We have been in the ministry, David for more than 30 years, Maxie for more than 60. In every church we have served, the assumption was that if an area was growing then we should do more of it!
- Add another worship service!
- Expand the Sunday school!
- Do another Outreach event!
- Participate in another community project! Grow – and get growing!
Usually that would have been the right thing to do. When the throngs were yearning for Jesus’s teaching and ran around a lake just to be near Christ, Jesus did in fact accommodate to their need. He taught them, and even fed them by miracle. Yet there was one singular exception to this:
In Jesus’s ministry, prayer in the private quiet place preceded healing prayer in public.
A favorite passage to help in developing a Theology of prayer has been Luke 5:12-17. In that material, Jesus healed the leper. It had this marvelous effect:
“But the news about him was spreading even farther, in large crowds were gathering to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses.” Luke 5:15 (NASB 1995)
If that were us in our churches, we can both hear our excited voices and the joyful voices of our leaders saying “Praise God! Many are being reached! The gospel is going forward! Let’s add another service. It’s clear that God’s favor is on this. It is always wise to ‘strike when the iron is hot.’”
In Luke 12 we are given some hard numbers and a vivid picture about the effect of Jesus’ ministry.
“…so many thousands of people had gathered together that they were stepping on one another…” (Luke 12:1b, NASB 1995)
What would your response to that kind of “crowd-energy” be? We suspect that if you are anything like us, you would have wanted to add more opportunities to pray for the sake as well.
“If it is growing – add on!”
This is in stark contrast to the practice of Jesus when he was having astonishing success in prayer for healing. Notice His response after remarkable success, with growing crowds of thousands clamoring for the chance to hear him and experience healing prayer:
“…but Jesus himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray.”
(Luke 5:16, NASB 1995)
Jesus put intimacy with God in personal prayer in private way ahead of intentional prayer for healing in public.
In fact, the ability to accomplish any kind of “power encounter” in Christ rested on Jesus’s discernment of the action of His Father’s Spirit. That shows up in the very next verse. These words are in capital letters.
“One day he was teaching; and there was some Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting there, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem;
AND THE POWER OF THE LORD WAS PRESENT FOR HIM TO PERFORM HEALING.” (Luke 5:17, NASB 1995)
The important inference lies in what the text doesn’t say directly but clearly implies. Here it is:
The power of the Lord to perform healing wasn’t always present. Jesus was aware of, and cooperated with, “the power of the Lord to perform healing.”
Why did Jesus pray? (It does seem odd, since he was the God the Son.) He prayed because he was also “the Son of Man”.
As “the Son of Man” Jesus prayed to become aware of those moments when there was a healing anointing upon him to even be able to get it done.
The author of Luke/Acts makes a summary statement at the beginning of each of his biblical books. He is the one gospel writer who tells us his methodology to “write out the scrolls” of Jesus’ life. He was careful to make diligent inquiry. He gathered eye-witness testimony, investigated the facts, and did everything in his power to write down the events of Jesus’ ministry in consecutive order. Luke talked to the people who were actually there. Somebody saw this event in Luke 5 – someone who told Luke that there was a tangible increase of the “power of the Lord” and it was resting on Jesus of Nazareth to bestow on him the ability to heal the sick. the people in the room became aware that “something was afoot” – and that there was “ healing power present”.
Luke heard the eyewitnesses talk about this, diligently compared their accounts, made notes, and wrote this narrative down in the order in which it happened. The conclusion is straightforward:
Jesus was “Present to the Presence!”
Christ co-operated with those moments in which he sensed “healing virtue” (as in the Old King James Version) landing upon him.
To get to that place of healing prayer, it was required that Jesus pray!
And so, he did. Jesus prayed – alone in solitary places and with others. If Jesus needed to pray to be “Present to the Presence”, how much more do we?
Excerpted from Healing Prayer: God’s Idea for Restoring Body, Mind, and Spirit © 2023 Maxie Dunnam & David Chotka. Used by permission of Whitaker House. May not be further reproduced. All rights reserved.
