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Too much faith
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I like the way we Christians constantly exhort each other to more faith, and flagellate each other for our lack of it — and then ridicule the person who has too much.
A friend of mine, who has proved sober and honest in all my relations with him, told me about a prayerfully sought healing in his prison fellowship that brought much rejoicing among the brothers.
But of course, you can’t always trust an inmate.
Yesterday I was at a party at which a couple told me the following story: They were stranded with a transmission fluid leak in the poverty-and-crime-infested Port Richmond section of
He was a new Christian. His wife-to-be was already a strong believer. She said to him words to this effect: “If you really believe in Jesus, like you say you do, you will pray with me now, and pray specifically for the right kind of funnel.” So they did. And when they rounded the corner, there was one sitting in the middle of the road.
Tell me, why shouldn’t I believe that?
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A matter of life
You should believe it. IT is real. That is the faith that is not dead and is not double-minded.
Even if the answer to the prayer did not result in what we thought we needed or wanted, it would not change my faith. God provides all we need.
I bet God just delights in doing this! A little skepticism is not a bad thing, though. Sometimes only the person involved will believe it. It is a private gift from God to them and that is enough.
#2
that sentiment is just as faithful (if not more so) than this man and his wife.
I’ve noticed this a lot, even in my own experience. God seems to grant the requests from new Christians for small miracles. I’d believe the couple.
Sometimes we pray and what we ask for happens. Sometimes it doesn’t.
I agree with Grandma. It’s okay to sometimes ask God to make our lives mor convenient, but our faith should not depend on 100% compliance from him. That is putting him to a foolish test.
Has anybody notice the trolls are not mocking posts like this as much as they used to? They must have realized their atheist arguments were ineffective and headed for easier prey.
We westerners are so quick to dismiss such events as the correct funnel in the middle of the road as coincidence. (”Co-INKY-dinks” as I like to call them)
There truly are no such things as Coincidences, only God work His will throughout the world and the human experience for the sole purpose of bringing glory to Himself.
Grandma and Matthew are both correct in saying that our faith should not depend on positive answers to prayer but on the fact that all things are in God’s control and work to bring glory to himself. This includes the things that seem like bad things that happen in our life.
John M-#7- I was just thinking that the trolls you speak of are like an infection on some threads. We have acted a bit like an effective antibiotic-or maybe a vaccine!
Hmmmmm…
Of course I’m reminded of the pastor and his wife who publically castigated their congregation for not having enough faith to heal the wife’s cancer.
That being said, I receive mixed signals when I pray that God will help me find that missing part I just dropped into the bowels of my automobile. Sometimes he answers in the positive and sometimes in the negative. Each time I have the same desperate prayer. “Lord help me find this part”. Sometimes I find it, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I call my wife and she takes me down to the parts store….
Hard to say how and if God answers these prayers….
Oh. Yeah. The poor woman died. The pastor excoriated the congregation again….
I love the story told by D. A. Carson. His church was having a prayer vigil for a woman dieing of cancer. Mrs. Carson, instead of the usual prayer for healing, wisdom for the doctors, etc. prayed, “Lord, if it is time for you to take her home, help her die well.”
This caused awkward silence and few thought much of Mrs. Carson’s prayer.
Later, the husband, in desperation came to D. A. Carson. His wife was further wasting away and what he wanted to know was could he possibly give himself permission to let his wife go.
We Evangelicals are used to telling God what to do in prayer and we showcase it as a victory the minority of times when we succeed. Yet the Lord’s prayer seems to me so very different than the “how to get something from God” way we typically pray.
One hears anecdotes like these from time to time and they do sound remarkable. But for every one of these stories, there are hundreds of contrasting ones that don’t get told as often. This is classic selection bias. Stories like the above are bound to happen coincidentally once and awhile, given how many times people are in trouble and pray for stuff! But are they statistically significant??
Francis Bacon in Novum Organum (1620):
“The human understanding, once it has adopted opinions, either because they were already accepted and believed, or because it likes them, draws everything else to support and agree with them. And though it may meet a greater number and weight of contrary instances, it will, with great and harmful prejudice, ignore or condemn or exclude them by introducing some distinction, in order that the authority of those earlier assumptions may remain intact and unharmed. So it was a good answer made by that man who, on being shown a picture hanging in a temple of those who, having taken their vows, had escaped shipwreck, was asked whether he did not now recognise the power of the gods. He asked in turn: “But where are the pictures of those who perished after taking their vows?” The same reasoning can be seen in every superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, nemesis and the like, in which men find such vanities pleasing, and take note of events where they are fulfilled, but where they are not (even if this happens much more often), they disregard them and pass them by. But this evil lurks far more insidiously in philosophies and sciences, in which an opinion once adopted infects and brings under control all the rest, though the latter may be much firmer and better. Moreover, even without this pleasure and vanity I have spoken of, the human understanding still has this peculiar and perpetual fault of being more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives, whereas rightly and properly it ought to give equal weight to both; rather, in fact, in every truly constituted axiom, a negative instance has the greater weight.”
er “happen once in a while” (not “once and awhile”) above
Has anybody notice the trolls are not mocking posts like this as much as they used to? They must have realized their atheist arguments were ineffective and headed for easier prey.
