Praying For The Sick

 We pray for Tom Payne almost every service. We pray for a miracle recovery. In doing this are we giving simple people a false hope? We have begun to pray for Michelle Aulson and Andrew Lucas also. They need prayer. but not miracle healing prayer.

There is a time for Divine Healing. Someone to physically lay hands on someone and see them miraculously made well. There is a time when we need to lift someone up in prayer for strength and comfort and peace. God will answer those prayers too.

Tom Payne needs strength to deal with his treatment. Michelle and Andrew need strength and courage and rest. The Gallup church needs a pastor until Tom is able to resume his duties there.

Hope is a powerful thing. Hope of eternal life is a valuable resource for us. That no matter how bad it gets, it will one day end. We are not like those who have no hope. We do not sorrow like those outside the church.

Our desire to help can actually hurt. People dying of cancer cling to the hope that something will work. They go through treatments that make life worse and not better. We pump people full of drugs to alleviate the symptoms instead of helping them put their affairs in order.

The best years of our lives were the last years I had with my wife, Kathy. We did our best to make her life as comfortable as we could. She died too young. But we did not prolong her life as an invalid.

Doctors are trained to fix things. They are not trained to guide terminally ill patients to the end of life.

Pentecostals are trained to heal the sick. We are not trained to care for the elderly and the terminally ill.

Pastor Mitchell did not linger. Kathy did not linger. Let them die with dignity.