James – Healed by Faith

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason Burns and Access Church in Lakeland, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

Well, if this is your first time here, you're coming in at the very end of a message series for five weeks.

We've been looking through the book of James together.

If you're new to this, let me kind of catch you up on where we've been, because I don't want you to have that feeling.

You know that feeling when you like walk into the end of a movie and you have no idea what's happening?

I don't want you to miss any of it.

James is written by the half-brother of Jesus named James.

It's not really that tricky.

He's the half-brother of Jesus.

And here's the thing that I find so fascinating.

James early in his life didn't believe that Jesus was the son of God.

Now that's not that hard for me to get my mind around because what would your brother or sister have to do to convince you that they were actually the son of God, right?

And James grows up not believing that Jesus is who he claims to be, but later in his life, he believes.

He goes on to be one of the leaders in the first church.

The book of James is five chapters, so every week we've been in a different chapter.

And what's so interesting about James that I like so much is James is practical advice for what it means to follow Jesus.

Some people call James the Proverbs of the New Testament.

It's beautiful, it's simple, and it's so practical.

Every single chapter has handles that will help us in every part of our life.

Week one, Pastor Isaiah kicked us off with a message on what it means to tame our tongue.

Like life and death are in the power of the tongue, and how can we be people who bring life everywhere we go?

Week two, I brought a message talking about the power of our faith.

Faith isn't about what we hear, it's about what we do.

And so I challenge you as a church, may we not just be people who hear the message of Jesus and walk out these doors and act like none of it applies to us.

But we'll be the kind of church that leaves an indelible difference.

The kind of church that for generations they feel the rippling effect of our lives when we're not just hearers of the word, but we become doers of it as well.

Last week I spent the whole week talking about the power of learning to think with eternity in mind.

James chapter 4, James says that our lives are a mist.

James 4 · chapter mention

They're here for a moment and then we're gone.

And when our lives are gone, the question you have to ask is, what will I have done with this life that has mattered for all of eternity?

Well, how will I live my life differently in light of eternity?

And so I asked the question last week: when it comes to your influence and when it comes to your money and your generosity, what is the legacy you are leaving with the mist of your life?

Today, I want to wrap up the series of James with this really powerful, kind of controversial topic.

And I want to go straight to the Word of God.

But before I get there, um, some years ago I had this weird experience.

My family and I, we decided to spend the day at Disney.

And I love Disney, but truthfully, Disney loves my family.

I think it gets a large percentage of our annual budget every year.

And so, great.

And uh it gets more expensive every year.

And so there was this day we decided to go to Animal Kingdom.

And Animal Kingdom is like, it's not my favorite park, it's got a couple fun rides, but we go, and there are some rides.

You know this if you've gone to Disney, there's some rides you do it for the experience, but when you get a little older, there's some rides you do for air conditioning and somewhere to sit down.

Anyone know?

So we go to this thing, it's not a ride, I don't know what it was, it was a show, and we wait in line and then we get seated, and there's some sort of a lake or a pond, and there's gonna be boats and fireworks and cannons shot and all this stuff.

And I'm excited about sitting down.

I'm gonna be honest with you, I don't care about any of the stuff that's happening, I care about the seat.

That's what I'm here for.

And we get in line and we wait for a long time, and then they bring us in, and because it's Disney, they seat us.

You don't get to choose where you seat, that they just seat you.

But that's how it happens.

And so we we go, and my family of five, there's four seats that are awesome, and then at the end of the seat, the row where my seat is, they seat me, and there is a pole right in front of me.

And it's big.

And so I say to the kind Disney attendant, he's got this big, goofy looking Mickey hand on, and I say to him, I say to him, I was like, uh, bro, this is not gonna work.

I I can't see anything.

And he put Disney on it.

This is gonna make sense in a moment.

He put some Disney magic on it.

He said, Oh, don't worry, this seat is an alternative viewing experience.

I said, I'm about to give you an alternative facelift.

My hand.

Like, what are you talking about?

An alternative experience.

I can't see because there's a pole in front of me.

And he goes, just look around it.

