Llangasty Retreat – Healing and the Kingdom of God
The Llangasty Retreat ended on Friday, October 2 at about noon. On Friday morning Sam officiated at a Service of Rededication. During that service we prayed the prayer that I included in a previous post (see ‘A Prayer for Humility and Death (to Self)’). We also individually knelt, one at a time, holding a small cross, and spoke the words “Glorious and gracious God; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, You are mine, and I am yours. May it be so forever”. For me it was a powerful moment and the perfect way to end a week in His presence.
The final part of the retreat I want to summarize, for those of you who are interested, is the teaching of Mike Endicott and Helen (who has worked with Mike in the past and herself has a great deal of experience with healing prayer). They took turns sharing their thoughts on various aspects of the Kingdom of God and healing prayer. Their presentations were excellent. The bulk of this post is a summary of their teaching.
I agreed with most of what they taught. I guess I was on board with about 90%, but found myself questioning or wondering about a few things. More on these questions in a later post.
The Kingdom of God
They spoke at length about the Kingdom of God, a topic I have written a lot about in this blog. The Kingdom of God is here, right now. While it might be within us (and Jesus says it is), it is primarily all around us. It is a tangible, real sphere of God’s activity and authority that we can choose to walk and live in (and we do need to choose). The Kingdom of God is Jesus, and Jesus, through the cross, is the door into the Kingdom. We have the great privilege of living with Jesus in the Kingdom of God (also called by Jesus the Kingdom of Heaven) in intimate friendship. We also have the privilege of partnering with Jesus to release the Kingdom of God into the kingdom of the world (my words). I am the minority partner. Jesus is the majority partner. It is not 50/50. But still, I am a partner; I have a role to play.
This relationship between me and Jesus (and between me and you, for that matter) in the Kingdom of God is amazing – it is the relationship that God had with Adam in the Garden of Eden before the fall, only better. We have the indwelling Holy Spirit as we live in the Kingdom. We have been restored back to the pre-fall intimacy with God and with each other as we live in the Kingdom, although not yet perfected (the now/not yet of the Kingdom). This is part of God’s Grand Plan revealed throughout the Bible – the restoration of God’s entire Creation, including you and me. God is doing this for His Glory. His Glory and His restorative work are related – one brings about the other. As we partner with God to restore Creation, we are glorifying Him and giving Him the glory for all that He is doing.
A few words about the Gospel and salvation. I took a lot of notes at the retreat, but I also tried to listen without the distraction of note taking. So, these words might not be exactly what Mike said; they might be partly what I was thinking, but I believe he would directionally agree with them. The Gospel, the Good News, is not just “If I have faith in Jesus, I will go to heaven (and not hell) when I die”, as many Christians believe. It is that, but more importantly the Gospel is that heaven has broken into the world and, because of the Cross, I have the right and privilege of entering heaven, the Kingdom of God, right now. This is not the whole Gospel – the whole Gospel involves all of God’s redemptive and restorative work throughout history. But the Kingdom of God is a major part of the Gospel. That is why Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the Gospel” (Mark 1: 15) and “I must go and preach the Gospel of the Kingdom of God to the other towns also because that is why I was sent” (Luke 4: 43). Later Jesus says, “If I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matthew 12: 28). It is here, now.
There is power in these words. For one thing, God cares about my life now. He does not want me to be a broken, half-hearted man, enslaved to the world. He wants me to be free, healed, and whole today, not just when I die. He wants me have Kingdom life. For another thing, God has work for me to do here in this place, work I cannot do if I am not a Kingdom man living a Kingdom life. I cannot partner with God if my life is still being lived in the kingdom of self, where I set myself up as king. As strange as its sounds to some, the sovereign God has chosen to use me (and you).
