Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor Sermon Podcast
The Healing Presence of Jesus (#6): The Incidental Healing
The Healing Presence of Jesus (#6): The Incidental Healing by Senior Pastor, Ken Wilson
This week we're finishing up our series on on healing. We've been looking at the gospel of Luke How Jesus healed the sick as his portrayed in Luke and this will be our our final in the series will be looking at Luke chapter? Chapter eight today read it read it for you up on the screen. Thanks to the Ministrations of one Lars Anderson on our multimedia team Now when Jesus returned a crowd welcomed him for they were all expecting him Then a man named Jairus a ruler of the synagogue came and fell at Jesus feet pleading with him to come to his house Because his only daughter a girl of about 12 was dying as Jesus was on his way the crowds almost crushed him and a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for 12 years But no one could heal her She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak and immediately her bleeding stopped Who touched me Jesus asked? When they all denied it Peterson master the people are crowding and pressing against you But Jesus said someone touched me. I know that power has gone out from me Then the woman saying that she could not go unnoticed came trembling and fell at his feet in The presence of all the people she told them why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed Then he said to her daughter your faith has healed you go in peace This healing is a fascinating healing because it's a healing on the way to a healing. It's a kind of incidental healing It's a healing in transit. It's an unplanned for healing. So often we picture Jesus as this omniscient Superhuman divine being and that's the source of some of the worst religious art on the planet But again Luke and his gospel is showing a very different side to Jesus this fully and completely human Jesus divinity is a mysterious Phenomenon his divinity is hidden. It's very much in the background in Luke's gospel Jesus for example in this case didn't know who it was you touched him Didn't decide to heal the woman it just happened when she sneaked out behind them Gonna cut pause and try to unpack some of the rich details in this text because it is dense This is this is just an amazing amazing interchange here. We have this panicked father of the dying daughter You can only imagine how he'd feel. He's the prominent head of the synagogue So he's a man of some note in the town his daughter is 12 I just on the just on the verge of womanhood and she's dying We have the the crushing crowd that's on the verge of becoming a mob and you can imagine that if you were that girl's Dad, and this is your last hope. What would you be doing? I mean you'd be doing everything Possible to get that crowd out of the way and get Jesus moving toward your home But hidden in that press of of crushing humanity is this woman? With a chronic menstrual bleeding over 12 long years no cure Luke notes the physician Physicians are almost always more in touch with the limits of their craft than the rest of us and Luke was certainly in touch with that here What we ask were the chances for this woman actually getting Jesus attention in the middle of a scene Like this as he's being swept along the rush toward the synagogue ruler's daughter plus we can't Skip over her condition. I have never menstruated but I've heard from my My female friends that it there's an inconvenience factor to the whole operation You imagine 12 years of incessant chronic bleeding You understand that soap was not around until the medieval period a clean water It was very scarce in that era. What kind of hygiene was possible for a woman with a chronic issue of blood over 12 years the only thing even remotely approaching public health in that time would have been the Levitical code the Law of the clean and the unclean the solution and the Levitical code for these conditions was essentially stay away from someone in this condition If this woman touches Jesus according to the Levitical clean and unclean framework that he is rendered richly unclean himself and that was a Significant inconvenience with some expense you couldn't be with other people when you were in an unclean state There was a certain ritual you had to go through to become clean again That whole unclean business was a a condition that was fraught with a profound religious and Social significance and the woman is suffering under this whole system How can we begin to imagine? What she went through? I mean, there's just no there's no modern equivalent that we can access her experience I suppose if the closest would be the the you know rampant STDs and STI 75% of us have have an STI called HPV and then there's no cure for it and so 75% of us having to tell a partner There's this condition I have and and just you know, that's just the unpleasantness of all Maybe that's the closest we could come to understanding this woman's plight and yet and yet In spite of all that she finds her way through this crowd She presses through this crushing pressing crowd and somehow she's able to touch the hem of his garment And at the point of contact, it says this is stressed especially in Mark's account of the same episode that she feels something in her body She feels something different for the first time in her body different than that uncleanness she feels the