And then he left.

Walt Disney would be so disappointed in this brother.

Like, I couldn't see anything.

And here's what happened: the show goes on, and I hear some of the explosions, and when there's boats off to the sides of me, I can see it.

But what was right in front of me, I couldn't quite, I couldn't quite see.

I wonder for us when it comes to our relationship with God, if that we some of us have a partial picture of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

We're good on the generosity, we love to serve.

We love how the message of Jesus is hopeful and inspiring and gives us courage for life.

But there's some parts of it that we just we either can't see or we choose not to see.

I don't know if your family is a puzzle family, but whenever there's a hurricane, only when there's hurricanes, my family pulls out puzzles.

And that I don't know if you've had this experience, but many years ago we decided to put a puzzle together and it was hard.

I hate puzzles.

I'm more of a like, let's just get it done kind of a person.

Like, why would you, why would you buy something that needs assembly?

I've never understood Legos.

Like buy it already made.

So we put a puzzle together and we get to the end and it's awesome, and we put the last piece in, and then we're missing a piece.

And you can see almost the whole puzzle, but it's missing some.

I wonder if this idea is how many of us approach faith, where there are so much of our faith, we can see it, we visualize it, we have a picture of it, but we're missing something.

It's something so significant.

It is a thing, in my opinion, that really completes the whole picture of our faith.

And here is one area that's a gap.

It is a pole that blocks our view of our faith that I see in people and churches all over the world.

So when it comes to the area of healing, and here's the question I want to wrestle with today, because this is what James 5 directly deals with.

The question is, do you believe that God still heals?

Like, like, do you believe that He is able?

Do you believe that He will?

Most importantly for you, do you believe that God still heals?

Now here's the funny thing.

If we were to back up from this and we were to look at theology, like the way churches tend to believe, I could almost reduce healing uh ideology into two different camps.

The first camp that I would call is what I'd call the confessionist group.

This is a group of Christians who believe that if I say it, if I have enough faith, as if faith is something that we can muster up, if I say it with enough faith, God has to do it.

If I confess it, God has to do it.

We we put funny language on this, we'll call it the name it and claim it group or the blab it and grab it from God group.

And there's some people that believe that if I do it, God has to obey.

So what we do is we reduce the almighty, sovereign, powerful God of the universe down to a dog who's gone through dog training camp, right?

Like that's not how God works.

The other view, though, is the other extreme, which is called the cessationist group.

Cessationist is a group of Christians who believe that when Jesus died, rose again, and then eventually left, that when all of his followers, his disciples, his apostles, when they all died out, that all the miracles, all the gifts of God, everything, the healing power of Jesus, prophecy, all of it, that when Jesus left and all those people died, it all ceased to exist.

And I I could I could get behind this idea, except it's like not in the Bible.

Not at all.

In fact, here's the truth about cessationism.

If God has done one miracle since then, this whole idea is garbage.

If God has done just even one miracle, and here's the truth, He still does miracles.

I mean, last Sunday, last week, we celebrated 52 plus one baptisms.

He's still in the business of changing lives.

We have story after story after story through the 17 years of our church of people who had been told one thing by a doctor, who had been given a word from a doctor, but we understand that as followers of Jesus, a doctor's word is a word, but it's not the final word, that God has the final word for us.

So the question is this as Christians, I think it's important for us to settle this idea.

We believe that God can, and this is important for you.

God can.

God's all powerful, God can do whatever he wants.

But today I want to challenge some of you to believe that not only can he, but that he will.

What does it look like?

So today I want to go to James chapter five, and I want to look at this interesting picture because we're gonna talk about healing, but the truth is I want to talk to you about something so much more than healing.

I want to talk to you about how God is in the miracle-working business, how he heals us, but maybe more importantly, how God wants to use our journey of faith to draw us closer to him and to do something that will be felt for generations to come.

James chapter 5, this is towards the middle of the chapter, verse 13, he says this.

James 5 · chapter mention

Is anyone among you in trouble?

Let them pray.

Let me pause here for just a moment and let me get quasi-political for just a moment.

