They have lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow. (Colossians 2:19)
Before I was diagnosed, I spent months if not years struggling with my legs. They tired very easily and they felt wooden. Finally, I met with Andrea, a nurse practitioner. Somewhere during the exam, I had a revelation that I spoke aloud: When my hand or foot is asleep, all my muscles are there; they just cannot do much. Suddenly, I realized that my problem probably was not a lack of muscles, but of nerves. All the exercising I had been doing could not make me better, if the problem were in the nervous system.
Andrea did not need my revelation, but it concurred with her thoughts. At the end of the appointment, she assured me that what I was suffering was not normal aging, and she referred me to neurology. That led to Magnetic Resonance Images and X-rays. Both types of imaging showed my spinal column was pinching my spinal cord in my neck, causing partial paralysis. The good news was that the diagnosis ruled out multiple sclerosis. The bad news was that it required major neck surgery (discectomy with fusion).
I had a month to prepare for the surgery. Being a student of the good news taught and exemplified by Jesus, I sought a miraculous cure, a divine healing. This didn’t arise purely from cowardice. The surgery is indeed imperfect, whereas divine healing could undo all the damage that had occurred. As I write this, I do not know whether my healing will be divine or surgical. Even if surgical, I’m looking to the healing power of Jesus to make it more successful than usual.
Last night my conscience spoke to me: Louis, you are so inconsistent, applying your faith to your medical condition but not to your human condition. Believe for healing. Believe also for meaningful decisions all day long. Believe you can hear my voice at every juncture. There’s much more divine grace to go around than you realize.
For years, I have needed this realization, now galvanized by all the frustration my infirmity gives me. There’s a scripture in Isaiah that describes my worst moments, moments that occur when fatigued and discouraged: “your tormentors said to you, ‘Fall prostrate that we may walk on you.’ And you made your back like the ground, like a street to be walked on” (Isaiah 51:23). Surely, the creator who can touch the lame can guide me through better days and nights. While I’m believing for great health, why not believe for all the love and communication Jesus shared with his first disciples?
Perhaps the most important thing I’ve learned is the importance of our nervous system. No matter how healthy a limb might be, if it’s not connected to the head, it’s nearly useless. This is the metaphor Paul suggests in Colossians: Jesus is the head of the body; all who belong to him must get their signals from the head; the signals are delivered by the Holy Spirit.
Clearly the body of Christ is often missing the signals the head is sending. Instead of being guided by the head, many members follow their own impulses. To make a short list, some impulses lead to needless divisions, others to self-destructive behavior, and others to watered-down beliefs. There seems no more important task than to be sure we are connected to the head and to help others be so.
However I’m healed, I expect my limbs to respond much better to my brain, and I want my recovery to propel me on a lifelong course of helping members of Christ get better connected to the head.
Physical healing is coupled with spiritual healing throughout the Bible. This may be particularly true in Isaiah’s detailed prophecy about Jesus (Isaiah 53) and in the gospel accounts of Jesus. Healing and salvation are nearly inseparable. Long before “faith healers” or “Pentecostals” existed, physical healing was revealed to be the will of God.
You may be thinking at this point, “Spiritual healing, I’m convinced of, but physical healing rarely occurs, not in the supernatural sense. I’m saved, but I haven’t seen a person healed for a long time, if ever.”
The “supernatural sense” provides a useful qualification. We all see our bodies healing themselves, just as sometimes medical care may heal them. These healings should be received as gifts from God, just as should all sunshine, groceries, friends, and pets.
As you may have guessed this post is about supernatural healing—healing that cannot be accounted for by natural explanations, whether the medical care exceeds medical expectations or, as in most of the Bible, no medical care is involved.
The fact that Christians believe unanimously in spiritual salvation but only occasionally in divine healing offers us an opportunity to ask ourselves these scandalous questions: “If the only parts of the gospel that I believe are the ones that cannot be verified, am I really believing? Or is my “faith” just religious hopefulness? Is it possible that I’m walking in disbelief in spite of my intentions? Is widespread disbelief among Christians what Jesus suspected when he asked, “when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8)
If you want to know whether or not it’s God’s will to heal you, look at Jesus in the gospels. He did only what he saw his father doing (John 5:19):
Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. (Matthew 4:23)
When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick (Matthew 8:16 & Luke 4:40).
