November 2015 Prayer Column

Greater works (John 14:12)

I read a really good book on holiday.  It argued that we should seek more healing in our churches with the aid of the Holy Spirit.  Healing and deliverance was what Jesus did all the time, and what the early church continued to do (as Jesus had promised they should), as in the book of Acts, and for the next few hundred years.  But then from the time of Constantine such good works were discouraged and declined.  Some said that only the holiest saints were fit to do it; others that is was presump-tuous to try and copy Jesus.  Later, some claimed that miracles such as healing has ceased with the apostles; and nearer our own time many have declared that today we should know better than to believe that such supernatural things ever happened at all. 

Thus, by one means or another, acts of healing and wholeness, once the lifeblood of the Christian faith, have been all but throttled – despite the occasional outbreaks of Pentecostal-style spiritual blessings at various times and in different parts of the church.  This includes the ‘enthusiasm’ of the early Methodists and, in the last hundred years, diverse Pentecostal and Charismatic movements.  The writer of this book urges that we open ourselves more widely to the movement of God’s Holy Spirit; and urgently seek the fruit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control); and also all the blessings of healing and wholeness he longs to give to the church for the glory of God in the world.  Worth a prayer?  With His power?

The Healing Reawakening: Reclaiming our lost inheritance. 
By Francis MacNutt, Chosen Books, 2005.

Roy LS

A prayer for each week

Thank you, O my Father, for giving us your Son, and leaving your Spirit till the work on earth is done.  Please Lord, help us to sing this with our lives.  Amen.

Holy Spirit, Teacher, please come and make your home in our hearts and minds, leading us into all your truth, through Jesus, our Lord and Saviour.  Amen.

Holy Spirit, Helper, please show us the vastness of your resources for living, and the depths of our daily need, and fill us with your presence.  Amen.

Holy Spirit, Counsellor, indwelling and ever present, please open our inner ears to your advice, and give us the sense to heed what you say.  Amen.

Holy Spirit, Guide, knowing us better than we do ourselves – our past, our problems, and our potential in Jesus, please keep us on your chosen path.  Amen.

Your own prayers