That all over my social media this week, there has been fear, people feeling like as a country we're in trouble.

And what is the response of our nation?

Let's talk about it, let's panic, let's worry.

What does James say?

Pray, let them pray.

Is anyone happy?

Let them sing songs of praise.

Is anyone among you sick?

Now he's gonna talk about healing.

He says, Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord.

And I want you to see this.

He uses this analogy of using oil.

Now, I want you to understand something.

There's not necessarily any power in the oil.

The oil is symbolic of the power of God.

In the same way that when we baptize someone, dipping them in the water doesn't get them saved.

It's symbolic of what's happened in their hearts.

Anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord, and I want you to see this.

And the prayer offered in faith will make a sick person well.

This word well means healed in their physical body.

The Lord will raise them up.

And then it's interesting because he could stop right here and be like, yes, God still heals, but then it's all gas and a hard turn to the left.

Then James says this if they have sinned, like what?

We're talking about talking about our bodies, not our spirits, but he goes, if they have sinned, they will be forgiven.

And then he gives us this verse that is powerful on its own, but in context, it is wildly powerful.

Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other that you might be healed.

Now, this word healed in Greek is a different word.

This word healed doesn't mean physical body healing.

This word healed means that your heart, your soul, and your spirit are returned into right standing with God.

It is a holistic view of healing.

That God wants to heal you from the inside out, but more important than anything in your physical body is your soul.

God cares about your soul.

Then he ends with this line, and this is so important, I want you to hear this.

The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

I think a lot of us we pray prayers, but the real truth is we shortchange our prayers.

We shortchange it, we say, we say all the right words, and in our minds we say all the right things, but in our hearts we're like, I don't know.

We, oh God, heal this person.

God, I pray that this disease will die in the name of Jesus.

God, we say the right words with our mouth, but in our hearts we think there's no way this prayer gets past the ceiling.

James says, if you're gonna pray, go ahead and pray in faith.

And you need to understand that the prayers of a righteous person, someone who's in right standing with God, they're powerful and effective.

What does it mean?

It means there's strength and that it works.

It means that God can and he will.

So I want to give you three phrases today.

They all start with God is.

And if you have your message notes, pull those out.

All three of these things, it starts with God, and I want you to get it, and this is so important when it comes to healing.

The first thing we believe as the church is that God still heals people.

He still does.

How do we know this?

Okay, in the Bible, there's something like 260 miracles from Genesis to the book of Revelation.

Many of them have to do with a person's physical healing, healing of leprosy, healing of sickness, healing of disease.

He heals all kinds of things from the beginning to the end of the Bible.

And here's what I want you to understand.

The author of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 13, says that Jesus Christ is the, come on, say this.

Hebrews 13 · chapter mention

He's the same, he's the same yesterday.

I want you to see this, and today, and forever.

It's always been kind of weird to me why it's written like this, because you wouldn't put and twice without commas.

It's not just a simple mistake.

There's an importance, there's an emphasis on the ands.

Jesus Christ, he is the same yesterday.

So we believe that in the past, he was awesome, did miracles, did all kinds of healings, and today.

And forever.

If he's the same, it means that if he once healed, he can heal and he will heal.

I want you to get this.

Now, if you're if you're kind of skeptical, if you're like, but Burns, you don't know me.

Like you don't know what I've prayed, you don't know who I've prayed for, you don't know the countless nights I've spent tossing and turning in bed, unable to sleep, but praying for a miracle, and I had to bury that person that I loved and prayed for.

What do I do with that?

Like, like maybe you're skeptical and you think, well, if God could heal, why are there hospitals for children?

And why are there funerals with tiny little caskets?

If God can still heal, why does any parent ever have to bury their child?

And I wish I had some perfect, beautiful answer for you.

But there are some moments in your life when you have to make this decision that I don't have to understand in order to trust.

The sovereignty of God means that God is thinking differently than you and I are thinking.

In fact, in the book of Isaiah, God says this through the prophet Isaiah, some 750 years before Jesus.

He says, For my thoughts are not your thoughts.

Neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.