Great crowds came to him, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute and many others, and laid them at his feet; and he healed them. The people were amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled made well, the lame walking and the blind seeing. And they praised the God of Israel. (Matthew 15:30)
Jesus never told a sick person to learn to live with an illness, nor did he ever say that God wanted to teach the person a lesson through the sickness. He never used his prayer from the Garden of Gethsemané, “If it be your will,” when confronting sickness. He healed all who came to him. Even in his home town where there was so little faith, “He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them” (Mark 6:4-6).
Because God’s will to see us healed is crystal clear, we must ask why it’s so easily disputed and discounted? Among the reasons are the following:
we pray and remain sick
we pay more attention to feelings than scripture
we let our experience define our theology
we ignore the gospels and instead listen to sermons and teachings that promote disbelief
Instead of focusing on these deterrents, we do well to focus on Jesus’ unabated habit of healing. Even in the Garden of Gethsemané, when Peter cut of the servant’s ear, Jesus healed it (Luke 22:49-51). It was the eve of his crucifixion and he still healed. Who are we following, after all? Our feelings? Our experience? Our institutions? Or the Jesus who is the same yesterday, today, and forever? (Hebrews 13:8)
In the past, I distinguished between divine and medical healing. That snobbery made me ungrateful for all the healing that occurs daily through good medicine. God loves to have people help people. That is the fabric of our existence. Most healing will be medical. But not all, particularly the many conditions medicine cannot cure—or where the cure is almost as bad as the illness.
As I write this, I’m aware of faithful Christians with chronic conditions, including blindness and polio—and I’d venture that these people are in many ways closer to God than I am. My concern is not to explain away our experience but to focus on what God revealed through Jesus. Then we are at least waging our war against disease on solid ground.
One way to find that solid ground is to recognize that healing and salvation overlap considerably, even semantically. Once we see that the same words are used to describe both physical healing and spiritual redemption, we have greater assurance that God’s will is comprehensive: good, perfect, and acceptable (Romans 12:1-2).
Three words in Greek are used to refer to both healing and salvation: sozo/σώζω, therapeuo/θεραπεύω, and iaomai/ἰάομαι (Three New Testament Words for Healing). Each of these words is used in the New Testament, and each refers to both physical healing and spiritual salvation. The Gospel (incarnated in Jesus) reveals that the whole person is under the purview of God’s love, with the result no hair is too short for him to number, nor life too poor for him to care. On more than one occasion, Jesus healed and forgave the person, making the person whole physically and admonishing the person to sin no more. Let us learn, then, to think of the divine touch as complete, sufficient for all our needs.
We all know that spiritual healing, being eternal, is the most important transformation any of us can (and should) undergo. If I have everything this life can offer—health, friends, and family—but am riddled with guilt and shame, these things mean little. But if I’m a new person, a person adopted by God and endowed with the righteousness of Jesus—I’m forever fine. This life may be painfully lacking but when we sow our earthly bodies to the grave, we can await our restoration, some way, some how, as forever healthy children of God.
Although physical healing is less important in the long run, we will see it promised or even stated as a fact in many scriptures, especially when we are aware that many times spiritual redemption and physical healing are both suggested in a promise.
Sometimes a New Testament writer will interpret the Old Testament in a way we would not suspect. It happens in Matthew’s gospel, where the writer insists that the healing is physical. After word got out that Jesus could heal people and deliver them from demons, Jesus was flooded with requests:
When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah:
“He took up our infirmities
and bore our diseases.”
The words “infirmities” and “diseases” are Matthew’s interpretation. In Isaiah 53:4 itself, you find words such as griefs, sorrows, pain, and suffering. But Matthew insists that the scourging and crucifixion somehow allowed Jesus to take up and carry physical illness. This overlap between physical and spiritual healing is of course perfectly consistent with the Greek words that refer to both kinds of healing.
The classical passage on how to pray in faith occurs in Mark 11:24. The fact that Jesus begins with “whatever you ask” implies that physical healing is included.
Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. (Mark 11:24)
In believing that we have received something before we experience it, we are moving from hope to faith. It would be hard to over-stress the difference between following Mark 11:24 and our feelings (which turn us quickly into quivering beggars when we are seriously ill).
If you are distressed, physically or emotionally, think about this: God knew before you asked what you would ask. God knows the exact solution. God says “yes” before the “yes” is visible. And God cares about your health just as he cares about your spirit.
This is the original April 22, 2024 version of the post (17 minutes), in the author’s voice (more improvisational, far less organized):
Publishing Info This post was first published on: April 22, 2024 at 15:00. Revised Apr 24, 2025. If this article is significantly updated, the publication date beneath the title may change in order to bring current posts to the top of the directory. The word “Gethsemané” uses an accent so the help the voice software.
Under differing circumstances, we exercise both hope and faith. Hope looks to the future; faith to the unseen present. Here, I emphasize faith because it has been misrepresented as hope by so many preachers, a misunderstanding reinforced by our emotions.
I am neither a Greek scholar nor a grammarian, but I am aware, as my readers are or will soon be, that “tense” matters when it comes to faith in Jesus.
By “tense” I mean the way verbs may point to past, present, and future events (I ran yesterday, I run or am running today, and I will run tomorrow). Or, to use a Bible verse: “God delivered us (past tense) from so great a death, and does deliver us (present tense); in whom we trust that He will still deliver us (future tense)” (2 Corinthians 1:10)
Let me begin with a pedestrian example. Assume a 12-year-old daughter who loved to ride her bicycle could no longer ride it as a result of a flat tire. It would be encouraging for her to hear her father later that evening say, “I will fix your tire soon” (speaking in the future tense). It would be even better if, instead, he said, “I saw your bicycle when I got home and repaired the tire” (speaking in the past tense). Both statements are good, but the one that declares the problem already resolved is, of course, the most secure, ruling out the possibility that the father would be interrupted or distracted later in the week.
When we pay attention to the past tense in the Bible, we see that God is already aware of our needs before we pray. We also see that much of what we pray for has already been provided by Jesus. The past tense redirects our attention from ourselves and our circumstances to God’s awareness and provision. Faith does not involve us reminding God of his promises. Rather, faith reminds us of God’s preparation. We are the one’s getting up to speed and not the reverse.
Note the past tense in the following passage, one of the most concise and profound teachings on prayer in the Bible.[1]
Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. (Mark 11:24)
Who would have guessed that the key to faith is to believe you have already received what you are about to ask for? Yet as Mark recites it, we are instructed to believe that we have already received whatever we ask for and then we shall have it.[2]
Many of us have read this verse all our lives and have not caught its meaning. However, its meaning points directly to the one to whom we are praying: the eternal creator who knows everything and stands outside of time. If you are not praying to this being, you are probably praying to someone created in your own image, most likely a “god” who is occasionally forgetful and sometimes indifferent.
We often pray as though God is a hopefully caring individual who will assist us if we can just get his attention, and this, frankly, indicates we are already living in disbelief. It’s essential to believe in the present that God both understands and has provided for this moment’s needs. He knows before we ask what we have need of (Matthew 6:8). For that reason, Jesus says, we should not keep repeating our prayers. We do not “remind” God of anything. We remind ourselves that God has already numbered the hairs on our head and knows what we need (Luke 12:6–7). We never make God aware of our needs. We wake up to his constant awareness. As we trust that God already knows and cares, we are living in faith.
What do we do in the mean time—the time between trusting we “have received” and actually experiencing it? Two things stand out in the gospels and elsewhere: be thankful and act on our faith.
Gratitude, especially when we are distressed, may not be automatic. It may require studying the goodness of God and the life of Jesus before we are able to thank God from our heart. It does no good to pretend anything when it comes to prayer, so it’s better to spend time renewing our minds by reading the scriptures than by mouthing words of thankfulness while our hearts remain troubled. In quietness and trust shall be our strength. Let’s stay in that place.
