Is It the Will of God?

Is It the Will of God?

by Tom Walker

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

If you know this story, you are pledged to keep silence till it is finished. There was once a rabbit. The rabbit lived up on a hill. And the rabbit enjoyed life, and he breathed in the presence of his Creator, and he hopped around as rabbits do, and he enjoyed his food. But every afternoon, the rabbit got bored. He just didn’t have quite enough to do. And one day, as the rabbit was contemplating his navel, or whatever rabbits do, and considering the things of the universe, he looked down over the hillside, and he saw in the valley some field mice playing. And these field mice were having a marvelous time. In fact, it was disgusting. They were having such a good time. They were running and playing and smiling and laughing, and the rabbit felt very bored. But he let it go by. And the next afternoon, when the rabbit had been through his usual daily routine, but was now sitting and contemplating the things of nature, he looked out over the hillside, and there were those field mice again, just having a good time. And he had what Gene might call an anger urge. And he decided that he was bored with life, and he just couldn’t resist the urge. So he went down, and he got closer to the field mice, and closer and closer, until finally he got close enough, and he trapped about three of them, and he just beat the heck out of these little field mice.

And the little field mice went scampering off, running away, and trying to avoid this sudden madcap rabbit. And the rabbit then went, much relieved, temporarily, psychologically, of course, having vented his boredom and anger and frustration, and he went back to his home in the hole in the hills. And this satisfied him for two or three days. But there came a day, and he’s sitting there again, just finished his carrot. And as he looked out over the hillside, there were those field mice again, and he felt this irresistible urge. So he proceeded down the mountain a little way, and he got behind the right shrubbery, and sure enough, he trapped two or three more field mice and just beat the heck out of the little field mice. And he decided this was a wonderful hobby. So he did this three or four times in a week. And finally, a good fairy appeared to the rabbit. And the good fairy said, “Now, you’ve really lived a pretty good life up to this point. So I’m going to give you credit on that side of the ledger. But I must call to your attention that this is not acceptable to the great Creator God and the supervisor rabbit in heaven. It is not acceptable that you start beating up on God’s other creatures.”

“Therefore, I must warn you that you must stop this.” And the rabbit said, “Well, it just gets so dull sometimes, but I will try. I will try.” For a week, the rabbit constrained himself. And finally, one week later, having watched the field mice and gnashed his buck teeth, he looked down and he just could not resist the urge any longer. And he thought, “Good fairy or not, I’m going to have my fun.” So he hops down the hill, finds a few of the field mice. Most of them get away, but a couple of them remain. He beats the heck out of the little field mice. And so when he goes back up into the hill, feeling much better, suddenly there is a poof. And the good fairy appears again and said, “Walter, I warned you about this once. Now, I have to say that if this happens again, drastic measures will be taken.” And Walter quaked in his bunny feet a little bit. And he said, “What would happen?” And he said, “Well, I’m afraid that if you do this again, I have been instructed by my superiors to turn you into a goon.” It was a terrible fate to be turned into a goon. And so Walter said, quaking, “I will not do it again.

I will muster all my rabbit power, and I will not do it again.” So Walter this time lasted two weeks. Every other day he would glance over the field mice. Every four days he would sit there and sort of drool. But he did not give in and go down and beat up the field mice. But at the end of two weeks he’d had it. He was having a caffeine fit.

And he thought, “If I do not get this release in my life, I just don’t think I can stand it. Surely the good fairy is on a coffee break and won’t notice.” So Walter proceeds down the hill and hides behind the shrubbery. And this time he catches five of them, and he just really has a field day. Pardon the pun. And he beats the heck out of these little field mice. And they stumble away back to their houses, soliciting and petitioning their Creator that He will do something about this rabbit. And when Walter gets back, you know, for a moment he thinks he’s made it. And then suddenly there’s a poof. And he realizes he hasn’t. And the good fairy appears and says, “Walter, it has been decided with my superiors who watched on the heavenly television what you have just done, that you must be punished for this so that you may become penitent. And in order to do this, you must enter a certain realm where you can repent of this until you can continue on as a rabbit in love.” So she held out her magic wand and she placed it upon the rabbit’s head and turned him into a goon. And the moral of this story is, hare today, goon tomorrow.

