“Will the healing last?
“”I will reserve judgement until I see how things are tomorrow!”
Initial gains in physical and emotional healing may be lost at a later time.
This is not the usual case, by any means, but it can happen within minutes, or perhaps a few days, after ministry.
Four broad types of reaction to the apparent loss of a divine gift of healing are common.
Firstly, we may adopt the ‘I told you so’ approach, in which we vindicate negative thoughts that Kingdom healing might be mostly a question of wishful thinking.
We wonder if we felt some improvement only because of some hype being experienced at a church service, and maybe our apparent gain was simply the exercise of mind over matter.
Either way, if the symptoms return, our scepticism is fortified.
Secondly, we may begin to blame the speaker at the service or at the conference meeting at which we received some healing.
Although he or she may never have claimed that anyone other than Jesus works miracles like these today, we dismiss them as ‘charlatans’.
What they were saying could not have been true, after all.
Thirdly, we may wonder if there might be something wrong with our faith that has come into play after receiving a miracle blessing. Perhaps it was not as
strong as we thought it was, or perhaps God discovered some underlying sin of which we were not aware and so withdrew his blessing.
Fourthly, most common, and most disastrous of all, is a sense of rejection by God.
Any one of these four broad categories of thought pattern serves to reduce our expectancy of God and, in doing so, reduces our ability to receive any further.
So how can we seem to lose something that God has given? In the Mark 4:4–8, Jesus gives a full explanation of these losses in the story of a farmer who went out to scatter seed.
As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.
Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil.
It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow.
But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.
Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain.
Still other seed fell on good soil.
It came up, grew and produced a crop, multiplying thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times.
Jesus then interprets the seed as being symbolic of the Word of God. We know that the Word made flesh is Christ himself, and that he is the perfect image of God, who wishes all to receive healing.
We can see by observing the whole earthly ministry of Jesus that the kingdom, the farm in our story, is a place of renewal, restoration, redemption and resurrection.
We then notice here that, in the kingdom, it is God who sows the healing.
Healing is not a chosen and directed gift; it is a river of mercy that flows.
Sometimes the seed falls on well–trodden and unyielding soil. The path is the way that so many of us go, believing that we know what there is to know and how we should rightly go about getting it. Our human knowledge, intellectual judgements, traditions, understandings and preferences make infertile ground.
This leaves the seed exposed on the surface of our lives and the devil soon snatches it away, sometimes even before we can receive it.
Other healing may fall on shallow soil, mixed with many stones, which themselves represent our doubts and cynical thoughts. Healing clings to our expectancy of God and doubts subtract from this fertility. Our healing springs up, but our expectancy and persistence in pursuing and keeping it are not strong enough to maintain the healing. Then there are the thorn bushes, other cares and influences of the world that throttle the mercy we have received. Doubting thoughts may crowd in from sceptical family and church alike.
On the other hand we may become aware of the necessity for new lifestyle changes which we were not prepared for. There are many possible choking influences.
Gloriously, much seed falls on fertile ground where simple, child–like hearts have quietly taken hold of it.
The good soil is our expectancy that God will do it for us, and there are few stones of doubt and scepticism to cause problems for the new plant.