Article August 22, 1983 Issue

The rightness and naturalness of Christian healing

MERLE WITHAM MILLER

Healing through reliance on God's power was in the very grain of our Saviour's religion. In the four Gospels alone, hundreds of verses recount healings by Jesus and his followers. Not only were there cures of sin and disease, there was deliverance also from deprivation, protection from turbulent forces of nature, escape from personal violence, and missions consummated in the face of raging religious opposition. Can we justifiably overlook the fact that Jesus required saving and healing works on the part of all who consider themselves his followers?

John Wesley, the distinguished theologian who founded Methodism, entered this account in one of his journals: "When ... I left Smeton, my horse was so exceeding lame that I was afraid I must have lain by too.... I was thoroughly tired, and my head ached more than it had done for some months. I then thought, 'Cannot God heal either man or beast, by any means, or without any?' Immediately my weariness and headache ceased, and my horse's lameness in the same instant. Nor did he halt any more either that day or the next."^{Nehemiah Curnock, ed., John Wesley's Journal (abridged) (London: The Epworth Press, 1967), p. 190 .}

After discovering this item in a giftbook, I learned that Wesley had covered some five thousand miles a year on horseback in order to preach fifteen sermons in an average week. How sustaining and gratifying the above experience of healing must have been!

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