As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways.

Parenthetically, so are my ways higher than yours.

You ever had a person accuse you of something, but they had a little bit of information and you had all the information?

And they accuse you with this little sliver of truth, and you know the whole truth.

It's funny in those moments because we're like, if you'll just trust me, it's not what you think it is.

I think there's gonna be a moment when we get to heaven, and I think we think that we're gonna go after God and be like, why did you let this happen?

But I think 2.9 nanoseconds into heaven, we're gonna be like, oh, I had no idea no idea.

Remember last week we said in James chapter 4 that James says our lives are a mist.

James 4 · chapter mention

They're here for a moment and then they're gone.

And in the scope of eternity, this life is a breath of vapor, a mist.

It's here, and then it's gone.

I think that you might think I'm gonna get to heaven, and I have some questions for God.

I actually think we're gonna get to heaven and we're gonna be in such awe.

We will stand in such reverence, we will see finally through the lens of eternity and realize that even the things that seem so big, so insurmountable in this life to God were nothing but a moment.

Hebrews chapter 11 is this interesting verse.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

It's it's called the the hall of faith.

If you read the book of Hebrews chapter 11, it talks about all the heroes, all the legends from the Old Testament.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

There's this interesting moment.

This kind of answers some of the question of why doesn't God always heal?

It says, These, all those heroes, were all commended for their faith.

Yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us, so that only together with us would they be made perfect.

Are you willing to trust in the middle of your mess, in the middle of your chaos, in the middle of everything you're walking through, is it possible that what you see with a sliver of information, God sees with eternity in mind, and because he loves you and because he's your perfect father, he has something even better for you.

There is no promise in Scripture of perfect physical safety.

Look at this, the book of Isaiah.

Here's Isaiah again, some 750 years before Jesus.

Isaiah 57, 1, the righteous perish and no one takes it to heart.

You're like, I take it to heart.

Like, what do you mean the righteous perish?

Be more positive.

Okay, ready?

I'm positive.

The righteous are gonna perish.

He says, the devout are taken away, and no one understands that the righteous are taken away.

Whoa, to be spared from evil?

Like, what if the thing that you see from your finite limited perspective God saw from a different point of view and realized that in doing what he's doing, he's sparing you.

Okay, so here's the question: which one is it?

Come on, like dig into your theological well for a moment and ask which one is it?

Does God heal or does God sometimes rescue us and allow us to go to heaven?

And the answer is both.

It's both.

And I wish I had some perfect answer.

I wish there was a verse that says, God will heal when you meet these seven conditions, but it doesn't work like that.

He is sovereign, he is in control, and he sees the totality of the picture of our life.

So the first thing is we believe God still heals, but here's the second line.

We believe that God is more concerned about my soul.

Why?

Because this body is temporary.

It's temporary.

It's here for a vapor or a mist, as James 4 says, and then it's gone.

But there is a part of you and there is a part of me that will live on forever.

God is more concerned about that than the temporary housing of our souls.

He's concerned about who you actually are.

Jesus Himself, Matthew chapter 10, said this.

Matthew 10 · chapter mention

He said, Don't be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.

Rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

He's like, there's something way more powerful.

Here's what I want you to get.

The journey for healing is about so much more than our bodies being made well.

Here's the third God line is that God wants me to grow in faith.

Now, this is hard for us.

And I'll be real with you for a moment.

This is hard for me.

You see, I want to be well.

I want to live my mist, my 70, 80, 90 years healthy and happy.

I want to walk in prosperity and have all of my needs met.

I'm not worried about heaven in the future.

I tend to spend all of my emotional energy focusing on now.

God is way more concerned with the journey of faith.

Some geez, 18 and a half, 19 years ago.

My wife and I had just gotten married six months into marriage.

I was out serving the Lord, speaking at camps all over the country.

One week I happened to be stationed in North Texas doing a camp for I think 800 children.

I was serving God.

I mean, like serving children, the least of these according to scripture.

My wife, we've been married six months, flew out to be with us.

That week she had found this like weird bruise in her leg.