In quietness and trust, you have prayed for something you are sure is God’s will (such as for wisdom, for physical healing, or for the means to provide for yourself and your dependents). You followed Mark 11:24 and believe you have received what you are praying for. Yet you do not see what you have prayed for. This is where we often revert to walking by sight and living in doubt. But you remain focused on the goodness and foresight of our Father in Heaven. You persevere and assume God has set the answer to prayer in motion. Because you prayed according to his will, you are thankful that he has said “yes, so be it. You thank God for the thing you prayed for because you are trusting it is yours. When worries arise, you retrace the steps of faith (hearing, believing, confessing) and thank God again. Your focus is on God’s focus, not on your feelings which ebb and flow as they will.
To act on our faith is to make decisions based on the answer to prayer. Remember how often Jesus told people to do something to receive their healing? Stand up, pick up your bed, stretch out your hand…. Typically those things simply would not happen unless the person were healed. A paralytic wouldn’t think of standing up and walking, just as someone with a thoroughly withered hand would not attempt to stretch it out (Mark 2:1-12, Mark 3:1–5).
This need to act has been misunderstood by some who are better at acting daringly than quietly trusting. Jesus never said, “stop taking your meds,” which anyone can do, healed or sick, at times to their or their children’s detriment. The point is to be open to attempting things that presuppose either a healing or the path to healing, never trying to force God’s hand, which simply isn’t how things work.
Examples of acting on faith abound in the scriptures, including these examples:
Naaman dipped himself into the Jordan River seven times and was cured of leprosy (2 Kings 5),
The paralytic stood up, picked up his mat, and walked away (Mark 2).
The man with the shriveled hand extended it fully (Mark 3:1–5).
The man who was lame from birth got up and walked upon Peter’s command (Acts 3:1-10).
The next passage reveals that not only does God know our needs before we mention them, but that God knew our needs before time itself began. Our greatest need was to have his life inside us. He first gave his life to us before time and later enacted it when Jesus lived on earth:
He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. (2 Timothy 1:9-10)
We may not understand all that it means for grace to be given to us before the beginning of time—I certainly do not. But the statement assures us that we have been in God’s mind long before we had minds of our own. As we know, grace is nothing to be begged for or worked for, but only to be recognized and received. That’s why it’s called grace, coming from χάρις (charis), meaning favor or gift. It’s the last thing you want to try to deserve, becuase it was the first thing God choose to share with us through Jesus, even before time.
Past Facts and Present Promises
We must take hold of the past as the period when God foreknew all our needs. if Jesus has already provided something, it’s in our best interest to recognize that. Paying attention to how God has provided in the past stirs our faith. We are no longer relying on what we see in the present. We rely on what we hear about the past. We think of God as truly eternal, a Father who considered everything involved in creation before he created. He is a being for whom nothing is impossible, a being who resists the proud but who reveals himself to the humble. This is the Father that Jesus said we must approach with the faith of a child. As we yield to faith, we are able to hear for ourselves what Jesus said to the blind men: “According to your faith let it be done to you…” (Matthew 9:29).
The present and the past are not separate for the eternal God. We live in time, but God does not. When we pray to the one who already knows everything, we are addressing the real God, wholly unlike ourselves in respect to time. What we experience today, God already knew about. What God did in the past may have full consequences for us today, especially when we rely on those consequences.
Most will agree that the past seems stable, while the present may be daunting, and the future remains uncertain. If the present is difficult (such as with ill health, bad circumstances, or demoralization), we will find more consolation in learning that something for our benefit has been done in the past than we will in finding something may be done for our benefit in the future. It is my wish that the readers of this post will walk away with increased confidence that our Father has already foreseen and addressed the majority of their needs. This revelation will result in peace for the believer who can respond with thanksgiving instead of with worry.
Hope is created through promises that refer to future events (I will marry you), while faith accepts facts that refer to past accomplishments (I married you). Usually, hope looks to the future, while faith accepts in the present that we have what we need even though we do not see it.
While promises are valuable, facts are often ignored. To correct that discounting of facts, think of our redemption as it is explained in Romans: we have died with Christ (fact), we have been forgiven (fact), we are dead to the law (fact), the spirit of life has set us free from sin and death (fact), we are more than conquerors (fact), and nothing can separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus (fact). To pray for any of these things is to pray in vain. Pray instead that the eyes of our heart may be opened to see these things, to accept them, and to be thankful for them.