opposite of that uncleanness some light some vitality Something wonderful going on in her body and it's so prominent the sensation that she knows That she's been healed At the same time Jesus who has been touched by this woman Simultaneously feels something in his body That is very simplest stripped down. This is two human beings in Israel a Desperate richly unclean woman on the one hand and Jesus the new phenomenon the the guy who could raise a crowd like nobody's business in Israel the wonder child of Moses and Mary they make Contact and each of them feels something going on in their respective bodies Who touched me Jesus says? Mark's gospel adds the little detail as Mark so often does that Jesus turned around In the crowd and asked to touch me in other words. He had to make a full stop We can't forget the father Who's desperate and wants Jesus at his daughter's bedside as soon as possible? How what's going through his mind as Jesus is? Interrupted by this woman who though she has a chronic condition. It's not life threatening Well, his daughter lying in her bed back home is doing the death death gas for air I mean everyone is a stir in this scene Jesus himself seems to add to the confusion who touched me somebody touched me Peter in a Mark's gospel. It's even sharper in in Mark a Peter as a source for Mark's gospel The exasperation of Peter with Jesus you see the crowd pressing and you ask who touched me I mean that this reminds me of my family going to church on Sunday You know like other kids in the back, you know who touched me you somebody touched me and all this back and forth all this Confusion and this hurry and that kind of a witches brew of human emotion But all of that is covering up one of the most beautiful One of the loveliest one of the most wonderful new things to have happened in the earth In a long long time this blessed exchange When this unclean woman touched Jesus the tradition of Israel the Levitical code The law of Moses sanctioned by God even said that Jesus would have been polluted by the woman He would be made to be unclean That's just the law of entropy The look the second law of thermodynamics if you see two fixtures side by side one of a beautiful vase and Another of a vase that's in pieces on the ground. You instantly know which is the second photograph in time It's the one that's broken on the ground Because order devolves beauty fades Things fall apart in the corporate world. We have a saying for it the s stuff Forget what that word is always flows downhill But this law is now the law of the unclean is being reversed right here in front of us The impurity does not flow from her to him the power rather flows from him to her ending her impurity first time first times a charm By the way, isn't this the issue for us I Mean how often we are kept from coming close to God because of our own sense of uncleanness or unworthiness or just abject dirtiness and We feel as though we are the you know We've got one of the goddess the mother of the pristine house Who has new carpeting and you cut and you're the wayward son that comes into the house with mud on your shoes Tracking all over and your mothers beside herself. That's our picture of God when we feel the mud on our feet And this is saying something so wonderful to us That we don't have to worry about the mud on our feet getting the carpet in God's house dirty It's just the river When we have mud on our feet in God's house and we walk on his carpet so much carpet Just marvellously absorbs the dirt and sends it into never never land and God our mother is as happy with us as if We'd taken off our shoes Then the woman seeing that she could not go unnoticed came tumbling and fell at his feet in The presence of all the people she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed Then he said to her daughter. Your face has healed you go in peace I Am thinking that Luke must have had some daughters. I Think Luke must is Tyrone. Thank you Luke must have had some daughters He is taken Luke is by the way Jesus related to women. It's all over his gospel It's one of the things that Luke noted in those interviews that he took Remember in the preamble of his gospel He says how he said about to provide an orderly account of these these events that have taken place many others have Tempted to do so, but I'm doing the interviews with the primary Witnesses we infer from his account that he must have interviewed Mary the mother of Jesus and perhaps Mary the Magdalene And so much of what we see in Luke is from the testimony of women More than any gospel and that's in a culture where women were almost invisible. They're highly visible in Luke's gospel And Jesus had a word for many of these women when he healed them. He called them daughter In a world where women had no rights this was the word of safety and Dignity for a woman, you know fathers may have been neanderthals in our view that sex is up the wazoo But if it was going to be different with a father in that era it would be different with the daughters Yeah, I spent many years in a very I would I would call it an overly conservative theological system and in the system there was a great emphasis on Gender as a criteria for what one could and couldn't do I'm all for that when it comes with to bearing children But ministry in the church with where the kingdom is moving to a place where there's no Jew and there's no gentile There's no male and