That’s painful, isn’t it? How many… I’ve got to know now. How many of you have heard the Little Fru-Fru Rabbit song? Well, thank you for keeping quiet during that. Little Rabbit Fru-Fru. That’s the story of Little Rabbit Fru-Fru. Well, for those of you who’ve heard that, I’ll try another one. But this one isn’t a story, it’s just a quickie. Do you know what has two knees and swims in the ocean? A two-knee fish. A two-knee fish.

Tomatoes were not furnished at the door. Praise be to God. Leslie Weatherhead served in India for a while. And there came a time in his service in India that there was a man who was undergoing a great tragedy. And Weatherhead had come to know this man as a pastor and as a friend, so he could be very frank and honest with this man. It so happened that the dread disease of malaria had entered the community where Weatherhead was serving at the time. And a man from India had some children and one of them had died from this dread disease. And the other lay critically ill and was likely going to die also. And so Weatherhead was called to minister to this family. And while they were waiting and the doctors had ministered as best they knew how, while they were waiting to see what was going to happen on this very demanding occasion, Weatherhead and his friend were in a room together and they were able to share and talk some. And Weatherhead’s friend said, “Well, Padre, it is the will of God.”

And Weatherhead contemplated a moment and decided he knew this man well enough. And he felt that the man’s knowledge of God had advanced to a point where he could confront him with something. Even though he was facing this extremely difficult time in his life when one child had died and another was gravely ill. And so Weatherhead said to his friend, “My friend, I have a question to ask you. What if one night, when some children were asleep in their beds, some stranger crept into the house and he broke in and he had in his hand a wad of cotton and upon that wad of cotton he had seen to it that there was spread the deadly malarial germs. And while children slept, this invader went to their bedside and pressed against their noses and against their mouths the dread malarial bacteria, thus infecting them with the disease. And he went from one child to another and did this and then crept off into the night and left the children to become infected and perhaps even die with the disease.” And Weatherhead said, “What would you think of such a man?”

And the grieving father said, “I would think he was less than a beast and should be taken out and shot.” And Weatherhead said, “I think I might agree with you.” And then he said, “Do you know when you just said that one of your children has died with malaria and the other is gravely ill with it? When you said it is the will of God that you have just accused God of that very thing, of giving your children malaria?”

Thus introduces something we Christians must face. We don’t want to face it. It is too deep for us. It is too wide for us. It is too broad for us. It is too big for us because it is the very mind and will of God. And no man can encompass or comprehend with absolute purity and no error or fallacy the pure will of God. Yet we must face what the will of God is according to the light that is given us. How do we pray otherwise? “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The Lord Jesus, thus in teaching His disciples that moment and for the 2,000 years that have gone on since, to pray that every day and in their hearts constantly was telling us a deep, wondrous, fantastic, and yet in a way obvious secret. Namely, the will of God is not always done on the earth. If it were, why would Jesus teach us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”? Do you read of murder in your newspapers? Is that the will of God?

Do you read of dictatorial communism that would dominate the minds of man and tell them that there is no God? Is that the will of God? Do you see people rising to try to kill each other nation against nation? Is that the will of the loving God we know in Jesus? Why did Jesus teach us to pray? “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The answer is simple. Because it isn’t being done.

We are among those who are privileged to be receiving gradually the mind of Christ, which is the mind of pure peace, the mind of pure compassion, the mind of pure forgiveness, and the mind of pure love, which is Jesus Christ, which is the mind of God, whereby this planet may be converted to the kingdom of Jesus Christ, which is the kingdom of pure love. We are the God-chosen channels, conduits, foreseeing to it that this incredible electrical, nuclear power that is God come to convert the spirits and the minds and the emotions of people so that warring may cease.

Yet, there are a few so confused sometimes over what the will of God as we Christians are. Do you wonder sometimes when you’re praying, “Am I praying in the will of God? Do I perceive or understand the will of God in a particular situation?” Do not feel alone. Some of the highest saints have faced this. Ultimately, everyone faces it in his or her prayer life. Agnes Sanford, in the early, early, early part of her healing ministry, was called once to the home where a child was ill, a little boy with a heart problem.