Most of us feel comfortable with promises. It seems natural to recognize a promise and to hopes for the future. We grow up with caregivers who make promises, and if a caregiver is both trustworthy and capable, we can hope for its fulfillment. Similarly when the scriptures provide a promise such as “no good thing will God withhold from them that walk uprightly” (Psalm 84:11), we are right at home. We put our hope in the promise for future fulfillment and assume we will receive its fulfillment so long as we walk uprightly.
But we are less used to hearing a divine fact about a past accomplishment and accepting it as being done. For this difficulty there are at least two reasons.
First, the facts to which I’m referring are not obvious to natural observation. These must be revealed in the scriptures and by the Holy Spirit. This is why Paul prayed that believers would have a spirit of revelation and, I assume, why Jesus said “Whoever has ears, let them hear.” Jesus taught that only by revelation could we know the true God: “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do” ( Ephesians 1:18, Matthew 11:15, 25-26).
The second reason we think in terms of God responding in the future instead of the past is that we have been misled by poor sermons. They may stipulate that if something is God’s will, it will happen. True, but that is largely a matter of hope: I hope it’s God’s will and I hope it will happen. Or they adhere more strictly to God’s promises: those who endure will inherit the kingdom of heaven. True, again, and clearly a matter of hope for things to change in the future. Such promises are good and worthy of our attention, but they are not statements of faith. They do not say the thing is accomplished now (rise up and walk) or was accomplished in the past (the chastisement of our peace fell upon him). Let us rest on divine facts and spend less time treading water by thinking only in terms of an uncertain future. Jesus told Peter to come into the water, but soon Peter forgot he was told to step onto it and focused on an uncertain future of drowning. By faith alone will we experience a kingdom that comes not in word only but also in power (1 Thessalonians 1:4-5).
It’s fine to hope for fulfillment in the future—and some things, such as one’s wedding date or our new, heavenly bodies, are reserved for the future and are proper objects of hope. Other things—indeed many of our greatest needs—have already been known by God, addressed by God, and accomplished by Jesus. To use a crude analogy, the check is not in the mail, it has been deposited before we knew we needed the money and awaits only for us to draw upon the account.
In short, when we pray, we are not called to beg that God makes an exception, we are called to agree that God is our provider. Prayer is closer to praise than we often realize.
If you are indifferent to what I’m pointing out, please know that the difference is immense. Trusting what God already knows, what God already intends, and what Jesus already accomplished delivers us from a life of fretful worry to a life of peace and joy. We may not instantly experience much, but the knowledge that the matter is in hands greater than ours creates trust. I’ve found peace and resolution by assuming a gift from God is mine, even when it isn’t visible or sensible.
Assurance without tangible evidence may be considered the foundation of faith, which, as we learn in Hebrews 11:1 is “the substance [in the present] of things hoped for [in the future], the evidence [in the present] of things not [yet] seen.” The litmus test of prayer is whether, when we are done expressing it, we walk away with assurance that it’s being taken care of or whether we feel it all remains up to us to accomplish. We may have to remind ourselves that we’ve been heard; we never need wonder whether or not our Father has listened.
This assurance comes by being convinced that we know God’s will; that it is good, perfect, and acceptable; that it is for our welfare and not our destruction; and that it is full of grace and mercy. We must rid ourselves of institutional disbelief—teachings and practices that reduce God to a lesser being. Among the worst examples, God is an inexplicable being that prefers to teach through sickness rather than healing, through punishment rather than forgiveness. Other institutional disbelief portrays God as a weak, memory challenged being who requires many reminders in order to act—if indeed this God acts at all. We are taught to keep confessing sins that are already, once and forever, forgiven—which is one example of how disbelief puts us right under the law again. If the good news is anything, it is good and, yes, even at this late date, it is still news.
The Past Tense is Everywhere
Once you are keyed into the importance of the past tense as a gateway to faith, you find it throughout the gospel.