Actually, I think there’s a troll convention on and most are busy. I was unable to attend this year …
With eternal perspective, no matter what happens in our life, we can rest in Christ knowing that all things are under Him. We do not know all the answers and prayers are not always answered the way we think they should be–but the Lord knows our needs and gives more than we can ask or imagine. When we suffer, He draws us closer to Him and “comforts us in our affliction.” 2 Corinthians 1:4. Because of His comfort, we can comfort one another.
Andrea, He cares about the little things (need of a funnel), and the big things (welcoming your son home).
Mrs. Seu, do I recall correctly that you are Presbyterian? Though I’m pretty Calvinist myself, I’ve hung out with Charismatics for a number of years and have observed that such little miracles are pretty common. IMHO, Christians who hold strict dispensationalist doctrine don’t see miracles because they don’t believe miracles are “for today.” But those whose theology is not so limited see them all the time.
The reason I saw what I’m about to tell you is that my next-door neighbor, a connoisseur of TV evangelists, was especially fond of Paul and what’s-her-name Crouch, and was always tuned into their program. The Crouches were in the process of expanding their operations into Russia and recently had travelled to St. Petersburg to get a TV or radio station. Unfortunately, due to mechanical problems, their airplane was forced into a lay-over at Palm Springs, CA. Jan — that’s her name! — prayed over the jet engine with a young mechanic, who turned out to be a believer! Although the wings of those prayers took the Crouches and the Gospel to Russia and back, they believed that keeping the old jet would tempt the Lord, who was about to give them a brand new one! He’ll give you a jet!
#18 I think I’ll start praying for my jet now!
Seriously, for the record, I led an orchestra for a charismatic healing ministry that appeared with Paul and Jan on TBN in the 70’s. So I saw a large gamut of prayer responses, from alleged “miracles” to times when God apparently “answered” with “no.” With hindsight, I’d say that the relative fraction of miraculous “hits” compared to “No’s” was consistent with chance occurrence. But none of us in the ministry would have interpreted it that way at the time!
I watched Jan Crouch preach a message where she saw a sick chicken crossing the road (I’m not making this up) and felt led to heal the chicken. Her point was that if God so loved the chicken, surely he loves you and me, my friend.
I was trying to reconcile that with the subsequent Promise Keepers event where 30,000 chickens were slain in Jesus name to provide lunch for the men. Must be an election thing.
Jayfromcleveland - I’m a bit confused by your comment. I am Pentecostal. We believe that the gifts of the Holy Spirit, including healing, are definitely for today. We are also dispensationalists, if by that you mean we believe in a coming rapture & such.
We are much aware of the miracles that happen in our lives.
I certainly believe the couple.
However, I’d be extraordinarily careful about expecting God to meet our expectations in the way that we want Him to. The inscrutability of God is much overlooked in the American Protestant church. The grandeur of our God should reassure and terrify us.
Many of us would agree, I think, that in addition to (or maybe even more important than) praying for a healing, we should pray for strength & grace to go through an illness, even unto death.
But I wonder - Have we put so much emphasis on this that we have lost our faith in healing? Do we doubt that God will heal us? Not doubt that He can, but He that will?
#19
With hindsight, I’d say that the relative fraction of miraculous “hits” compared to “No’s” was consistent with chance occurrence.
—————
This seems fishy to me.
The relatively small number of miraculous healings was consistent with chance occurrence? The chance occurrence that an ailing person is somehow instantly healed at the exact instant that the pastor happens to be praying over them?
The likelihood of that happening ONCE is… astronomically high. The likelihood of it happening more than once is, in all practicality, statistically impossible.
True, there will be a number of “placebo healings,” where the person believes with such passion that they honestly think they’re healed, regardless of whether they really are.
But they cannot ALL be attributed to the placebo effect… You can’t even claim that MOST are “false positives.”
#24 - “The chance occurrence that an ailing person is somehow instantly healed at the exact instant that the pastor happens to be praying over them?”
Well I can’t say I actually witnessed this. You get a bunch of people hyped up in large meeting and various ailments are called out with “word of knowledge,” and then, lo and behold, somebody actually has such an ailment! What are the chances?! Pretty good, actually. Then somebody says they’re healed or is told to “believe” they’re healed (healing assumed to follow if you truly “believe”). Most often it’s a trivial set of symptoms like a cold or whatever. And then, if there was followup at all, only positive results were reported. I knew of a LOT of negative ones, but only a selected few with actual remittance were used as “testimonies” in later services. Of these, I’d say the vast majority struck me as not all that remarkable.
