service of healing ?

[polkaman]

do any church's hold regular services of healing ?

how often ?

also, any church's hold regular Love Feast or Agape Meal ?

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

do any church's hold regular services of healing ?

how often ?

also, any church's hold regular Love Feast or Agape Meal ?

I think the Order of St Luke conducts healing meetings. There is an organisation in Spokane in the U.S. state of Washington where they have "healing rooms" where people come and get regular prayer. There is a small provincial town in the North Island of New Zealand where they do the same.

I haven't heard of the Agape meal concept.

 

[polkaman]

I am surprised of few responses, these come direct from the UMC deciples I believe
Worship section.... anyhow
Off the national website.

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

I am surprised of few responses, these come direct from the UMC deciples I believe
Worship section.... anyhow
Off the national website.

I was invited to speak at a Sunday night small group healing meeting. It wasn't an official church meeting. I was also asked to conduct two full day healing conferences in small provincial towns about an hour's drive from Auckland.

These meetings did not consist in me being the great healing evangelist. I said that my calling in the body of Christ is that of pastor and teacher, and that I couldn't heal a flea with a headache, but it is Jesus who heals. So my work there was to teach and encourage people to minister healing the way that Jesus did it, and we studied the different Scriptures that showed what and how Jesus did it. I also told them that the Scripture says that "These signs shall follow those who believe [not any great evangelist]...they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover. So I taught them that any one of them in the hall would be able to lay hands on a sick person and believe that they will recover. I said that recovery takes time, and if a healing is instant, that would be a miracle rather than healing as spoken in Mark 16 or James.
To give the example of what I meant, I put out a hot seat and invited some who was sick to sit in it, then I told the people to come up one by one, lay hands on that sick person and say, "Jesus heals you". After the weekend, I got an email from the church pastor to say that the woman was healed of a chronic back problem and was rejoicing that she had the best nights sleep in a very long time!
My teaching resource was the "Healing, the Children's Bread," by Simon Wilson and Cornel Marais. You can download it by googling the title. At the end of the day I invited all those who needed prayer for healing to sit on the front row, and then told the rest of the people to line up and go along the row, laying hands on each one, saying, "Jesus heals you", or "I bind that spirit of infirmity" or to speak to the affected part of the body and tell it to resume it normal function and that all pain leave this body at once.
I was adamant in telling them that the sick person does not have to have faith to be healed. It is the person ministering healing who needs the required faith. So if someone doesn't get healed it is because God in His sovereignty has decided not to do it at that time, and that the condition could be healed through medicine, or the person ministering did not have enough faith, or he asked God to heal the person when God had already promised it in His word. It was a very positive time for all and both church pastors were very happy with the outcomes.

Not everyone gets healed on demand because God is sovereign and He knows what He is doing. Our responsiblity in ministering healing is out of obedience to His Word and not for results. The results are in the hands of God.

It is very interesting that people in the small group were too scared to come up and lay hands on the sick ones who came forward. It was so foreign and new to them because they were so used to the minister or elders ministering healing and just 40 minutes of teaching on that Sunday night was just not enough. The larger conference groups were more confident because there was a whole day of 40 minute teaching sessions to increase their faith and confidence.

Also I have learned recently that healing is not limited to physical healing of medical conditions. There are mental conditions, healing of memories, of hurts, and other types of inner healing that are all part of the healing ministry.

It is interesting that when CF had a healing ministry forum, I ministered healing to a lady who had a kidney condition who had infections every month. After I told those kidneys to resume their normal functions [I typed it to you as a personal conversation], she reported three months later that she had no further infections. So God is not limited when we minister healing in faith to others. But I tell a sick person they don't need any faith to be healed. I have faith for both of us. John Wesley's horse got healed of lameness, and it didn't have any faith. It was God working in answer to Wesley's prayer that brought the healing to his own headache and the horse's lameness.

 

[dreadnought]

do any church's hold regular services of healing ?

how often ?

also, any church's hold regular Love Feast or Agape Meal ?

It seems to me our church did that for a while. I wasn't convinced, though, that that was it's real purpose. Maybe I am too cynical.