there's no female. It's just to me the dynamic of scripture is moving toward freedom It's not moving away from freedom. I see the whole slavery issue and slavery You know that the scripture is very human and the human it's embedded in culture and the scripture does not take an unrealistic View of the human trying to separate the human from the culture But if he wants to work with the human has to work with the human slowly and culture and you see that was slavery Slavery is not forbidden in the Bible. It's a great scandal But slavery is transformed from within in the Bible and the movement and scripture is always toward freedom And so now every church on the planet knows that slavery is not of God and the seeds of that are in the holy scriptures And I see the same thing going with women But you know when I was in that other framework It was just so easy to have this lock rigid kind of thing with Women and men and roles and it was like in our world is falling apart. We need some structure and this was the answer Until I had daughters It was not the answer it was the problem when I had daughters There is something about all that careful theologizing that just fell apart in the face of my daughters That's the sense behind this word daughter daughter of Eve Daughter of Abraham daughter of God most high daughter your faith Has healed you go in peace? Donded an excellent job treating the text and acts acts chapter three Really representing the heart of then you're teaching in his sermon last week And he talked about this commentary on the first healing and acts it goes like this It is Jesus name and the faith that comes through him that has given this complete healing to him as you can see And this could also be a commentary couldn't it on the healing of this woman with the issue of blood. It is Jesus name In the ancient world the name wasn't just on your name tag. It wasn't just a moniker for your birth certificate It wasn't just like your your your your code for for amazon.com in the ancient world The name stood for the whole person and all the person's complexity When this woman touched this person Jesus even without his conscious awareness or intention She was in touch with healing. There's power in Jesus name and the faith that comes through him When both factors are present Jesus and faith that comes through him boy that's it when it seems like the healing especially is the facilitated why did Jesus put such an emphasis on the woman's faith why didn't he leave it with hey power came out from me Whoa if you could have felt what I felt man. I healed her. I zapped her good. It was awesome But no, that's not his emphasis because it was more than that in this case the healing happened between Jesus and The woman and to understand his commentary. The woman had an enormous role in her own healing Your faith has healed you go in peace So is this the new faith formula the modern world loves formulas Faith minus doubt equals healing every time. No No, Jesus didn't say this to everyone he healed He sure didn't say it to Lazarus Lazarus your faith healed you by the way, how'd you manage that being dead? I suppose that's a case of dead faith healing Now the demoniac was out of his mind He couldn't focus on anything or any one and Jesus did not say to him your faith healed you What does Jesus mean saying such a thing though to such a woman? Well, think of it this way There's just something about the way certain people respond to Jesus that just boggles his mind and when he sees it he's like oh My this is Nothing delighted him like seeing what he saw in this woman once he heard her Story it was hard to define so he didn't define it it couldn't be reduced to a formula So he didn't reduce it to one, but he knew it when he saw it Though it has as many expressions as there are people and circumstances He knew it when he saw it and when he saw it he wants to point it out First for the sake of the person who was moved by it. This woman was moved by something She may not have recognized he wants to affirm whatever it was in her moving her so she can Nurture that within her. It's his way of saying this wasn't just me zapping you. This is us Connecting and there's power in the connection And he also wants to point it out to anyone who has eyes to see whenever he sees this in a person He's shining the spotlight on it. It's what he longs for in the world faith One of Jesus great fears you think he didn't have any One of his great fears was that when the son of man returns will there be faith in the earth? Or will all of this been in vain just imagine Jesus Racked by that fear when the son of man returns will there be a spark in humanity or not? Well, all this had been in vain Jesus is a lot like a man who's attracted to the woman that is the woman of his dreams He wants to see and her that spark of attraction that he feels in himself toward her But coming in the other direction so Jesus longs to see the spark of faith in us And when he does he's like stop hold the phone take a look. This is it. This is it The father of course of that dying girl needed a lesson in faith didn't he he was stopping for him dad It's gonna be your turn You're gonna need to learn from this unclean woman with faith is all about but that's another another story It is Jesus name and the faith that comes through him that has given this complete healing In other words, there's something about his presence his