And the parents wanted to pray for the little boy and of course she wanted to pray. But she recalled the moment this way. She entered the room where the little boy was. Now these were her words. Strange words. She said, “For a moment Satan entered me. And I thought perhaps it might be the will of God that that little boy be ill. Maybe even die.” Things going through the mind like maybe he is supposed to be ill so that the parents will come to God, this sort of thing. But as she put it, “In that black moment of doubt, I realized that if I believed that my healing ministry was over, if I believed that the will of God was for a little child to be sick, what kind of a beast did I worship? And so, I knelt and I prayed and Christ entered me and I was refreshed with the single-minded knowing that God is good.” This is the message that we have heard and declare unto you. That God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. No darkness at all. I once heard of a physician, apparently a very proud physician, but a very honest physician, who said, “The first thing that I’m going to do when I get to heaven is lay a cancer cell at the foot of God’s throne and say, ‘Why?’”

We get very confused over the author of sickness and death and yet the Scriptures are eminently clear that God has nothing to do with them. We are among the privileged. We are among the immensely privileged. We know Jesus. Jesus is the manifestation of the perfect light and wholeness and well-being that God is and wants for His children. The preeminent grounding upon which we Christians in Christ stand is the resurrection of the Lord. What does the resurrection say? That death is God’s enemy. It is even proclaimed in the Holy Book. The last enemy to be destroyed shall be death. Yet how many times have you and I proclaimed death to be the will of God? So, let’s take a look at this and see if we can understand a little better this mystery called the will of God. We begin with humility. Will of God with perfect understanding. If we did, we would be God. God created this universe, this galaxy. We can’t even create a tree like that. We cannot, as Jesus put it, add one cubit to our stature. We can do nothing before the mighty God. He created our conscious knowing, our souls, our beings, our physical bodies. Even our transplants don’t work sometimes. We are very far behind the living God because we are the creatures and He is the Creator.

So, let’s begin humbly. We are not going to fully fathom the will of God. But I turn again to what I believe is an inspired teaching. In this case of Leslie Weatherhead, with whom I disagree on most subjects but not on this one. I think he was given a clarified flow that helps me at least, I hope it will you, to understand better the will of God. He categorized this infinite will of the Father into three basic categories that we might better deal with it in these situations that we face where we need to know how to pray, where we need to know why there is sickness and we are not always given why of course. That we might pray more single-mindedly for, as the apostle says, a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways, as the writer of Scripture says. We want to pray more single-mindedly, that’s what I’m getting at. I’m getting at something else. In our relationship to God, I think we are impeded in learning to love Him because we blame an awful lot on Him and get very angry at Him when He has nothing to do with those things. He didn’t bring them about at all and in the midst of them is willing to help us deal with them.

Weatherhead categorized the will of God into three basic categories. First was the intentional will of God, that is, what God intended to be when He created the heavens and the earth. This was the Edenic stature of a man, nature of a man, before what we call the fall. There was no death. There was no disease. Everything was fine. Everything was provided for. But there was freedom of choice. And we have to take into account God’s intolerable gift of freedom.

God decided, if I may be presumptuous in trying to understand this eons ago, that it would be better to risk free children who could by their own volition choose to love Him than to have a race of robots who didn’t do anything wrong. So praise God you’re not a robot. Praise God Adam wasn’t a robot. Yes, disaster has befallen, but there was a worse possibility and that was that we would be push-button people. God complemented the human race by infusing His image into us and infusing into us His will and the ability to make choices. And He took the all-time risk when He did it. But that is what God is like. He seems to be an infinite risk-taker. He also is never caught by surprise and always has something up His sleeve when things to us go terribly wrong. Witness the Lamb slain from the foundations of the world. The plan of God’s redemption was in the mind and heart of God so that if man made the wrong choice there would be a way out. The intentional or first or whatever you want to call it will of God was that man not choose alienation from God. That man not turn his back on God. That man not go his own way. And the prophetic word of God was given, in the day that you do, you shall surely die.

The wages of sin is death. Why was death introduced? God did not bring death. The wages of sin is death. God pronounced death. God decreed death as a mercy when sin entered in. God is not the author of death nor of sickness. Witness this testimony of understanding. You think it is hell to watch a person ill with cancer or with some terrible sickness to watch them in pain. You know what would be hell if they could not die.

If they were to remain ill and not be able to be released from the physical shell and fly out of it when it had served its purpose and had come to a point where there was to be the decay of it unto death. The Lord God who is light in whom there is no darkness at all willed when sin entered and with sin the beginning of the decay of the body which He had said would be the beginning of what we now know as illness because man turned from the light which is perfect attunement with the Creator and which is perfect wholeness, God decreed in His mercy when that happened that there would be a back door out and we call it death. Death is strange to us and God did not author it but He decreed it as a mercy so long as the human race remains in its sinful condition. Until that day of the total redemption, when we will be given a vehicle, a body, a resurrection body like unto the body of the Lord Jesus, that will know no sickness, no decay, no death, no grieving, and no pain. In the meantime, death is a mercy and is granted because it has to be lest man live on in his sins, which also means misery and decay and sickness.

