I had to teach this lesson twice. Each time was very different, so I'm not sure what to enter here. It might be altogether different too. This is a topic very tender to me.
When the Savior began his ministry years, he started with proclamations of his divine nature, preaching and also by performing miracles of healing.
WHY DID HE BEGIN HIS MINISTRY WITH HEALINGS?
"Miracles" in the Bible Dictionary tells us a lot about why Jesus started preaching with healing. Click on the link above to read the full text, here are the highlights:
- Healing is a part of divine teaching
- Showing the people individual healing prepared them for them to accept the greatest miracles of all: resurrection
- Manifestation of power/action of a higher law
- Fulfill prophecy
- Teaching truths (cure of sin, value of faith, curse of impurity, law of love)
- SHOW HOW THE LAW OF LOVE IS TO DEAL WITH THE ACTUAL FACTS OF LIFE (I could ponder this forever)
- THEY ARE THE NATURAL RESULT OF THE MESSIAH’S PRESENCE AMONG MEN (He can do this by the power of His spirit and the eternal nature of his works and eternal perspective).
I did, in fact, rename this lesson for my class: "How the Law of Love is to Deal with the Actual Facts of Life."
This sort of power is new to the Jews. There are instances in the Old Testament of healing, but not many. So, the Jew even ask in Mark 1:23-27 "What new doctrine is this?"
In Mark 2:1-5, where four men lower a man with a palsy down through the roof to be healed, Jesus notices their (the four men and the palsy) faith and first cleanses the man spiritually. The scribes told Jesus that only God could forgive sins (little did they know they were in his presence). Jesus said, it's easy for someone to say "sins are forgiven" but here's proof that I have power to both forgive sins and to change a man physically. He then physically heals the man with the palsy.
What is the relationship between physical healing and spiritual healing? When we ask for a priesthood blessing of healing, what are our expectations, what is our faith for?
- All things are spiritual and eternal: D&C 29:31-34 – the higher law is spiritual law directing the physical. It is no wonder then, that we are taught to obey and taught to fast, to suppress the physical and let the spiritual operate more fully and other commandments of obedience where we learn to put off the natural man/woman.
- We may have physical ailments to help us heal (or learn to heal) our spirits.
- Olive Oil has a special significance. Jesus went through Gethsemane, an olive garden/olive press. Using olive oil links blessings of healing to the atonement and power thereof for both physical and spiritual healing.
I think the reference to Mark 4:35-41 sheds a light on spiritual and physical healing and what exactly our faith is in. At first I was puzzled at why this account was included in a lesson about healing, but the lesson is highly applicable. The disciples are with Jesus in a boat in a heavy storm and they finally wake him and ask: "Carest Thou not that we perish?" Jesus responds: "Why are ye so fearful?" "How is it that ye have no faith?"
- The disciples were still in doctrinal infancy and this is a powerful lesson for them.
- They were surprised that he could calm the water. So, if they didn’t expect him to do that, what do you think the disciples wanted Jesus to do?
- Carest thou not that we perish? Do we ask this in the depths of our affliction whether spiritual or physical? Jesus responds: “Why are ye so fearful? How is it that ye have no faith?
- Faith in what? (Jesus) Faith for what? (to be completely healed? To be able to calm the storm themselves? To endure the storm?)
- They would have endured the storm without harm because Jesus was with them. If they had a remembered his mission according to what he taught and what the prophets before him taught, they would know that this is not how the Lord would die.
- Maybe our healing is the ability to endure the storm.
- Good cross references in footnote:Alma 44:4 “Now ye see that this is the true faith of God; yea, ye see that God will support, and keep, and preserve us, so long as we are faithful unto him, and unto our faith, and our religion; and never will the Lord suffer that we shall be destroyed except we should fall into transgression and deny our faith."
Blessings of healing are spiritually healing and physically healing and each depends on the will of the Lord. What I take from it depends on me. I have diabetes. I have had many blessings of healing, yet I still have diabetes. Do I lack faith? NO! My faith is in the Lord Jesus Christ and every time he helps me have more self-control, a new perspective about myself or the disease, every time he tells me through feeling his spirit that he loves me even though I have diabetes, or even because I have diabetes, I am healed. IF I DECIDE TO LOOK AT IT THAT WAY. I can endure this storm and through enduring, I will be completely healed some day.
No comments:
Post a Comment