name His person like who he was how we taught how he prayed how he was in secret how he was in public how he was with people Especially the unexpected ways he was with people the unexpected ways that represents the gospel Jesus is demonstrating the gospel when his way of being is completely Outside of our expectations of God God would condemn he has mercy when you see that in Jesus You are seeing the heart of the gospel and that was enacted not just in his teaching But his way with people his whole person was oozing that something about the whole complex mystery of personhood was a vehicle not just for healing but for releasing or specializing or sparking or drawing out or Planting maybe even in people a faith that heals oh my this is This is mystery zone stuff. This is not formula zone material Now what might this mean for us the church as? We seek to extend the ministry of healing why have? series on healing if We don't get to play oh Man 2,000 years ago. Jesus really healed the sick and he said it's going to be better for you if I leave and So wasn't it great that he did it a long time ago? And isn't it a bummer that he left? Yeah, that's the whole point. Yeah, it's just like a museum Let's go to the museum and see the healed people who eventually died in our you know in their cases What a Savior? No, it's only means something to us if this is a ministry that continues if Jesus is risen from the dead or not the issue What might this mean then for us as the church? Well the gospel isn't a message apart from a messenger There may be some messages that our message is apart from a messenger, but this is not one of them This is a message that requires a messenger. This is a message that's embedded in the messenger This is a message that is the messenger in a certain sense the person of Jesus To the church is though the body of Christ in the world The church is the extension of his physical presence on earth his hands his feet in his heart So the gospel message for better or worse is embedded in us Either that or the church is not the body of Christ and the church is merely a Christian organization Now if I were to form a Christian organization and join one it wouldn't be an organization of Christians believe me I can't think of a more dysfunctional organization than an organization of Christians who are going to argue about whether God wants the bulletins to be mob or pink or blue If the church is an organization of Christians, I have wasted 35 years of and they were good years of my life The church is the body of Christ The way we are in the world Has an effect on the healing presence available to the world When Jesus was on the earth and his physical presence was one human being There weren't a lot of healings happening. Yes, there were plenty But in terms of what was possible they were very few many people went away unhealed because they good Couldn't get an appointment with him he said you are going to do even greater works than I'm going to do because he wanted to Spread this into a body a corporate body that would represent his physical presence in the earth called the body of Christ And so there's more healing now than they're used to be the way we are as the body of Christ Has an effect on the healing presence available to the world The healing presence. I'm afraid to say is a lot more than hot worship It's a lot more than how thick the spirit gets in the room when we're gathered for worship The healing presence is embedded in the way we are in the world including our worship together But not limited to that and this unclean impure world especially Are we carrying ourselves in the world as though we're afraid of the world's cooties? Let's keep our distance from those lice infested worldlings Back in Mylon when our youth ministry got really going it started to attract kids who weren't from church And you know what our biggest challenge was? Some of the Christian parents were like I don't want my teenagers hanging out with these kids I mean, it's a very real issue the church has to face What are we about in the world? What is our way in the world? Are we selfishly trying to squeeze as much God out of God as We can for ourselves Sometimes I think that's what people think it means to be a spirit-filled church We are a church that is desperately trying to squeeze as much God out of God as we can for ourselves That is not Jesus presence in the world Are we willing to be like Jesus in the world? Allowing his presence to be drained from us by contact with the impure world He was willing to let hit the presence within him be drained from him by contact with that woman It will make a difference which way we are in the world for the healing presence available to the world Storytime I went to Christian churches together the fun. I was representing the vineyard in the foundation of a new ecumenical Organization bigger than the National Council of Churches including Roman Catholics Orthodox Traditional Protestants evangelical and Pentecostals and the historic black and ethnic churches five church families first Ecumenical organization of its sort ever in the United States Deciding that they would focus on alleviating poverty as their first common concern and At this meeting I was meeting a bunch of muckety mocks and one of the muckety mocks I met with a guy named Steve from World Vision the evangelical relief Organization and when he found out I was from the vineyard