The great scripture that is so often quoted as to become a mere jingle to our ears epitomizes the role of tense for conveying divine truth: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Note that the loving deed has been done in the past; we need not pray it happens nor can we make it happen: “he gave his one and only son….” Note, also, that we who live in the present can believe in this son: “whoever believes in him….” And, finally, observe that the effect of this past deed believed in the present will result in future effects for they “shall have eternal life.”
Another wonderful scripture highlights the role of tense:
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!
(Romans 5:6-9)
The “right time” is the historical past, about 33 A.D. This is followed by the literary (or eternal) present, “God demonstrates his own love.” And, again, “While we were still sinners,” refers to the past in two respects. First, the author, Paul the Apostle, was alive and sinning (by his own confession) when Christ died for him. Second, those who were born after the crucifixion (that’s us) discover that, while we may be still sinning in the present, Christ already died for us in the past. As a result, whether a person lives in the first or twenty-first century, “we have now been justified” (past perfect tense—to indicate that one event happened before another in the past).
In a final example, the apostle Peter applies the past tense to the majestic prophecy of Isaiah 53:
“‘He himself bore our sins’ in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; ‘by his wounds you have been healed'” (I Peter 2:24, quoting Isaiah 53:5. Peter changes Isaiah’s text from “by his wounds we are healed” to “by his wounds you have been healed—past perfect tense. Either the present “are” or the past perfect “have been” assures us of healing. But Peter’s use of the past tense “have been healed” reminds us that what was done in the past has real effects in the present. Before we were born, the drama of our rebirth into Christ had been transacted.
More can be said for living by faith in what God has already achieved and accomplished. Not only does it put us in tune with God. It also makes our part in the process perfectly clear. We are truly humble recipients. We cannot brag about things someone else achieved, especially if they achieved it in the past, most especially before we were born. We can only be grateful. When we realize that the vast majority of our needs have already been met by Christ—through his sufferings and his resurrection—we have nothing to boast about, to anxiously work for, to fear concerning, or to earn. We are already home.
This recognition that we are already recipients of a great gift is what Paul’s opening statement to the Corinthian believers makes clear:
It is because of God that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.” (I Corinthians 1:30-31, NIV)
God has already placed us in Christ. We are neither waiting to gain entrance to God’s presence nor to be near Jesus. We are there, feel it or not. We are not waiting for Jesus to give us wisdom, righteousness, holiness (sanctification), or redemption. We now have them by virtue of already being in Christ. All we need are the eyes to continually see this and the heart to insist on it when this life tells us we are on the outside, far away from Christ.
Consequently, three attitudes should inform our prayers.
When we have a need, remember that God already knows about the need and has provided a remedy, although we have not yet experienced it.
When we feel we need to become a better person, know that we are already identified with Christ in his death, resurrection, and ascension. The true us cannot be closer to God than we are right now. Living this out in our old bodies may be difficult, but the difficulty is to trust we are exactly who we should be in all the ways that count most.
When we feel ungrateful, allow that feeling to remind us that we have forgotten what God has already given us, whether it’s our new life in Christ (done) or that thing we have prayed for (done).
Footnotes
[1] This teaching occurs after Jesus cursed the fig tree and it died. The cursing of the fig tree is puzzling to most of us who see Jesus as constructive and the fig tree as innocent (it was out of season according to the passage in Mark 11). Without pretending to know why Jesus did it, I can only point out that the cursing of the fig tree and the cleansing of the temple occur on the same day, an extremely emotional one that demonstrates both the misuse of the temple and the impending death of Jesus, who, like the fig tree, would die prematurely.
[2] The past tense in Mark 11:24 is undeniable. The Greek text reads πιστεύετε ὅτι ἐλάβετε καὶ ἔσται. “ἐλάβετε” is the aorist (past perfect) of “λαμβάνω” (to take or receive). The New International captures the tense (believe that you have received it, and it will be yours), as does the New American Standard (believe that you have received them, and they will be [granted] you), as does the Revised Standard version (believe that you have received it, and it will be yours). Some translations hedge slightly, such as King James (believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them). “Ye receive” is present tense. Perhaps the translators could not believe the past tense was intended. The verse, however, retains its meaning that the believing comes before the receiving and that is the most important point.
