Fervent Prayer: Health and Healing
Notice the high calling and purpose that Jesus charges our lives and prayer with. Pray then like this: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. (Matthew 6:9) Are we satisfied with our calling, and our purpose of prayer? That is, to hallow, or glorify the Father’s name.
When the Christian considers health and healing in one’s life, could it be that we often misplace our need for health and healing? Do we realize that our Heavenly Father has called us to, and provides much more to His children than mere health and healing?
It will do us well to consider the subsequent verse in our Lord’s model of prayer and life. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. (Matthew 6:10) Because God is our Father, and does delight in His children, we have been called into living for God’s kingdom to come, and for His will to be done. Ponder this…called (chosen) by God to hallow His name in our living!
Oh, but you may think, it feels strange to me that God seeks His own glory, and that His children should be designed for that what He seeks above all other things – His own glory. But now, quiet yourself, and embrace this stunning truth: the sovereign God of the universe gives Himself to us! It is brothers and sisters, infinitely loving that our Heavenly Father calls us to glorify Him; He gives us the very best, the ultimate of all worth – Himself! And it is here that we must grasp, that the desire for mere health and healing is a superficial need for our life; health and healing must be purposed in the hallowing of God’s name. True joy and satisfaction can be found only in such ambitions.
How then should we come to our Heavenly Father for health and healing? Not at all? Hesitant? Demanding? We should come as the psalmist in Psalm 147 – knowing. The psalmist knew that it was fitting to praise God. Immediately in building his case for praising God, the fact that God gathers the outcasts of Israel is mentioned. Further, the healing of broken hearts is declared. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. (Psalm 147:3) We must come knowing that by grace, our sin broken hearts are healed! One time outcasts separated from God are now healed and the bitter wounds of sin bound up; therefore, life purposed for God’s glory becomes the Christian’s delight.
In our needs for health and healing, we come then, knowing that the sovereign of the universe has given Himself to us. We come in the joy of our rescue, in the purpose of life lived for God’s glory, and in the peace of understanding that God’s sovereignty is a banner of love over our lives.
Brothers and sisters, ask for health and healing in confidence, knowing that all you will ever need to live for God’s glory will be given to you! Pray then also, to know Him in such delight.
- By John Klein