He just had a smile on his face and he said all the vineyard I mean I remember John Wimber and then he told me a story as so many of them did That he was in the last class that John John went over for those of you Don't know it's the founder of the vineyard movement and he taught a class at Fuller theological seminary called MC 510 most popular class in the history of the seminary and the most universal the title of it was signs and wonders and church broke and John Wimber taught people how to pray for the sick and the class in this evangelical seminary and Steve was telling me he went to the last class that John taught and John opened the class by saying if you're here as this as a Honest skeptic that's awesome. The more the merrier if you're just here as a skeptic Just leave Because you're going to irritate me. You're not going to be happy with what goes on. Let's just face it right now and Steve was happy because he considered himself an honest skeptic this guy is now that one of the leaders in world vision he's a Presbyterian by birth and conviction and So, you know the class is going on. There's some things happening in the class that Steve is skeptical about C. Peter Wagner does his leg lengthening thing and he thinks oh man There's a lot of explanations for a person's leg getting longer while they're prayed for and you know he's honestly skeptical and then you know one day one of the classes is toward the end of the semester John says well Are there any other people who need prayer for healing so we can practice on you and Steve had a sciatica that was affecting his long distance running quite seriously and so what the heck you know So he raises his hand. He's what a what a a mark of openness on it the honest skeptics parties thinking is congratulating himself John recognizes him and some others and then John says as he would often do oh look at the time I've got to go to another appointment. So I've got to leave got to go and just the people around you can pray for you Steve looks at the people around him One guy's a guy in a powder blue leisure suit Who opens with Steve by saying oh, this is great I just received the new prayer language last weekend and I've been praying in that prayer language more than in English It's been awesome Another guy says to Steve Dave. What's wrong with you? Steve says well actually my name is Steve. Okay, Dave. He just continues to call him Dave So he's thinking great, you know, I get the two you know losers in the class and I'm skeptical So I say well, what's wrong with you? You said sciatica. They say where's that you think so Lord And he says that says to himself no way I'm gonna tell him because I know these guys they're gonna want to lay hands on me So he says yes, I had a kid It's kind of like in the lower back area and they said well exactly where does yours hurt and then he just has to point to his right butt The gluteus maximus covering the issue tuberosity And he submits himself to their prayer and it's as bad as he thought guy in the powder blue leisure suit is a praying in his new language and thrilled and the other guys say it Lord bless Dave but And Steve is just kind of leaning forward and and then it happens his worst nightmare They apply the laying on of They got right up against his cheek. They're both of their sweaty palms on his Behind and he's in a public setting the class God, what have you gotten me into he just gets more and more angry? I tried to show a little bit of openness God to this stop and this is why I told you this stuff was not God's and in the you know Steve said to me, you know, sometimes God can speak of paragraph in a phrase and One of those moments happened to me Steve says I heard the phrase Foolishness of God The phrase from first Corinthians the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of this world and with that phrase running through his mind There was just a little twist in his mind of you know, wouldn't it be just like God to use these bows? Maybe there's some hope and at the same moment he started to feel heat in His posterior and it wasn't the heat of sciatica pain It was a different kind of warmth and it was very pronounced now these guys were asking him every 30 seconds Do you feel anything? Do you feel anything? Do you feel anything? So when the interval came around he said yes I feel heat back there and they're like oh thank you. Jesus phrase and God you feel their brother Steve and all that He's like oh no this might just be heat it could be anything. There might be a light bulb back there But his pain went away And when it was all done he had no more sciatica pain and he went on a long-distance run And he was pain-free and this is 30 years later, and he's still 20 years later He's still pain-free talking to me in the back of the bus What we learned from this story oddly oddly, it's the same Lessons practically we learned from the woman with the issue of blood Thank you God for giving me an opportunity to tell that story when I heard that story I said Steve you got to give me permission to tell it then I'm thinking God when I'm gonna have a chance to tell that story And then I'm working on this text and I see it's the same three things and that story in this woman I said sometimes the magic works, and when it does it's unbelievable Here's what we learned from Steve and this woman Sometimes touch is part of healing prayer The human touch is powerful. There