This is the original April 22, 2024 version of the post (17 minutes), which, in its overenthusiastic way, included what is now a separate post on healing and forgiveness:
Publishing Info This post was first published on: April 22, 2024 at 15:00. Revised Apr 23, 2025. If this article is significantly updated, the publication date beneath the title may change in order to bring current posts to the top of the directory.
I had met Kirk for breakfast. I liked him. We met on a water taxi from Belize to an island, Caye Caulker. We were now having breakfast at Amor y Cafe. Kirk is younger than I but still feeling the weight of his sixth decade of life. He observed that aging is not enjoyable. I concurred wholeheartedly, for that was the reason I had come to this island: to swim and hopefully regain some of my health.
Never again will there be in it
an infant who lives but a few days,
or an old man who does not live out his years;
the one who dies at a hundred
will be thought a mere child
It is a verse I have been “claiming” in an approximate way, hoping that I have many good years ahead of me.
To this, Kirk quickly and confidently rejoined, “Ah, yes. The Millennium!”
I knew exactly what he meant: Christ would return someday, Satan would be imprisoned, and earth would be well for a thousand years. During that time, we will experience a wealth of miracles, all the healing imaginable.
If we had been keeping score, Kirk would get a point for allowing the statement about the hundred-year-old child to be true (even literally) and at the same time entirely futuristic. I’d get a point afterward for writing that the statement is hyperbolic. Whether someone lives to be a hundred this year or in the Millennium, there’s something rhetorical and exaggerative about calling that person “a child.” Similarly, if someone dies at, say, 95 years, calling that person “accursed” (as Isaiah 65 soon states) is equally hyperbolic. The obvious point of Isaiah 65 is that things will, at an unspecified time and under unspecified conditions, get incredibly better for people.
Enough of Isaiah 65 for now, beautiful as the vision is. Enough of Kirk, too—only because he had to leave the island the next day and I never questioned him further about his beliefs.
But the conversation we started at the cafe continued a debate within me. On one hand, I am one who believes miracles are for today. On the other hand, I looked at the advantages of those who believe miracles are for the Millennium.
I see miracles, especially healings, as part of our daily bread, the sort of thing Jesus illustrated while on earth, the thing the disciples illustrated after Jesus ascended, and the thing occasionally experienced, sometimes in crowds, sometimes alone, by people across the ages.
The other school, sometimes called dispensationalism, sees the one miracle of being born again as the miracle we can both count on and help manifest in our lifetime. Salvation, period. The physical miracles can wait until the Millennium.
Unlike Millennial thinkers, I cannot wait passively. If miracles, especially of healing, were needed and delivered to the people in Jesus’ Palestine, they are equally needed today. Yes, medicine does much, but medicine doesn’t come close to curing many, many ailments. Look at the disease stricken world and realize the need is greater than ever. The reason, I think, people join the Millennial school, is because they don’t understand why divine healings are so rare. When I am pressed for why miracles occur so rarely (few people I know have documentable divine healings), I think of the one thing for which Jesus criticized his disciples most frequently: disbelief.
If Peter had enough faith to get out of a boat and take a few steps on stormy water, began to sink, cried for help from Jesus, and was met by, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”—if that, then why in the world are we satisfied with our level of faith? Most of us are still sitting in the boat. Many of of us cry out for help. Few of us even imagine walking on water or doing anything that suggests that a great reality undergirds us.
I bring up disbelief because it was a problem among the disciples and is surely a problem among most modern “believers.” There is no condemnation in admitting one has disbelief, just as there’s no condemnation in admitting one has a past. We all need to start somewhere. The question isn’t, “Where did we start?” but “Where are we headed?”
Faith has little to do with with our will power and much more to do with what we are listening to. To become absorbed in the teachings of Jesus, including the prophetic voices of, say, Isaiah, is to be on the path to faith. Learning to see what is real for God (read Romans 8 for a sample) is learning to doubt our experiences and instead trust in the good news.