As long as the human race has not yet come into that total redemption, it must be as a grace way out of this planet. But it was not the intentional will of God. Death was not originally the will of God. The author of death is another, and the wages of sin is death. That is what brought death into the human experience. It was not God’s plan. The intentional will of God was perfect. We need to know this, that in the nature of our Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer God, He is only good. He is only beauty. He is only peace. He is only joy. He is only light. And there is no cancer cell in God. He is pure truth and wholeness and beauty. The physicians are working to help bring that back into the body when it has temporarily been lost. If you really believe that sickness is the will of God, why do you go to the doctor?

Are you defying the will of God then to go to the doctor? No. You are cooperating with the will of God to go to the doctor, because he is one of the arms of God’s healing, and because deep in your spirits you know God is on your side. He is on the side of wholeness. More appropriately, you are on God’s side, the side of wholeness and purity and light which heals.

Physicians are one arm of that glorious healing stream which God continually breaks into the human race to show is real. The primary manifestation of that is Jesus the Christ. A house divided against itself cannot stand. Jesus went around healing. If healing were not the will of the Father, Jesus would never have done it.

If death were the will of the Father, the power of God would never have raised Jesus from the dead. You see how fuzzy our thinking gets? Even as Christians who have been lightened by the Christ of God, we are still working this through. We still face sick people in prayer and wonder, “Well, wait a minute, is this the will of God or how do I pray?” And we do need to ask for wisdom in every case. There comes a time with the saints of God when it is their time to go home. How wonderful! How wonderful! At such times, it is best to hold a hand and pray with them, rejoicing at the home going and the reunions in the face of Jesus, which is so close. There are times, and now we are into Weatherhead’s second category, that the circumstantial, I prefer the word permissive, that the circumstantial will of God is death. But as long as you know, it is the circumstantial will of God that He did not author death, that He never wanted death, but that He permits it given the circumstances of the human race. As long as you know that and you are not accusing Him of causing the death or wanting the death, then you can say, given the set of circumstances, given what has happened, given, dare I say this, the amount of faith sometimes available or not available, given sometimes the will of the person to go on.

Have you known those who wanted to go on? Sometimes they are given a choice. At least so it would appear. Given the set of circumstances, then we have what is called the circumstantial will of God, or what I find a little clearer in my mind to call the permissive will of God. Here the Christian has a very high calling. I was talking on it in one of my talks this week. You may accept anything that comes your way, anything as God’s permissive will. You may go further. You may say, as Jesus said to Pilate, “Nothing can touch me except by the hand of God.” That doesn’t mean God wanted disease. It doesn’t mean He wanted an accident if it happens. But it does mean in the sovereign control of God, it passed His desk, it didn’t catch Him by surprise, and for reasons usually unknown to us, He permitted it at that time. So that we can say for the Christian, anything that comes to us, we may accept as from God’s hand. It doesn’t mean He wanted it in the intentional will sense, that He did not author death. He doesn’t. He did not author sickness. He doesn’t author anything negative. In Him is no darkness at all. But He permits, given not only our choices, people, but the choices of the human race for 4,000 years of recorded history.

Agnes Sanford was once asked by parents who had, I believe it was a retarded child, why was this child born retarded? Do you remember who else was asked the same question? Why was it whose sin that this man was born blind? And the answer was the same in both cases. Jesus said, “Neither, but that God may be glorified.” And there is no more dangerous heresy afoot than the accusation of sick people that they have sinned and made themselves sick. Now that may be true in the mind of God sometimes. Resentments, unforgiveness, things can fester in our bodies. But I ask you, if you are sick, would you want someone to come along and tell you that it’s because of your sin that you’re sick? That drives you further into yourself as opposed to more onto the mercy of God. And so Agnes replied to these parents when they said, “Why was our child born retarded? Who sinned? What is wrong?” She said, “I would answer rather that in the human race and in the race consciousness because of the fall of man or you put that into your own vocabulary to make it clear to you. Because of man being so far from the pure love of God. Because of that happening, there is a vibrational sea of negation that has been introduced in the human history.