But every once in awhile there would be a rather powerful claim like a reversal of Myasthenia Gravis. I still don’t know what I think of that.
I have also seen a non-Charismatic Baptist thrown across the room when I “laid on hands” for the “slaying of the spirit.” That was very weird!
In retrospect, I would say that the vast majority of “testimonies” were certainly selection bias. I have an open mind about some of the weirdest cases, but I realized some time ago that the assumption that these “unexplained” events validate any particular theological belief or religious dogma is a complete non sequitur.
That “slain in the spirit” thing is interesting to me. I’d like to know from anyone who has experienced it what it feels like.
Many years ago, I was prayed over by someone from a charismatic tradition. Then he placed his hands very lightly at my shoulders and began to move them back and forth. My shoulders turned to match his movements (like doing the twist) even though he was barely making contact, not at all hard enough to be pushing me … but it certainly felt like something was.
Very strange experience.
#25
But every once in awhile there would be a rather powerful claim like a reversal of Myasthenia Gravis. I still don’t know what I think of that.
I have also seen a non-Charismatic Baptist thrown across the room when I “laid on hands” for the “slaying of the spirit.” That was very weird!
————
fair enough…
thanks for the clarification.
#27
that is strange…
i have no experience with it, but it sounds pretty crazy.
#27 Yeah I’ve been both slain and slayer (apologies to Buffy fans). I can’t really say that I ever felt a miraculous power knock me over; more of a hypnotic relaxation and faint. I think there really is “hypnosis” heavily involved, but I’m not sure that’s much of an explanation.
People used to argue whether the “slaying of the spirit” was scriptural; the going quote was just an example from the Johannine “I am” sayings:
John 18:6 - When he said to them, “I am (he),” they drew back and fell to the ground.
But I don’t see this as really exemplified by modern charismatic practice.
I have not been “slain in the Spirit”, but I have witnessed this happening every now & then in our church.
One woman later gave a testimony about her experience. She had been stressed & “had the ‘hurries’ ” for a while. While lying on her back on the floor, she experienced God’s peace flowing over & through her body.
Later in the week, going about her daily life, she realized that God had taken “the hurries” away, & she was much calmer.
Yeah - I do remember lots of “tingling” and “calming” sensations. They come back very easily in my Tai Chi class, and I still have to concentrate to keep from falling over backwards in some kind of religious ecstasy. Of course my instructor chalks this all up to a flow of “Chi”.
“Do we doubt that God will heal us? Not doubt that He can, but He that will?”
Physically? In this life?
Absolutely.
He absolutely can. But God will do as He sees fit, and physical healing may or may not fit into those plans. So I certainly do question whether or not God will do things in a particular way. Any other claim to know the specifics of the mind of God should probably take a step back and reconsider.
We absolutely have a Scriptural promise of physical renewal and rebirth… but that hope is the Cross and Resurrection.
Spinoza,
I sometimes get those tingly feelings when I exersise. I found I need to drink more water. Maybe you could give that a try. Unless you really do want to fall over backwards so you can have that “religious experience”!
I agree with your #19 post. “It rains on the just and the unjust.”
Biasedbulldog, I see you understand the difference between the “theology of glory” (prosperity, health, and all good things) and the theology of the cross (Christ crucified).
Faith is not about us - having too little or too much. It’s about God at work and our sight or lack thereof. This is not semantics. Do some have better sight than others? Of course, but it is not a limitation on God’s work in any case. Genesis 18:17 is instructive to this point and is often neglected in discussions of Abraham’s prayers that follow in the story. A passage like Luke 8:9-10 teaches the same principle in the new testament.
Even a passage like Luke 7:1-10 which would seem to be contradictory affirms that it is Jesus who is relevant not his own circumstances or motives. He had a sight that went beyond the superficial circumstances and was not based on the strength of his own passions or knowledge. He was acknowledging the complete authority of Jesus, refusing to acknowledge ANY constraints on what Jesus would or could do. He was prepared for anything Jesus would provide but was also confident to ask for his heart’s desire.
As I read through the posts here I begin to remember something that struck me several months ago. We Americans (especially) tend to pray for healing, jobs, and things. We pray in “grocery lists” as if we were shopping.
I believe prayer is so much more than that. If you look at the prayers of Paul and the prayers of Jesus, you rarely see the “gimme” attitude we have.
Try praying through those prayers and see if it doesn’t change your perspective…
Okay, here’s another way of asking my question - Do we associate prayer for healing so much with the “Prosperity gospel” that we hesitate to believe God will heal us?
If one is ill or injured or dying it is perfectly acceptable to cry out, “Oh Father, please heal me!”
This does not mean that the one crying out only wants healing & won’t accept whatever else God sends. True faith & trust accepts whatever comes from His hand, but still asks for what we want.
As Dick wrote above, “He was prepared for anything Jesus would provide but was also confident to ask for his heart’s desire.”