Dear Bro. John:
I want to share something that the Lord taught me this past Thursday while listening to the Old Meeting CD in your office. We can pray according to how we think we should but in our ignorance still be praying the wrong way until God sheds His light. And He always does it in such a loving way that it makes the heart glad to bow to him.
We were listening to the CD and coming to the end where your father was praying for others. We all began to pray, too, and I was praying for those who I knew were sick and needed a touch from the Lord. As I started to pray for the pain you have been having in your shoulders, I first was praying in the Spirit and then began to pray in English, “Lord, heal his shoulders.” As soon as I said “his” shoulders, the Spirit corrected me and interpreted what I had just prayed in tongues and said, “MY shoulders”. It felt so good and so right that I then prayed, “Yes, Lord, heal your shoulders of your servant so that he may do your work”. What a settled peace came with that prayer!
It was so good that when I shared it with you tonight after the meeting, you mentioned a certain scripture and I looked up when I came home. It is in Matthew 8:17:
“That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.”
Matthew referenced Isaiah 53: 4-5
“Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.”
“But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.”
Then I remembered a scripture that also says how the Spirit helps us because we don’t know what we should pray for. It is in Romans 8:26:
“Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”
After the Lord corrected my prayer, his words humbled me so, that it makes it seem prideful to even take credit that this body and these illnesses belong to us. As the Lord told me years ago: “You can’t give credit or take credit – – all the credit is mine!” He is the Creator and we are the Creations. So, maybe the prayer to pray for healing is not, “Lord, please heal my back” or “please heal my stomach”, but “Lord, please heal YOUR back” or “please heal YOUR stomach, so that YOUR servant may do YOUR work!”
Jesus has healed us many times when our words may not have been completely correct, but that is because he is good and he knows that we need him for everything. His tender love constantly reminds us who we are and who he is. I love Hebrews 2: 9-10:
“But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man.
For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.”
Sandy