And whether fortunately or unfortunately, seeds of ill reproduce and multiply, just as, praise be to God, seeds of good.” However, “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me,” He says, so we must believe that the seeds of light are more powerful. How many millions of human beings since the earth was given the privilege of human life and freedom to choose have chosen away from God, have introduced into the human atmosphere negation and fear and guilt and sickness and death. And we are born into that as a fish is born into water. But, we are also born in earth into the presence of God. For in Him we live and move and have our being. And as I quoted the other day, “Though I make my bed in Sheol,” Hebrew, the place of the shades, that is, the place where the ghosts, where the spirits of people went when they left this body, they did not know yet the fullness of the truth in Christ who later revealed it. So to them, the going of the spirit beyond was to a shady, gray area, place. And it was not a very pleasant thought, even though they consciously survived, until God should totally redeem this whole situation. “Though I make my bed in Sheol,” use your own word, though I make my bed in the pits, though I turn my life over to the swines and the hog and the pits of life, though I make my bed in hell.

“There Thou art with me.” So here we find ourselves living in earth, in the midst of God, breathing God in, and in the midst also of negation. Always able to choose which we will attune to. But it would be a great error every time somebody comes sick, becomes sick. To blame the person and his own sin. There are cases where that is not so. We have the authority of the Lord on that. Who sinned? This man or his parents that he was born blind? Neither! All sickness is not related to personal sin. Isn’t that good news? Now maybe some is. But if it is, it’s for the Lord to judge, and not for you and me. And so Agnes told the parents, “I would say rather that the sin vibrations of the world around us have produced this tragedy, and that people do not need to be concerned that their own sin brought it into being.” I want to close with a four-step prayer that Agnes Sanford gave us so that we may learn how to pray for people to get well. It doesn’t have to be limited to that, but it is primarily her healing prayer method. And I want to give it to you. It is found, I think, in her book, The Healing Light.

It is found in one of her books, anyway. And it is a very excellent model for prayer. It’s not the panacea of all, and you would have to adapt it to your own needs, but it does help in understanding a specific handle to the pot of prayer. You know, we see the pot and we want to get a hold of the pot, but we need a handle. The pot is healing prayer. How do we pray? Here is the way that Agnes suggests. It is four steps. Step number one is to select or to choose the person for whom you will pray. I cannot overemphasize because I have watched this so much in our Christian living, including mine, the importance of this. Let me put it this way. Everyone is not in your prayer bundle. You will dissipate your prayer power if you try to pray for everyone in his canary. Now, you may have a prayer list of names and you may bring that before God briefly or however you do it each day. But if you take someone on as a prayer project, you better be careful as to how many. Most of us couldn’t handle more than one or maybe at the most two at a time. I mean when you are really going to pray for somebody.

So the first step is to select or to choose the person for whom you pray. Sometimes that’s chosen for us. I’m a minister. I’m called to a hospital. Someone is ill. I don’t have to pray for selection. It’s lying there before me. And many times I wish it were not. Many times I think, “Oh Lord, I don’t know. I don’t feel quite right about such and such in these prayers.” So I don’t always have the option that some of you have. Rejoice in your options. Sometimes the choices are there. They may be in our own family or directly in front of us or someone gives us an emergency phone call. But do in general, especially if you’re going to take someone on as an extended prayer project, select. Then you move into the actual prayer sequence. And the first step in that, which is number two in the total process, number one, select. Number two, is to ask. Now you must be careful for what you ask. And you must ask God what you are to ask. And you must begin at least to settle within yourself what you can believe. Now God does not call you to believe that you can walk on that water. If you can, we will all join you at the lake in the morning and watch.

I’d like to, wouldn’t you? But He does not call me where I am yet to walk on the water, even if I knew where the rocks were. You know that joke? I’ll tell you that one some other time. That’s another joke.

