11/8/2013 7:29:00 PM —
More than a decade ago, in 2002, the ecumenical men’s ministry Promise Keepers coined a rallying cry that inspired believers across a broad cross-section of faith expressions to one-on-one evangelism: bringing 1 million men to the cross.
It was brilliant, because it accurately quantified the evangelist’s charge: to bring people face to face with the atoning work of Jesus Christ, at which point the work of conversion and discipleship – His work – could begin. It’s important to remember that we can’t save anyone. But we can introduce our friends, neighbors, co-workers and family members to the One who can. When a broken life becomes whole again at the foot of the cross, we rightly call it a miracle. And I’ve been fortunate enough to see many such miracles over more than 30 years of public ministry.
I am looking forward to being a small part of hundreds of thousands of miracles this coming weekend, when our
Worldwide Miracle, Healing and Victory Prayer Cloth service is held in Columbus, Ohio. Like the Promise Keepers of the turn of the century, we will be bringing people to the cross, and letting God do in their lives what only He can.
The prophet Isaiah has forever linked our healing and wholeness with His suffering on Calvary:
He was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his stripes we are healed.
- Isaiah 53:3-5, ESV
Healing, apparently, is something of a controversial subject in some corners of the Body of Christ these days. Some well-meaning believers, not content to believe for themselves that the works of the Holy Spirit as depicted in the book of Acts are no longer possible today, have taken to strident criticism of those who dare to believe differently.
I can’t help what others believe. I also can’t help what the Holy Spirit has done in my presence. Who knows? I might be inclined to believe that healings and miracles are not for today if I hadn’t seen so many with my own eyes!
As I note in my new book,
“The Cross: One Man…One Tree…One Friday,” I will go as far as to say that what Jesus Christ accomplished at the cross makes healings and other miracles possible today:
Throughout scripture, disease is associated with the demonic works of darkness.
Jesus came “to destroy the works of the devil(1 John 3:8).” The last Adam came to restore what the first Adam had lost.
Nevertheless, through the centuries since that Good Friday, there have always been those who—for whatever reason—have chosen to believe that no provision for physical healing was made in the atoning work of Christ. And not surprisingly, such believers have seen little in the way of Jesus healing virtue flowing in their lives.
In contrast, wherever there has been intellectual honesty and scriptural accuracy…wherever the truth of Calvary has been preached… wherever Isaiah 53 has been read in the revealing light of the cross . . . there have been those who have come to that bloody beam and exchanged their brokenness—spiritual, physical and emotional—for God’s wholeness. Innumerable sick and suffering children of God have walked boldly into the court of Heaven and there presented [Isaiah 53:5] and [1 Peter 2:24] as legal documents establishing their Biblical right to healing, and walked out whole … nothing missing, nothing broken.
Jesus once told a desperate father seeking healing for his child, “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.” That man walked away hand-in-hand with a son who was whole and free. In the same way, those faith-filled souls who come to the cross believing that there Jesus bore their sicknesses, carried their pains, and by His stripes they were healed—they walk away changed as well.
There—in the place of the great exchange—they lay down their brokenness and receive His wholeness.
Healing is not just something “those other Christians” do. It is the birthright of every believer, claimed by those fortunate enough to worship where the implications of Calvary are fully taught. I am looking forward to having one of the world’s pre-eminent healing evangelists, Reinhard Bonnke, with me this weekend to offer one of the promised outcomes of Christ’s sacrifice at Calvary, divine healing, to all who will believe for it.