When it comes to
sickness and healing, a balanced view and good sense should prevail.
WHEN GOD
DOES NOT HEAL
This
is a very sad story about a child who died because his parents, who were faith
healers, did not think that they should send him to hospital.
Austin Sprout, 16, died of a burst appendix after suffering
appendicitis for a week. The painful disease is easily remedied by routine
surgery (source: Mail Online).
Please
check out: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2205306/Russel-Brandi-Bellew-Faith-healer-parents-avoid-jail-Austin-Sprout-16-dies.html
The parents believed in God for everything, including physical
healing. But things went awry because they lacked wisdom and good sense.
Is seeking medical care and belief in
supernatural healing mutually exclusive?
As for the boy with
appendicitis, the parents should have prayed for him as well as send him to
hospital. Granted their church has strong convictions on supernatural healing – even
if they had prayed for healing and kept the boy at home – the excruciating pain
of unresolved peritoneal inflammation after the second day, should have alerted
them to send him to hospital.
But, alas, some people are fixated on
supernatural healing alone. They have not yet embraced the whole counsel of God found in the
Bible: Seeking
medical care and belief in supernatural healing are not mutually exclusive.
In
another incident, a faith healer was called to minister to a patient who was
seriously ill in a hospital in Malaysia. The former confidently told the patient’s
relatives that, since God was going to heal her, they could remove the ‘life support’
(the ventilator, feeding tube, intravenous line – among other things – which were
keeping her alive in the intensive care unit). They followed her advice but the
patient died. The relatives later sued the healer.
In
this second case, the faith healer should have earnestly sought God for a rhema word whether it’s God’s will to miraculously
heal this very ill patient before
proceeding to give advice. The healer should have fully understood the fact
that the advice she gave to the family – to remove ‘life support’ – has grave legal
implications. The patient in question is not
her (healer’s) own mother but someone else’s. Furthermore, the condition could
have easily taken a turn for the worse. It is not just headache or joint pain. So
due diligence should have been the order of the day before giving advice.
Once
again, we need to reiterate this fact: Seeking medical
care and belief in supernatural healing are NOT mutually exclusive.
Having faith does not
necessarily mean we shun medical care. Isaiah ordered a poultice to be applied
to King Hezekiah’s boil. Timothy was told to drink some wine for stomach
ailments.
Often, the physician
works alongside the Great Physician in healing. The apostle Luke, who wrote
Luke’s Gospel and Acts, was a doctor who followed Jesus in the latter’s healing
ministry.
Obviously, Jesus does
not discount the doctor’s role in treating diseases. Otherwise He would not
have said: “Those who are well have no need of a physician but those who are sick”
(Luke 5:31).
Nevertheless, the above two examples
do NOT nullify the fact that God does, in fact, heal by supernatural means.
There are so many well-documented cases of supernatural healing through God’s
servants.
RELATED POSTS:
WHEN SICKNESS STRIKES
Disease and healing as
the Bible sees it,
Yes, both/and vs either/or.
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