was an era back in the what was it the 60s be of Skinner conditioning therapy where they actually tried to put babies in boxes as soon as they were born take care of all of their needs as they were Understood scientifically without human touch and the babies quickly they realized didn't thrive even though all their needs were met They had a profound need for human touch if they didn't get human touch some of those babies would have died Even though all their other needs would have been met human touch is powerful Touch was part of Steve's healing Especially, you know when touch overrides the sense in the person receiving prayer that I am untouchable That's especially when touch in the healing ministry of Jesus the leper the woman with an issue of blood Although what the touch was so important as a vehicle of the healing power now touches These got the guy in the in the blue powdered suit. Please is not the way to do touch Touch is very personal. It's so be careful asked first the rule is the person receiving prayer is in charge of their body You don't touch them without asking permission You don't touch them in ways that are uncomfortable to them You don't touch them in ways that are inappropriate for another human being to be touched by another person, you know We don't take our heads up on the way to healing prayer Sometimes touch is part of the healing Sometimes feeling is a part of healing prayer The feeling of the one receiving the prayer and the feeling of the one praying in the example of the woman and Jesus They both felt something going on in their bodies pay attention to your feelings When you're praying for the sick Steve felt that heat going through his backside it was different than the nerve pain It was it was a sign of some activity going on a Pam told her so Pam Am I correct that when you received prayer for your back? It was a kind of a chronic was in an arthritic type condition in your back and you received prayer I imagine it was right over there when you first started coming. I think I was watching that unfold a little bit and And well Linda or whoever was praying for you and I think in your story was that you felt something at the time that you were Receiving the prayer and that's not uncommonly associated with with healing So pay attention to your feelings what the person is feeling? But also what you as a pray or might be feeling it might be warmth that might be heat It might be something a little out of the ordinary sometimes feeling as part of healing prayer Sometimes faith is part of healing prayer Often faith is part of healing prayer But faith doesn't always look like faith is supposed to look according to the book for Steve faith was invisible It was just that little twist in his head when he heard that phrase wisdom of God and he thought to himself It would be just like God to offend me by healing me through these bozos. That was faith That was faith for him The woman who received the healing who touched Jesus. I think it's in Mark's gospel She gives an explanation that Mark records She says this if only I touch his cloak That's what I thought if only I touch his cloak now Verel Bach a scholar of the gospels writes that that the if only in that phrase was a class 3 condition of Greek I know you all know that but let for a few of you might not the class 3 condition in Greek original language means perhaps if Perhaps if I touch the hem of his garment in other words It was the feebless form of faith possible in the English language Sometimes faith is part of healing prayer, but we don't always know what faith is or what it looks like Faith happens a lot of times when we're weak When we're in pure when we are messy with the life messiness all over us That's when faith is often something we feel underneath the furrowed bra Faith is the impulse God word often when everything else would have a shrinking back You've ever been in that place where everything powerful forces in you are getting you to shrink back from God Powerful doubt is working on you a sense of unworthiness all kinds of narratives in your mind while you Couldn't be moving toward all sorts of lies about God's nature and his disposition And you're shrinking shrinking back that woman was shrinking back every fiber of her being except this God word impulse in the midst of that All Look for that God word impulse when you're in that messed up place. That is faith Jesus affirms it in you. That's what will make you well Follow that voice and that is usually stimulated by something about Jesus That's different than our normal expectation of God, which is the heart often of the gospel All right resources to help you along your learning curve as we close the series number one Don's paper. It's not up on the screen. Don had a Don Bromley our own had a paper published in the journal of biblical studies on this very text It's called healing of the hemorrhaging woman miracle or magic and it's it's the link to it is on our web page Excellent excellent study of this text and then just a good general commentary on the gospels where a lot of the healing Happens is Jesus according to scripture by Darryl Bach a very good evangelical scholar Luke for everyone an Anglican scholar is a great This although I don't think Tom Wright really has as much Understanding from his commentary on like how healing actually happens today But he really understands the gospel in historical context So