In conclusion, on one hand, I like the tidiness of Millennial thinking. The plan is to appreciate the miracle of being reconciled to God. Not only do we appreciate the one miracle but we also propagate it. We have churches that teach the gospel. We are all able to share in one capacity or another the gospel. Those who believe, start a new life with Jesus and our Father. Those that don’t may later. Someday we will die and experience much, much more. It’s beautiful.
It is beautiful! And I need to appreciate this vision. Of course the standard way of sharing the gospel needs constant tweaking. After all, it’s often preached to the choir. But beneath the cliches and rote understandings lie treasures that cannot be measured and shouldn’t be missed. Being born spiritually means never being alone again. It means always being in Christ, always being loved by God. It dwarfs about any other experience imaginable.
On the other hand (of my internal debate) I love the hope of the early gospel, the message that Jesus lives in us, that he is the same yesterday, today, and forever. I love the promises that whatever we ask in his name, we shall receive so that our joy may be full. And I love the occasional testimonies of those who were so ill that nothing could be done until the Spirit of God miraculously healed them. More than health, they gained a better knowledge of Jesus than otherwise possible.
So I do think I gained more appreciation of the purely spiritual salvation message that Kirk got me thinking about.
It in no way dislodged my appreciation of the physically miraculous.
I pay attention to all the stories of healing in the Bible, closely, as though I’m reading the news. Even when I’m not healed (and at the moment I’m imagining a divine touch), I’m coming closer and closer to learning God’s will. Just because things happen frequently in this world doesn’t mean God wills them. And just because things don’t happen, doesn’t mean God doesn’t will them. God’s will is revealed in Jesus, and it is expressed wherever there is faith and obedience. God’s will is wholesome, meaning God wants us whole, body, mind, and spirit. It will not be realized completely in this life—we all see through a darkly lighted mirror. But there’s not a bit of confusion of how Jesus treated sickness, never turning anyone away, always healing, always delivering.
Call me little faith, and I’m encouraged! If a little faith untangles God’s will from all the evil that happens, a little more faith will brings us in touch with the “God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not”—yes, the God who enabled geriatric Abraham and Sarah to give birth to a son (Romans 4:17).
What is a genuine miracle for the purpose of this post? The short answer is that it is one that I find convincing because (1) it is beneficial and (2) cannot be more easily explained as a natural occurrence.
The longer answer (but not dreadfully long) goes like this. On one hand, every thing is a miracle. But as soon as we admit that, the term loses its usefulness. Perhaps it’s better to say everything is a gift and some gifts are miraculous.
A physician’s report that says an individual recovered in spite of medical predictions would be bonafide in my mind, whether or not we knew that someone had prayed for that healing. Missing a flight or a ride that happened to culminate in an accident might be a miracle. Finding oneself in an airport and receiving a call from one’s grandmother warning one not to board the flight that did culminate in an accident would be an even more convincing example of divine intervention.
You get the idea: the less probable and the more helpful an otherwise difficult-to-explain event is, the more likely it is to be a miracle.
As a reminder, we believe in Jesus because his Father has revealed him to us (Matthew 16:16-18). That revelation—that conviction that Jesus is the Christ—is less tangible but more reliable than a reported miracle.
Even so, miracles that reveal the love and kindness of God deserve our attention. Frequently in the New Testament, they serve two purposes at the same time, to help the individual and to reveal the goodness and power of God (John 9:1-6).
In my experience, Christians talk about miracles and even imagine miracles far more often than they experience them. What counts as miracles here are experiences that cannot be more easily accounted for as coincidences or instances of random luck. Bonafide miracles in this context result from the Spirit of God somehow moving in this physical world to make a much-needed change.
So, if you will, in the comments below, please share any bonafide miracles you’ve witnessed. Please be as honest as you can. When I was in high school I told a friend my van had miraculously started running well. She told her dad. He was a skeptic. I stood my ground. The truth is, I didn’t mention that I had replaced a spark plug. This was something I didn’t even think about in my zeal. If I could go back in time, I’d simply thank God for the ability to put a new plug in my car and leave the miraculous out of the picture.
If I see a need to edit your comment, I’ll send you an email letting you know the reasons (for clarity and integrity). Let’s start with one of the few documented miracles in my life. There are many events that I think are divinely guided but they do not make compelling stories to outsiders.