. 3) Unless you show statistically that prayers of faith work, their presumption is that it doesnt. They will believe the numbers before they will believe the testimony of Scriptures, personal testimony or any other anecdotal evidence. Here is my response. For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect ? God forbid: yea , let God be true , but every man a liar Romans 3:3-4 It gets a little old listening to critics blame God for failed faith, failed healings and failed prayers. Since these people have failed to get their own prayers answered, they want to crush the hopes of all others who dare believe in a God who heals. They flippantly flip the Romans 3 verse I cited above by wrongly arguing that all men are true and God is a liar. They propose that we just tell them instead that Jesus ignores or says no to prayer the majority of the time, despite all the numerous Scriptures which promise otherwise. We can just call Jesus an outright liar for letting children die from cancer despite parental prayer. Our faith, according to them, plays absolutely no part in prayer at all. Despite Jesus promising over and over again in Scripture that prayers of faith would heal the sick, this is just a cruel lie He victimized us with. Since all these parents had perfect faith (according to them), then Jesus must be the imperfect one who is lying. The thought here from them is that its ok to call Jesus a liar as long as we dont offend any human being by daring to challenge their respective faith-fervencies. When Jesus often insisted that those who sought His healing needed fervent faith, was He misleading both them and us? Romans says let God be true and every man a liar; NOT let every anguishing parent be true and God a liar. It seems many favor the latter construction. Certainly we should be sensitive and Spirit-led as to who we share healing dynamics with. Some can hear it and some cant, some can bear it and some cant. As with all things, we must use discernment to follow the promptings of the Spirit. And whatever exhortations to fervent faith we might give, they would NEVER condemn parents AFTER their child was lost. That is cruel and foolish, but so is telling them that their faith-fervency is a non issue. This just ultimately dumps the blame for everything onto Gods lap by denying that we play any synergistic part in the manifestation of His will. An exhortation to believe more is totally different than cruel condemnation over personal loss. But to say Jesus NEVER challenged the faith-fervency of the sick (or the family of the sick) misstates Jesus incessant call to faith and more faith. He didnt always challenge the listeners faith-fervency, but He frequently did. But here is the real problem with the three encounters I first described above. They are treating God like He was a cosmic genie and the Bible like it was a magic lamp that housed Him. Their argument that the the Bible is false when it comes to promises of healing comes from them rubbing a particular passage like it was a magic lamp and then wishing there was no evil in the world. Since God didnt then immediately jump out of the Bible, blink His eyes, and grant their wish, they reason that a faith reading of the Bible has no veracity because evil still remains in the world. However, faith is far, far more than mere wishing. God is not a genie, the Bible not a magic lamp which is there to grant our every half-hearted whim. A deeper, more mature, and more nuanced analysis is required than that. Their argument is based on the presence of evil in the world rather than exploring and discovering the true nature of faith. Their use of the word faith equates it with simple wishing, and that couldnt be farther from the truth. They seem to suggest that statistics prove that most all prayers go unanswered. Thus, the Bible is false. That is a red herring-- AS IF such information was humanly possible to obtain from some omniscient bureau of spiritual statistics which would know and keep meticulous heavenly records of ALL who prayed with effectual fervent faith and ALL who didnt, of ALL who really believed Christ as healer and ALL who really didnt, and of ALL who ultimately received some level of healing benefit from prayer and ALL who didnt. These statistics are unknowable by anyone but God. And while we are at it, where are their statistics that most prayers of Christian faith fail? They seem to have formed an incredibly baseless presumption that ANY prayer that mechanically mentions Jesus name is automatically a prayer of faith. Thats a lame and lazy presumption, but its at the heart of the agnostics entire premise. Yet, these doubters seem to claim THEY have knowledge of EVERY result of EVERY prayer on EVERY level which has EVER been offered in the name of Jesus. Well, I challenge them to PROVE it. What database do they get that from? How do they know who had faith and who didnt? How do they know ALL the trillions of historical intercessions for protection and healing which have gone on behind closed doors and