And she goes to the doctor for a routine checkup.

The doctor looks at it and goes, uh, does one test, does another test, does another test.

And I was with Liz.

She had literally gotten to me Friday afternoon.

All the kids are leaving the camp, and I can overhear her talking on the phone, and I hear the word cancer, and I literally kind of caught her as her body collapsed into my hands.

In that moment.

I didn't for one moment think to myself, yes, a journey of faith.

Never thought that.

I thought, God, what in the I'm serving you.

Where are you in this moment when I need you?

Where are you?

You see, let me let me boil it down.

We are more concerned about what happens to us.

God seems to be way more concerned about what's happening in us.

I remember I flew home after doing these camps.

I got back and we got list started with the chemo treatments.

It was it was a miserable few months for her specifically, but it as her husband, I mean, I just felt helpless.

And there was a day when I went and sat with the counselor and I unloaded on this guy.

Who in the world does God think he is?

I use much more colorful and PG 13 plus language with this guy.

Who does God think he is in this moment?

And the counselor said back to me, he said, You don't seem to understand what God is doing.

I was like, Of course I don't.

Has cancer.

I could be married for less than a year and be a widower.

What are you talking about?

And he said to me, it's in these moments, pain and challenge, that God carves out of us the capacity to know him and to trust him more.

I'm gonna be honest with you, in that moment, I didn't like that answer at all.

Because to me, it wasn't about the faith journey.

It was about my wife and cancer and shaving her head and watching her wither to almost death.

Does this make sense to you?

We get concerned about here and now and this moment.

God is concerned about the journey of faith.

So it begs the question again: why doesn't God always heal?

Like he can, but why doesn't he always?

And I want to submit to you, I think it's because he's really concerned about your journey of faith.

See, why would that make sense?

When do we tend to run to God?

When things are good and happy and easy?

When there's plenty of money in the bank and everyone's healthy and everything's fine.

No, we tend to turn to God when we need him.

And I wish I could give you some beautiful, poetic, theological reason why God allows stuff like this to happen.

I don't have the answer.

I just do know that God tends to get more done in the turbulent days of our lives than when everything is blue skies, sunny, and easy sailing.

Hebrews chapter 11, we read from it earlier.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

It's the hall of faith.

And we read the end where it says that sometimes God has something better.

Here's what Hebrews earlier says about this journey of faith.

He says, without faith, it is impossible to please God.

Because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

A few months ago we did a series on faith, and I gave you a unique definition of faith.

I said that faith is learning to see from God's perspective.

Faith says, even when I can't see it, God, I trust that you can see it.

Faith says my confidence isn't based on my own ability and what I can see with my natural eyes.

Faith says, God, I trust that you see it, so I just choose to see from your point of view.

And he says, without faith, without learning to live your life this way, it's impossible to please God.

But then he gives us this picture of who God is, and he says that God is someone who rewards those who earnestly seek him.

Now let's go back to James chapter five.

Because in James chapter five, he's going to do something so fascinating and so interesting.

He's going to give the people who are reading it.

Now remember, these people grew up going to the synagogue or their church.

They heard all the stories of the heroes of the Bible, the ancient people, the Abraham's and the Isaacs and the Jacobs and the Moses' and the Joseph's.

They heard all these stories over and over.

So in three sentences, he's going to give us a picture that reaches back hundreds and hundreds of years to one of the goats, the greatest of all time, the prophet Elijah.

James 5, 17.

He says, Elijah was a human being, even as we are.

He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years.

Again, he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.

In just three short sentences, he gives kind of a quick recap.

Kind of like, you know, when you watch a Netflix show and you're on episode seven, it'll say, watch recap.

He gives us a three-sentence watch recap of what happened in the book of 1 Kings.

And now I feel like this is good, but to understand the journey of faith, you've got to understand this story a little bit better.

1 Kings chapter 17, we get introduced.

1 Kings 17 · chapter mention

This is now Elijah the Tishbite from Tishbi in Gilead said to Ahab, this evil, unjust, wicked king, he says, As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years, except at my word.

Elijah was a prophet.