Agnes used to say, because people would get impatient with her about prayer, Agnes was one of the most patient prayers I have ever known. There are those who lay the hand upon the head and who say, “Be healed,” and they expect that moment that you be healed. Praise God, sometimes it happens that way. But I heard one renowned person in the ministry of healing say, “Actually, most of the healings in my ministry are gradual healings.” You know the Scripture on this? “And they shall lay their hands upon the sick and they shall recover.” Recover. Recover is a process word. We are in that sense sort of spiritual doctors. The doctors expect their patients to get better gradually and to recover. So we don’t have to expect every time that we need an apostolic gift of faith. I doubt that anybody here has one. “Think soberly of yourself,” the apostle says, “according to the measure of faith given you.” Do you have the faith of Simon Peter? I don’t. I have a mustard seed grain of faith. God wants me to use it. But I’m not called to extend the hand and say, “Rise, get up and walk.” Maybe one day I will. I heard one saint speaking at a CFO camp. She says, “I believe,” she’s a southerner, and she says, “I believe that one day we will develop a ritual for raising the dead.”

We are called to do the greater works. The beginning of the greater works that Jesus did is as with Jesus, to learn the mastery of your own soul so that you will go forth in compassion and not in judgment. Agnes used to say in impatience with people who were impatient, “Yes, I know all things are possible with God, but all things are not yet possible with Agnes.”

That has become a theme song of mine. Yes, I know the promises of Scripture as well as many who would hold them up and say, “But why can’t we just say, ‘Be healed’?” Well, we can, but we also need to come in that boldness with humility and to realize that the power belongs to God and that sometimes our composite faith will see instantaneous miracles, sometimes it will see progressive recoveries, and sometimes for reasons we don’t know. It may not happen the way we ask. Have you not known believing, expectant saints who prayed for healing and it didn’t happen? There comes a point where you have to face our finitude in this. So you decide what to ask. “Lord, do I ask for healing? Lord, do I ask for absolute healing? Lord, do I ask for this person to get back better? Lord, is it this person’s time to go?” There are all kinds of questions, but the gift here is wisdom. So you ask what to ask. And after you and God decide what you’re going to ask, then you ask it. “Ask, and it shall be given you. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened to you.” So you’re praying for someone in bed that can’t get up. Maybe you can’t believe yet that she can leap out of bed.

Maybe you can see in your mind, within three days as she takes the covers and sits on the side of the bed. Ask that. Be humble enough to take some baby steps instead of expecting to be an Olympic runner in the things of God when perhaps you have not let the refining of your soul yet let Jesus bring you to that point. Was it, I’ve forgotten who, maybe Laubach, that said, I talked to somebody about this recently. One Christian praying, maybe 2,000 angels present. Two Christians praying, 10,000 angels present. Three Christians present, about 40,000 angels. It doesn’t just double. It’s even a geometric progression of power. When two of you agree on anything on earth, there is something in the body ministry. I feel an anointing as we say this. One of the callings of CFO to pray together. There is a cumulative power that happens. You have a straw in your head that goes straight from Jesus to you. I have a straw in my head that goes straight from Jesus to me. You put 12 of us together, you’ve got a pipe.

And the power can flow more thoroughly. There’s something about a body ministry. So the second step is to ask. Ask for the person to get well with the degree of faith that you have, or if it’s not a healing prayer, then ask for whatever you want. The third was Agnes’ great contribution to the Christian healing ministry, possibly her greatest, I think. And that is what Tommy Tyson calls the faith image. Step number three is to see the person well. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not, may I add a word, yet seen, by it the worlds were created. God is teaching you to be a creator, a co-creator with Him. It was by faith that He brought the worlds into being. He must have had a marvelous time doing that. And He wants you to learn to create by His power, which is pure love, which is the reason most of us don’t get any further than we do in prayer, because we haven’t yet learned. Pure, forgiving, unconditional love, which is, I think, the source line of faith in Jesus. Now we come to the faith step. It’s what Agnes called the prayer of faith that St. James mentions. The prayer of faith shall save the sick. You see by the spiritual eye of faith that which is not yet.

So you see the person walking and leaping and praising God in your mind. So it’s a child. You see him playing baseball, hitting a home run. So it’s an adult who used to love to bicycle but has a leg problem. You see that person bicycling all over town. Face, radiant with the light of Jesus. Being full of the presence of God. Shoulders back, confident, successful, buoyant with life itself. You choose to enter the prayer waves with a positive faith image. You are letting the mind of Christ create through you what He so earnestly yearns for this person. Hold well-being, health, joy, success. “I am come that you, that they, might have life and might have it more abundantly.” He’s crying out, “Let me create it through you. Let me see it through you. Let me bring it into being through you. For I have given man dominion over the earth.”