which may or may not have produced countless harvests of healings, recoveries, protections and averted disasters? How do they claim to know the success rate of protections, healings and physical/mental/emotional strengthenings which have availed from ALL such fervent prayers? How do they even know the number of times somebodys distant prayers, which they were unaware of, may have benefitted or helped them or their families well being and health? Where is their evidence to the contrary? Show me their documentation of the the historical abject failure of the Christian prayer of faith. Their own evidence of failed healings is entirely anecdotal and based solely on their subjective perceptions. Whats good for the goose is good for the gander. Do they know all the hearts of men in all places over all time? Do they know the positive number of answered prayers for all Christians over all times and in all places? Show me their evidence, their VERIFICATIONS and DOCUMENTATION which show the total number of prayers ever prayed in Jesus name, the respective faith levels of each of those who prayed, the spiritual willingness of those who were prayed for, and the ultimate long-term results in those who were prayed for. Show me that over 50% of the genuine prayers of faith ever prayed in every time and place abjectly failed in giving any betterment to the one prayed for. Well, certainly they cant do that. Nor would I ever seriously demand it of anybody. My statements above were meant to show how unverifiable the nature is of their claim. Nether one of us has access to that kind of information. And yet these doubters continue to claim that the Christian Jesus doesnt come through for us the majority of times we pray. Is that the heartfelt message they are looking to promote? Is that their exhortation? Is that their contribution: Dont believe in or pray to Jesus for healing or deliverance. They apparently reject anecdotal evidence entirely, biblical evidence altogether, and ANY kind of subjective epistemology whatsoever, and seem willing to scoff at those who do employ those dynamics. They demand a strictly clinical, solely empirical basis for your faith, which has never worked and will never work. They appear to have excised out of their mind the leap of subjective faith and replaced it with statistical demands. You see, here is the real problem. Sadly, many people see God ONLY as a cosmic genie here to do their bidding. If they dont get their wishes granted satisfactorily, they then drop their magic lamp of Christianity and move on to the next shiny lamp in line. Their goal is not to interact with God, but rather to find a genie who will grant their every whim and desire. He doesnt give me what I ask for in prayer. Since He doesnt grant my wishes to my satisfaction, I now believe He doesnt even exist. He must first prove He exists by granting my prayer wishes before I will definitely believe in Him. See the flaw here? Jesus said evil generations seek signs before they believe. Please hear me. We should believe in Jesus NOT because He gives us the things we want, but because we have INTERACTED with Him, His virtue, His wisdom, His love. Thats what God wants-- interaction, not performance based belief, either FROM us or TOWARD Him. Show me a man who claims he once believed in but now renounces Jesus divine actuality and personality, and I will show you a man who never really met Him to begin with. Certainly, once we meet Him, we can thereafter renounce our intent to RELY on Jesus by walking our own way, but we cant ever renounce His actual existence once we ACTUALLY engage it. Once we meet Him, its too late for that. We should believe ON Jesus in prayer ONLY as we have first met WITH Jesus in prayer. Otherwise, we are worshipping a God we dont even know. If we must first have our wishes granted before we commit to relational connection, we have missed the whole point of the divine-human marriage. If I never got another prayer answered, I still would never deny Jesus ontology and personage. He is an established fact in my personal history. My unanswered prayers would have another source on this side of the equation, not Gods side, never on Gods side. Doubting Thomas would not believe in the resurrection unless he first thrusted his finger into Jesus nail-scars. He had to have a visible sign BEFORE believing. Today, many will not FIRST believe in Jesus actuality unless they FIRST thrust their hands on the genies lamp to see Genie-Jesus grant their wishes. God must earn their belief. Jesus was not pleased with this attitude. He says to unconditionally believe without first seeing signs is blessed. If our faith in God is conditional by how well He PERFORMS as our cosmic genie, then we may well have never truly encountered Jesus relationally. Until that happens, the posture of our heart is askew. Jesus is a relational genius, but not a relational genie.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Nov 2014 22:31:08 +0000
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