It means that God spoke to him, and God would speak on behalf of God to kings and leaders and to the nation.

And God spoke to Elijah and said, We have to do something to shake Ahab to his core.

We have to do something to get his attention.

He is literally leading the people in a wrong direction.

And so go to him and tell him that it will not rain until he hears from you again.

Elijah comes to the king with a word from God.

And I want you to hear this.

Number one, if you have your notes, faith begins with a word from God.

What does the word from God mean?

It means it's something that when it feels like the lights of hope are flickering, you hold on to.

When the storms of life are raging, it grounds you.

This word from God is the thing that you run to when what you see with your natural eyes doesn't match what you've seen in your heart.

Remember, we said that faith, without faith, it is impossible to please God.

In the book of Romans, chapter 10, Paul says this, and I love this.

Romans 10 · chapter mention

He said, Then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

So faith isn't like a muscle that we go to the gym and we work out.

Faith is something that we grow over time.

And here's the pathway: it's by hearing, it's by getting yourself in environments that encourage your faith and speak the truth and speak the word of God with conviction.

It comes by hearing and then hearing by the word of God.

Where does a word of God from your life come from?

From the actual word of God.

Some of you have floated aimlessly through life and you have blamed God and been upset with God because he hasn't met up to a promise that you have concocted in your own mind.

You need a word from God that you hold on to when the storms of life are raging.

The Bible talks a lot about itself.

It talks a lot about the power, the integrity, the beauty, the transcendence of Scripture.

In the book of Hebrews, we've been in Hebrews a lot today.

Hebrews 4 12 says the word of God is alive and active.

This is the reason you can read a verse or a chapter of the Bible a hundred times, and then you read it one day, and words jump off the page as if God had literally speaking to you himself.

It's alive and active, sharper than any double-edged sword.

It penetrates even to the dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow.

It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

God's word is alive, and you need a word from God to bring that faith into existence.

The story goes on in 1 Kings, one chapter later, 1 Kings chapter 18.

1 Kings 18 · chapter mention

Elijah is now gone three and a half or so years from the time he makes the promise to King Ahab, and not a drop of rain has fallen.

But now it's been three and a half years.

Now he knows that he's got Ahab's attention and he needs to say something to him.

But he told Ahab to wait for his word, the word that would come from God.

So Elijah says to his servant, he says, Go and look towards the sea, the Mediterranean Sea, he said to his servant, and he went up and he looked, and he said, There is nothing there, he said.

Seven times.

I want you to get this.

Seven times he's gone and he's looked for a cloud.

He's looked for a sign from God that the rain was going to come.

Seven times he's looked for a sign and nothing happened.

And Elijah said these two words.

He said, Go back.

I know it doesn't make sense, and I know you can't see it now, but go back.

And the seventh time it says, the servant reported, a cloud as small as a man's hand is rising from the sea.

So Elijah said, Go tell Ahab, pitch up your chariot and go down before the rain stops you.

And he's like, What rain?

It hasn't rained in three and a half years, and there's one cloud, it's the size of a man's hand.

What are you talking about?

I want you to notice something.

Seven times he went looking for the sign from God.

That means six times he went and came back in futile attempts.

Six times he went and came back disappointed.

Six times he prayed and didn't get the thing that he expected.

And every single time, what did Elijah say?

Go back.

I wonder if this is a word from the Lord for someone in the room today.

Maybe you have prayed.

Maybe you have prayed in faith.

Maybe you have done everything right, and in your own efforts, you are exhausted and depleted, and you feel like it's never, ever going to work, and you just need to hear God say, Go back.

Go look one more time.

Why does this matter?

Because God always comes through on his word.

And because faith continues, regardless of what I see.

Faith continues.

If I don't see anything, I can still trust that God is at work.

I love reading scripture.

Sometimes, if you pay attention, there are moments when it feels like God is absent or silent or distant at best.

And what you understand is you back out from the stories in Scripture.

That even when God seems silent, it doesn't mean he's not active.

Just because God seems absent doesn't mean that he's not actively at work on our behalf.

