Monday, March 19, 2012

Jesus Healings part 1 - Ministering Twice

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NOTE:  An updated version of this post is available on my new website:  http://bornofspirit.net/jesus-healings-ministering-twice/
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I'm going to be going through the various passages in scripture where we are given some details of how Jesus ministered healing to people with various ailments.

I chose this one first because it is so  fascinating.

Mark 8:22-25
22 Then He came to Bethsaida; and they brought a blind man to Him, and begged Him to touch him.
23 So He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the town. And when He had spit on his eyes and put His hands on him, He asked him if he saw anything.
24 And he looked up and said, "I see men like trees, walking."
25 Then He put His hands on his eyes again and made him look up. And he was restored and saw everyone clearly.

In Bethsaida, a blind man came to Jesus, seeking to be healed.  Before ministering to Him, Jesus took him out of the town.  From reading Matthew 11:21, it appears that the people of Bethsaida never really received Jesus.    It doesn't say why He took him out of town before praying for him, but there were other times where Jesus made people leave before He ministered because of their mocking or unbelief (Matthew 9:24-25).  This could be another case of that, but we don't know for sure.

Anyway...

After going out of town, Jesus begins to minister to him in a very unusual way.  He spit on his eyes (more on that later), and then laid hands on him (and no mention of any praying).  Then he asked him how his sight was.

From the man's answer, there was only a partial healing.  
So, Jesus laid hands on him again, and then the healing was complete.

Here we have biblical evidence that Jesus had to minister to someone twice before their healing was completely accomplished.  Even Jesus, had to minister twice!  That is so amazing to me, and so encouraging.  Jesus is always operating in the perfect will of the Father, in the power of the Holy Spirit, and yet this one took two times to work completely.

This tells me a number of things.

1 - Ministering healing doesn't have to include any praying, or even any talking...Jesus just "put His hands on him" and then asked if he saw anything.

2 - You can be absolutely in God's will, ministering to someone in the power and leading of the Spirit, but not see the person get completely healed the first time.  But, you can keep going until everything is 100% healed.

You can minister to someone and get results progressively.  What I mean is, someone can feel a little bit better immediately, but you may need to keep going.  If Jesus had stopped after the first time, the man would have been a little bit better off, but he would not have been totally healed.  This may sound strange to some of you reading this, but this story is in the bible.  I didn't make it up.

I don't advise building a complete doctrine or formula off of one example, and I'm not aware of another one like this (ministering twice) in the life of Jesus.  However, there are some principles here to remember.  This story does prove without a doubt that healing can be progressive, and that there may be times where healing only comes fully after ministering to someone more than once.  It also proves that although praying is good, it is not a requirement for ministering healing to others.

(Now a note on the spitting.  Apparently, at this time there was a belief that the saliva of the firstborn in a family had some kind of healing properties.  It could be that the Holy Spirit was instructing Jesus to do this in order to demonstrate that He was indeed the "firstborn" Son of God.  That is just my opinion, though.)

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