Our message today from the gospel of Luke is entitled “Power of Faith in Healing.” Gospel of Luke is filled with accounts of Jesus healing people. There are fifteen detailed specific accounts of healing miracles in the Gospel. These accounts tell us what Jesus did 2000 years ago. And what He desires to do today through His body, the church.
What does it take for Jesus heal someone? First of all, you need to ask Him to heal you. In Luke 18, there is an account of a blind beggar who was calling out on Jesus to have mercy on him. Jesus asked the blind beggar a question.
Luke 18:41 (ESV) “What do you want me to do for you?” He said, “Lord, let me recover my sight.”
Jesus asked “What do you want me to do for you?” What are you asking for specifically? The beggar asked Jesus specifically to see again.
Luke 18:42 (ESV) And Jesus said to him, “Recover your sight; your faith has made you well.”
So in this account we see the man who wanted to be healed asking for the specific healing he desired. Then Jesus tells him and us that faith is required to be healed. Your faith had made you well.
Mark 6:5-6a (ESV) And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief.
In the town of Nazareth, there was so much unbelief, that Jesus could not do any mighty miracles there. Healing comes through asking for God’s healing power with faith. All of us would like to see ourselves and other healed through the power of God. How can we do our part to believe and have faith for miracles of healing?
Romans 10:17 (ESV) So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
One of the primary ways that you can build your faith is by daily reading God’s Word. Not only read the Bible, but believe that what it teaches applies to today. Faith also comes through hearing stories of God healing people today. That is why it’s so important that when God heals or blesses you, you tell others through a God Story here in church.
Faith is not something that is binary, you either have it or you don’t. You can have little faith or you can have great faith and everything in between. If your faith is small, it can grow. The Bible tells us that over the years that Abram was waiting for the birth of the promised Son, his faith grew stronger the longer he waited. You can have faith for yourself to be healed or you can have faith to see someone else healed.
The third way that you can have faith is through the spiritual gift of faith, talked about in 1 Corinthians 12. How do you receive spiritual gifts? Some people think it is just a random choice of God. Nothing could be further from the truth. Spiritual gifts like every other gift from God come to those who ask God for them.
1 Corinthians 14:1a (ESV) Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts,
If you earnestly desire a spiritual gift, what are you going to do? You are going to ask God for that spiritual gift. If you desire to have the gift of faith, ask God for it. God desires to do many more miracles among us at Life Church than ever before. For that to happen, our faith has to grow. Today, my prayer is that our faith would grow as we learn about the power of faith in healing.