This is the reason Paul in 2 Corinthians says, this is the reason we walk by faith and not by sight.

If you could see everything that you were trusting God for, you wouldn't trust God.

This is the beauty of faith.

Faith is learning to see what you can't see.

It's learning to see from a higher or a different perspective.

It's learning to see from God's point of view.

Let me end with this.

Number three, this is this.

Faith starts with a small beginning.

Remember when the servant goes and he looks out over the Mediterranean and he sees one cloud?

It's tiny, it's the size of a man's hand.

It's small.

It doesn't seem like it is going to produce the rain that God has promised through the man of God, Elijah, but it goes on, 1 Kings 18, 45 and 6.

Meanwhile, the sky grew black with clouds, the wind rose, a heavy rain came on, and Ahab rode off to Jezreel.

The power of the Lord came upon Elijah, and tucking his clothes into his belt, he ran ahead of Ahab all the way to Jezreel.

What does it mean?

It means that God gave a word, and even though the sign that they could see with their eyes was a small cloud, it was the beginning of a big promise.

Here's the thing for many of us.

When it comes to our journeys of faith, we tend to look at something small and we think because it's not everything we see in our hearts, it must not be from God.

Sometimes I look out at our church.

We're now thousands of people connected to our church.

It was just so small.

And I knew in my heart what access could be and would become.

But the funny thing is I couldn't see it at all with my eyes.

What do you do?

You just trust that God is in these little moments.

In the book of Zechariah, there's this interesting moment.

He says this, he says, Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin.

What if you've prayed?

Like what if you've exhausted yourself?

You feel like you're out of prayers, you don't even know what else to pray.

Go back.

And when you see something small, insignificant, hold on to it.

Because just because you don't see the full picture of what God is doing, it doesn't mean that he is not at work.

So here's the point of today we can trust God for our healing, but what I want you to understand is that God seems to be wildly concerned about the journey that we are on.

The Apostle Paul, so interesting.

The Apostle Paul is this extraordinary hero.

He writes roughly half of the New Testament.

In the book of 2 Corinthians, chapter 12, he admits that three different times he begs the Lord to take something away from him.

2 Corinthians 12 · chapter mention

He called it a thorn in his flesh.

There was something bothering him, hurting him, tormenting him.

Scholars argue over what it was.

We don't know what it was, and the truth is it doesn't even matter what it was, but it bugged him.

And each time he said, My grace is all you need.

Paul begs God, take this pain away from me.

And God's response is like, Nope, my grace is all you need.

My power works best in weakness.

So then Paul learns to see this whole pain, this thorn in his flesh from a different point of view.

He says, So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses so that the power of Christ can work through me.

Someone in the room needs to get this.

God still heals.

He does.

And you should keep asking.

Go back over and over and over until you experience it.

But the journey of healing is actually a journey.

In fact, I could summarize it like this the process is the point.

I think we tend to live our lives so hyper-fixated on the moments that we can't see the story that's unfolding.

We live our lives here and now, shell-shocked by a doctor's report, humiliated with the loss of a job, dumbfounded at the divorce you're walking through.

We live our lives in these really desolate dark moments, and we tried so desperately to hold on for a word from God.

And I just want to tell you, stop living in the captivity of the moment and start learning to trust that God is the master craftsman.

He's an artisan, he's writing a beautiful story through you.

If we could go back to Liz in my story, she gets the diagnosis of cancer.

I catch her.

Put her on a plane, send her home.

We walk through this together.

There are some moments, there was one moment in particular, I was speaking at another camp that was nearby, so I was able to leave just for the nights and come home.

Came home and she had fallen asleep with her hands like this on her chest.

Her face so lacking in color, her eyes so sunken in, and her breathing was so shallow that I walked in and thought she had died.

In that moment, I wasn't thinking about you, I wasn't thinking about a church, I wasn't thinking about our future.

I was held in the tyranny of the moment.

Fast forward some 18 or 19 years from that moment.

In the moment I couldn't see all that God had planned.

Let me tell you what God had planned.

Some months ago I met with a mentoring voice in my life.