Luke for everyone is great and then the best book on healing that I've ever read is power healing by John Wimber and Kevin Springer That's the classic on the theory and practice of healing I mean, I would just hope that like half the people and vineyard would have read, you know Power healing and we're probably really underread as a church on that particular book So get thee to a nunnery and read power healing if you if you can And then you know if that business of daughter that word daughter floated your boat I have a little recommendation that you read a book called a stitch in a prayer a very short little book to Memoir by Phyllis tickle about her father whom she adored and what I read it I thought oh my goodness You know in an era of a million little pieces and all the memoirs about how messed up your parents were What what are refreshing thing just to read about someone who would daughter father and you just get an insight into that little book about? What is packed into that word daughter when a daughter knows herself to have been well loved by a father? So if that would be a helpful thing to add to your experience I highly recommend that little book and then we have a couple of vineyard classes coming up We have our introducing healing prayer back by popular demand. They moved up the date So it's going to be the last Friday and Saturday in April new updated Class they're introducing healing prayer. They'll be teaching more in depth and there will be a lab experience So of a practicing healing prayer and then a second class This is a new one Emily Swan and Cliff Johnson are teaching this if they're around that they could stand up to people could see who you are It's called. I love their title hearing God's voice prophetic gifting for the rest of us That says it all And they'll be teaching that class. I think it's the first and third Sundays of May We'll have that in the notes next weekend for you in the afternoon on a Sunday a two-part class on Hearing God's voice, which is very important in a practicing healing prayer. Okay done We could have the team come back to lead us into worship as we close that'd be just awesome There was a thing that came to me this morning and then again before the service. It was just a little word that was to the effect of Don't forget Alexander who is on his way home And just a sense for an Alexander on his way home if that's a comfort or reassurance or you might be an Alexander on Your way home may be physically or spiritually that's God knows you and sees you on your way home You know before we you know what I want to do actually before we start praying for the sick is Just taking a moment and praying for those of us who feel exiled from God and have gotten A spark of faith in our hearts. Maybe even just today That there is a home for you in God and that maybe you've had a just a brief taste of what a home with God could be I would just like to ask anyone who's here today Who feels maybe that you've been more on the outside looking in when it comes to God? And but there's some kind of in spite of all the static inside spirit. So there's some kind of spark God word that's that's in you right now and you can feel it and you can sense that you know It's there what I'd like to ask you to do in a moment It's just to stand up right where you are and we are just going to recognize Just God's gracious invitation to you and we're just gonna pray a prayer of blessing and invite you to just say yes to that home a Homeward invitation that is tugging on your heart right now So let's just see if that applies to anyone right now. If if maybe I don't know we won't close our eyes What the heck just stand up if you think this applies to you right right at your seat there I'm not gonna ask you to do anything else, but just stand up as a way of responding to that tug in your heart right now All right now church could we just close our eyes and extend a blessing? So God we just extend the welcome of the kingdom to those who have our feeling the homework tug today and We say brother. We say sister to these sons and daughters and we rejoice at a place at the table for them and I pray the Holy Spirit now would just come to them and would reveal to each one of them the place that they have at the table of God and the heart and the disposition of the tables host toward them right now I Pray for an overflowing just Descent of the Holy Spirit upon them over their minds over their hearts I pray the Holy Spirit would just breathe on the faith that was a spark in their hearts this morning and That by the breath of the spirit that spark would become just a roaring flame and would light the way home for them So would you just come Lord and touch those who've been feeling themselves call? Why don't we just all join them and stand? And if you have a need for healing I want to invite you to come up and receive prayer We got people just ditching to pray for you So if you if you have a need for physical or other spiritual emotional healing This is the time for that as we close with Worship so just start coming up now so we can see how many people we need to pray and if you're on the ministry team If you could be available to pray with people and if any other need that you have today that's Unrelated to the healing but you need God's touch in your life or blessing or in power and please come forward And we'd be honored to to pray with you You (gentle music)