Was it Gene who said about psychological process, people just want God to come and do it? Have you ever thought, well, God can do it if He wants to do it? Yes, He could. But He hasn’t chosen most of the time to do it that way. He has chosen to need human vessels. And we will never know till we face Him how many died or suffered or went through anguish because some of us would not listen and pray. Would not be the channels that God so earnestly wants. Are we not called the body of Christ? You remember the old CFO song? “Oh, to be His hand extended.” We’ve kind of lost that song over the years. It’s a beautiful… That’s what you are. His hand extended. There may be those who would never be touched unless you were the one that agreed with God in Christ within you to go to that person at least in prayer and possibly actually in physical body. So see the person well.

A young man that I had known fairly well underwent a very severe motorcycle accident. He and his wife. He entered Orange County Hospital and was put there for quite a while and he went through absolute agony with the likely loss of a leg. I was not where he was but every now and then we would be in touch one way or another. He became almost delirious with pain and the doctors gave up his leg and had told him that it was quite likely that he was going to lose it. One day, it was a Sunday morning, he didn’t know that because he was in a hospital, he’d been there for, I think it was at least three months by that time. No, it was about two months because he went in November and this was December. He called me Christmas Eve morning. He didn’t know that. He didn’t know what day it was. He just knew great need. And he said to me, “They have told me that they’re going to take my leg.” He was 24, I think. Maybe less. And he didn’t know the timing or anything but the doctors had done everything they knew how to do. And they had told him that for his life at some point it just kept getting infected and kept whatever.

I don’t know what was wrong with it. So I said, “Well, let’s not give up yet.” That was the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. I said, “Let us pray for you before a decision is made.” I said, oh, he did say, “I have to tell them. I have to give them permission or whatever or tell them what I want done.” And I said, “Well, don’t tell them yet. Do you have to tell them today?” “No.” “Well, don’t tell them yet.” I said, “Let’s have some prayer first.” So I went to my congregation that morning. It’s a beautiful congregation in Big Bear Lake, California. We had three friends that came here that now live in the Seattle area just last night that were in that church at that time. At least one of them was. I think two of them came to the church at a later time. And we had a beautiful rapport there. And we prayed for many people. We had some minor and major miracles. We had women go through hysterectomies that said, “I never knew a moment’s pain.” There were people in that church that knew how to pray. So I went before them over-emotionally as I am sometimes prone to do because I loved this young man. And he really didn’t have much family in life.

And he had sort of let himself wander from Jesus too. He knew better. But he’d gotten himself into a fix and I knew that God’s love was bigger than this problem. I also knew that we needed a lot of faith, not just one person’s. So I said to the congregation, “I have this friend and he phoned me today and the doctors need a decision as to whether they take his leg because it was a severe motorcycle accident and the leg is not getting better. I would like us to try healing prayer.” And I said, “Now only two or three of us hear and know him. I think my wife and I were the only two. So we will take the responsibility of seeing him well if the rest of you will take the responsibility of seeing Jesus. You see Jesus. All of you can see Jesus with your spiritual faith eye. We will, with our minds, image him as well and whole.” They knew what I meant. We had talked about it before. I came out in front of the congregation and I knelt in the very front as a focal point. The anointing of the Spirit of peace was beautiful. There’s something special about Christmas time anyway. There’s more prayer going on.

Easter is the same way. When the saints of God are focusing and when more people are focusing on Jesus, there’s more prayer power available on the earth. And we performed our prayer. I did the best I could. My wife did to see him well. And they did their best to see Jesus. And we dismissed him to God and went on with our worship service. The next day, the phone rang. And my wife said, “Randy’s on the phone. He wants you.” So I went to the phone and he said, “I have some new babies.” And I said, “What?” I couldn’t get my mind into what he was trying to say. And he said, “The doctor came in today and was so excited he went running out into the hall to get the others. He said, ‘There have been some new nerve endings born in my leg.’”

That was, I don’t know how many years ago, but he still has his leg. It is thinner than his other leg and he’s had some difficulties with it, but he never lost his leg. All the glory goes to God. But the way He did it was love and the prayers of people who used their God-given imagination power. Who was it that said, Glenn Clark said, his major contributions were CFO and imagination. Love and imagination. Who told us that? Just this week. Love and imagination. Anyway, one of Glenn Clark’s great themes was, use your divine imaging power to see wholeness. So, you see by faith that which you cannot prove yet to be, but you hope to be, the substance of things hoped for. And Agnes had prayer experiences, probably you have. Until you can get your mind to have a clearer image of the person well than you do of the person sick, your prayers are going to be bogged down. Now, in the process, God is refining you as well as helping the other person. And then the final step is to give thanks. Gene already did this with that coat that he gave to Barbara or somebody. Agnes one time gave this, we have the hardest time. Do you think, with me at least, letting go and letting God is one of the hardest parts of my Christian life.

