A healing service for one

Theoden: [upon being exorcised] Gandalf...

Gandalf: Breathe the free air again, my friend.

Theoden: [stands up from the throne] Dark have been my dreams of late.

[looks at his hands]

Gandalf: Your fingers would remember their old strength better... if they grasped your sword.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

“If the enemy can't have you on his side, he'll make sure you're no good to the other. But he doesn't dare attack you openly in case it might rouse you to take some meaningful action against him. So instead he pushes you by slow, calculated degrees toward the darkness. Working from the angle of truth, he gradually distorts it, bit by bit, until you believe nothing but lies. He uses slow poison to weaken your spirit until you are no longer a threat to his kingdom.”

“Such is the case with Wormtongue.”

Walking with Frodo by Sarah Arthur, p. 98

This past Sunday evening, Refuge held a Service of Healing and Wholeness at which only one man showed up to be prayed for. A week or so before I had created a Facebook event page and invited at least 40 of my local friends to the gathering. Last week I posted a press release in our local paper listing the time of the gathering and its purpose. I sent a notice via email to all the participating fellowships in our local ministerial asking my fellow pastors if they could share this with their congregation. And I exhorted the folks who were present at the weekly worship gathering that morning to come and be prayed for and still only one individual arrived a few minutes before the service began in search of prayer. Blame it on the extreme cold. Blame it on the Packer play-off game that this service was attempting to preempt. But whatever the reason, my appeal had clearly fallen on deaf ears.

Noah leading worship at our gathering

We waited another ten minutes or so for any late-comers to straggle in but when they didn't, I gave Noah, the young man from our fellowship whom I had asked to lead worship, the nod to begin. We were a congregation of five – Noah leading us in worship and invoking the presence of the Lord, Ben, the man from our fellowship who had come to receive healing prayer, Troy, one of Refuge's elders who was present to assist me, my wife, Linda, and myself. The sanctuary was essentially empty but the more Noah played, the more it seemed to me that the presence of the Lord filled the place.

About fifteen minutes later, Noah concluded his short worship set and Troy and I circled some chairs around Ben to minister to him. Linda felt inclined to simply pray in the back of the sanctuary while we prayed with Ben directly. At first, Ben was somewhat overcome with emotion. “This is so humbling,” he said. “A service just for me.” Ben has been attending Refuge off and on for a couple of years now. He's a mountain of a man but years of brick-laying have really done a number on his back. But even more painful are the spiritual and emotional wounds he carries from his past.

I anointed him with oil and asked the Holy Spirit to teach us how to pray for our brother and for the next hour or so, we listened and dialogued, prayed and affirmed, read the Word and spoke the truth where our mutual enemy has lied to him about who he is and how God feels about him. Last winter, while out in the Taylor County forest, I unwittingly drove my car up a snowmobile trail and got stuck there. Random snowmobilers could not get me unstuck, AAA refused to come as I was not on a paved road, and my attempts to reach some of the guys at Refuge were a bust. But Ben loaded up his 4-wheeler and drove two and a half hours in the dark to extricate me from my dilemma. I will forever be grateful for his demonstration of love for me. While we prayed for him I recall the mutual feelings of genuine brotherly affection for this man while at the same time being angered at our enemy's attempt to keep this man in bondage to lies and half-truths. Freedom is God's will for our lives and our birthright as younger brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ. “Let my people go!” is still the demand of heaven to any power that seeks to enslave those who belong to God.

When it was over, Ben's face beamed with joy and the three of us shared manly bear-hugs with one another before we went back out into the cold. Later that night he sent me a text that read: “By God's grace my lower back feels better than it has in a while. Not as much pressure. Tonight was inspiring.” Personally, I attribute this to being released from some of the spiritual burdens and guilt he had been carrying for a long time. May the Lord bring release and healing to that part of his back that remains in need of restoration.

Mark 4-5 tell an interesting tale of healing that also centered on one guy. At the end of Mark 4, Jesus and the Twelve are in the boat heading across the Sea of Galilee. They are heading to the “Gentile part” of the lake and suddenly their boat is caught in a squall and nearly swamped. Awoken from deep slumber, Jesus stands up in the boat and in a loud voice tells the sea to “settle down.” Compliantly it does leaving the disciples just a little bit freaked out to be in such close proximity to the man who seems to have at his beck and call the wind and waves.

The beginning part of Mark 5, tells the rest of the story. They have made this foray into “enemy” territory to liberate a man held in bondage to a truckload of demons. He lives alone, a crazed individual, the local version of the “boogie man” whom nearby mothers threaten their children with if they are naughty. A power encounter happens right at the shore of the sea at which time that legion of demons is sent packing into a nearby herd of pigs rooting for grubs. Now filled with the unclean spirits, the pigs are driven mad and careen off the cliff and drown in the sea. When word reaches town of what happened, an angry crowd shows up demanding an accounting for the loss of the pigs. But when they see this formerly demented man “wearing decent clothes and making sense, no longer a walking madhouse of a man” (v. 15) their outrage turns to shock and awe. Who could work such magic to restore this man to sanity?

The townspeople demand that Jesus leave post-haste. They're mad about the pigs but they're even more afraid of the power wielded by the leader of this small band. Maybe if they had struck a different tone Jesus would have stayed for awhile and ministered to others afflicted in their community (and given how many places Jesus had ministered healing for long hours in the Galilee there certainly were others). But not welcome there he and the Twelve load the boat and prepare to return back home. The formerly demonized man begs to join their crew but knowing his ethnicity would compromise his mission, Jesus gives him a task to do:

“As Jesus was getting into the boat, the demon-delivered man begged to go along, but he wouldn’t let him. Jesus said, 'Go home to your own people. Tell them your story—what the Master did, how he had mercy on you.' The man went back and began to preach in the Ten Towns area about what Jesus had done for him. He was the talk of the town.” Mark 5:18-20, Msg

Sometime later, Jesus will return to the area (see Mark 7:31-37) and healings will happen there because some had heard his amazing story and were provoked to seek out the miracle worker for himself.

I'm not disappointed that only Ben showed up Sunday evening to be prayed for. We're a small fellowship, after all, in a town with a number of small fellowships. Everything we do, by comparison, say, to larger communities is small by comparison. But in the Kingdom of God small never means irrelevant or inconsequential. Clearly, it what the Lord had ordered that night. Troy and I wanted to pray for the sick and God sent us someone afflicted in body and spirit to whom we could minister love and grace to. That was worth missing the second half of the Packer-Redskin play-off game and a whole lot more.