Day 55: Prayer and Healing

Luke 4:38-39 :

He rose up from the synagogue, and entered into Simon’s house. Simon’s mother-in-law was afflicted with a great fever, and they begged him for her. He stood over her, and rebuked the fever; and it left her. Immediately she rose up and served them.

These two verses give us a short example of how we can pray for healing for our relatives. Notice that the person who was sick was not able to even ask Jesus for help. Instead, others “begged him for her.” That is a good example for us about prayer. Some of the hardest work of prayer is when we put our own needs aside and start praying for the needs of someone else. We need to take up the cause for those we love who need healing.

It’s important to remember that the most important healing is not physical but spiritual. Every single one of us needed Jesus to heal us spiritually so that even if we die here on earth, we will be made alive again through the promise of God in Christ. That is why we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus each year. One of the most important events on earth was that day that Jesus rose from the dead and made our worst enemy powerless! He is risen and this fact means that every single one of us who believes in Jesus can live forever at peace with our Creator. The problem we now have is that Satan has made this topic laughable to the natural person. Satan holds the minds of our relatives and people we love in a prison of selfishness that makes it impossible for them to believe, just like it used to be impossible for us to believe.

God expects us to take on the duty of prayer for others. We should pray and ask God to open their trapped minds to the truth so that they will look at the historic fact that Jesus grave is empty and many witnesses have testified that they saw Him alive after his death. This fact changes everything and only a mind that is open to the facts will be able to believe. This is a big responsibility that we have as believers but it is something that any of us can do.