And he asked me a question and it dumbfounded me.

He said, Jason, look, he goes, Everyone likes to check on you when everything is bad, but everything in your life seems good right now.

How are you actually doing?

I said, What do you mean?

He goes, it's really easy when things are successful and growing and big and exciting for a leader to lose sight of his or her own soul.

So how are you actually doing?

And I said, you know the truth is we've grown now to thousands of people that call us their church.

But because of what we walked through, the beautiful thing is I feel like no matter how big our church gets, the DNA of our church is rooted in the fact that we have walked through pain.

So when someone walks through pain, we're gonna walk with them.

When someone hurts, we love them.

When someone asks us to pray, you know, we like actually pray.

I feel like that season of our life felt dark, it felt desolate, but it wasn't a dark, devoid, empty space.

It was a dark room where the film, the picture of our life was actually being developed.

I think for so many of us, we're willing to throw God and throw faith away because we can't see with our eyes the picture we see in our heart.

And I just want to encourage someone in the room today, go back.

Go back.

Ask God, heal you.

Look for signs of his hand at work.

And when you don't see his hand at work, trust that what the author of Hebrews says is true.

It's that even when I don't see it, I trust that you have something better for me.

Tease this out for me for just a moment.

I've done a lot of funerals for people who were believers in Jesus, some who died, in my opinion, prematurely.

What's the worst case?

God heals you, or you take one last breath on this side of the mist of our life, and you inhale in God's presence forever.

God heals and He heals.

So I want to end today by praying for you.

Some of you, I need to pray for God to heal you.

We're gonna pray and we're gonna believe that right now.

For others of you, we need to pray, but your prayer doesn't need to simply be God heal me.

It needs to be God, encourage my faith to trust you even when I don't see you.

Here's what I believe.

I believe if we'll go back, I believe if we'll trust, God still heals and He still has something better for us.

Will you bow your head and close your eyes all across this place?

God, for every person in this room who needs healing, we believe you can, and we believe you will.

So, God, we just ask you in faith right now, do what you can do and heal.

God, I pray for this week there to be doctors' reports who are dumbfounded.

Like I saw this on the skin, but it's no longer there.

I I diagnosed this sickness, but you are completely well.

We trust you for it.

We've heard it over and over and over again for 17 years.

We trust that you are in the miracle-working healing business.

Jesus, we believe that when you died on the cross, you paid for our salvation, but you also bought our healing physical, mental, spiritual.

You bought it all.

So we we receive that gift now.

But God, I thank you so much that you're also about the journey, you're about the process.

So, God, some of us we've honestly thrown in the towel.

I believe there's probably people here today who just came out of obligation, but the truth is they've given up.

God, would you do what only you can do?

Reignite our faith and our trust in you.

We love you, we trust you in Jesus' name.

With your head still bowed and your eyes still closed, maybe you're here and you don't know if you're right with God.

I said it earlier, God still heals, but what he seems most concerned about is our soul.

Maybe you're here and you don't know if you're right with God.

Maybe you just feel like you've walked away from your relationship with God or you've never started one.

If you're here and you need to start or restart a relationship with God, this moment is for you.

If you say, Jason, I need I need to start or restart with him.

Would you raise your hand right now?

I want to pray with you.

Thanks.

Thanks.

Yep, thanks, thanks, thanks.

Wow.

Here's your moment.

Look, praying a prayer only changes things if you mean this with your heart.

So would you pray this with me now?

Say, Jesus, today I trust you and I give you my life.

I invite you to be my Lord and my Savior.

You being my Lord means you're in charge and I follow you.

You being my savior means that you and only you can save me from my sins.

Jesus, I believe that when you died on the cross, you died in my place to pay for my sins.

When you rose again from the dead, I believe you showcased the fact that you have power to forgive.

So I receive your gift of forgiveness and I receive your salvation now.

And from this day on, I'll follow you.

I love you, Jesus.

I give you my life for the rest of my life, and it's in your name we pray.

Amen.

Church family, we just had people all over the room pray to make that decision.

Come on, let's celebrate like it matters.