But that is the last part of prayer for healing. To let go by giving thanks. You give thanks, that was Agnes’ method of release. That is a way of letting it go to God. And you don’t have to pretend that you’re some giant saint of belief. You can simply say, “Thank you, Lord, that this is being done. That You are doing this.” You don’t have to pretend that you believe that that moment the patient will leap out of bed. If you can believe that, fine, wonderful. But if you can’t, don’t worry about it. God knows where you are with this prayer. So you give thanks and thereby release it to God. One day, she gave the example just as Gene did with the coat. And a sort of an illustration here. She had someone stand in front and have a cup of tea in her hand. It was Edith Drury, if any of you know Edith. And so Edith said, had a cup of tea and Agnes said, “Edith, could I please have a cup of tea?” And Edith handed her the cup of tea and Agnes just stood there. And then Agnes said, “Edith, could I please have a cup of tea?” And Edith hands her the cup of tea and Agnes just stands there.

And then Agnes, portraying all Christians, says, “Oh, please give me a cup of tea.” And Edith is going like this, you know, a cup of tea. “Why won’t you give me a cup of tea?” And finally, Agnes says, “Oh, thank you.” It was her way of saying that giving thanks to God is an avenue of receiving. All this time, God holding out these good gifts. “Fear not, little flock. It is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” He wants to give the gifts. The problem is in learning how to receive. An avenue of receiving is giving thanks. Let us close with a prayer.

We will make this very simple. Choose a person quickly that you would like to pray for. I’d rather it not be yourself, but it could be you if you want it to be. It can be a person that you just want to know God better. It can be a person with a physical illness. It can be a person with a marital problem. But just quickly, whom does God give to your mind to pray for? And let’s do this prayer. And for this moment, at least, we will count that as your selection. This person may not be a prayer project for weeks, but it can be a beginning, at least, tonight, of a prayer for this person. Maybe a person you need to forgive. That prayer can be included in this, too.

Now, place this person before God and ask. That is the next step. Ask. “Lord, what do You want me to pray for this person?” And listen. If a specific answer isn’t clear, you know He wants joy and abundant life for this person.

So now, God and you agree on what you’re going to ask. In your own private times, of course, you will have more time to meditate on this than we do tonight. But this is a good way to experiment and to learn together.

Now, ask God what you feel God wants you to ask for this person. Make an explicit, definite request of God for this person. “Ask, and it shall be given you.” The Amplified Version says, “Ask, and keep on asking.”

Persevere. And now take a step of faith. We who would learn to follow Jesus better need to go beyond just asking. The prayer of faith shall save the sick. Maybe it’s a sick parent. Maybe it isn’t just physical illness. Maybe it isn’t actual sickness. But shall save the person in the situation. What is the prayer of faith? We don’t know entirely. But we can help it to happen this way. By seeing in the mind, in the imagination, with the spiritual eye of faith, that which we hope to be. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen. Now, you’re not praying with faith until you’re praying for something that is not yet. So see, by faith, that which you’re asking God to bring about and which is not yet.

If it’s something that already is, you don’t need to pray for it. That’s not a faith prayer. You’re asking for something that only God can bring about through faith. See the person that you’re praying for. Happy, joyous, free, released, full of Christ, full of joy, full of abundant life, full of peace and joy and everything beautiful. See that person doing what he or she is happiest doing.

It may not be easy at first for you to see. God will teach you gradually and will help you and enable you so that it’s no longer a blur, but gradually, over a period of time, a prayer like this becomes a clearer image because Christ is thinking this through you that He may bring it about.

And now let yourself relax as inwardly you give thanks and in your way, silently, give thanks to Almighty God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in Jesus’ name that He is doing this, that He is bringing about this faith image that you are praying about.

And in so doing, release it. Let go and let God. If the person returns to your mind, hold for a second or two that faith image until such time as God leads you again to pray the full prayer.

Now release the whole matter and yourself into Jesus’ hands. And everybody said, Amen.