This idea of life in the Kingdom of God vs. life in the kingdom of self ties in with salvation. Most Christians would define salvation as “if I believe in Jesus, when I die I will go to Heaven’. These are the same words most Christians use for the Gospel. To the church today, especially in the West, the Gospel has become the ‘Gospel of Salvation’ or as Dallas Willard says the ‘Gospel of Sin Management’. That is not what Jesus preached. Salvation (rooted in the Greek word Sozo meaning ‘to be healed and made whole’) is the act of entering into and living in the Kingdom of God now. When Jesus preached about the difficulty of the rich man entering the Kingdom of Heaven, and the disciples said “then who can be saved”, Scripture is making the point that “being saved’ is synonymous with entering the Kingdom of God (Matthew 19: 23-25). We are saved now, as we live in the Kingdom, and that salvation lasts for eternity. But it begins now. We are set free, healed and made whole, and saved from the depredations of the enemy in the Kingdom of God (not fully, of course. That will come later when Jesus returns) when we live in God’s Kingdom under the authority and protection of the King, who is Jesus.
But as I have said before in this blog, we can embrace the Gospel of Salvation, claiming Jesus as savior, and still choose to live in the kingdom of self.
The Gospel is, in part, the good news that the Kingdom of God is here, now, and I have the right to enter into the Kingdom. Salvation occurs when I enter into the Kingdom of God and live there in intimate friendship with Jesus. These words are not just academic theology. They express a true, authentic, and life-changing reality that is available to all who profess Jesus as Lord and Savior and strive to live out this reality day-to-day; or do their best to live out these truths – none of us can do this completely or perfectly. Part of the Gospel or good news, is that when we have decided for Jesus (so to speak) we have to ‘work out our salvation’ (to me this means continually repenting of the places in our hearts where we still live in the kingdom of self – a life-long but necessary process) but not on our own. As Paul says in this famous passage in Philippians 2: 12, 13 “Not in your own strength for it is God Who is all the while effectually at work in you, energizing and creating in you the power and desire, both to will and to work for His good pleasure and satisfaction and delight” (Amp bible). Add to this good news the gift of repentance, and you have great news. Hallelujah!
All of this – the Gospel of the Kingdom of God and salvation now – fundamentally changes the way we think about, live with, and pour out Jesus into the world around us. It not only changes us, but also puts us in a place where God can use us to restore His creation. It is life changing and it is world changing. And it is different from the ‘Gospel of Salvation’ which primarily focuses on the good news that one day we will make it into heaven, and therefore does not emphasize the importance of not living in the kingdom of self now. And a major part of life in the Kingdom of God today is healing.
Healing
Mike and Helen spent quite a bit of time talking about healing – spiritual, emotional, and physical – although many of their examples were focused on physical healing. Their approach to healing is very simple. First, it is not primarily about healing; it is about the Kingdom of God. Healing is one facet of the Kingdom. We, the believers, are called to display the glory of God to the world and healing is one aspect of His character. Here’s a thought – am I displaying God and His glory to the world if I am angry, bitter, resentful, jealous, unforgiving, judgmental, or fearful? Am I telling this world “this is what God looks like?”. God is good, merciful, full of compassion, and His heart is to heal.
Healing will occur within the atmosphere of the Kingdom: love, joy, peace, and freedom. Is that the atmosphere we are walking in? We are not just working for Jesus; we are working with Jesus. We are to have a oneness with Him – after all, He is within us. This means we always have our eyes on the cross, walking with a spirit of humility. When we take our eyes off of the cross and Jesus, the enemy wins.
When we pray for healing Mike and Helen taught us to approach God with thanksgiving. We tell Him about the problem, but we don’t presume to tell Him what to do. (And we don’t ask God for anything. This was a major point for Mike. In his mind, when we ask God for something we are attempting to bring Him down to our level. In effect, to manipulate God). Then with thanksgiving we proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. We give God room to work or, as Mike says, to manifest. We proclaim, He heals. We are working in partnership with God – we make the space for God to manifest rooted in our trust in Him. Of course, this trust requires that we spend a lot of time in His presence. How can I trust someone I don’t know? I must dwell in His presence daily.
As Mike practices healing, it is relatively simple: With thanksgiving I proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, God does the healing. I don’t concentrate on the healing, God does that. My work is trust, proclaim, and keep my eyes on Him and His cross.
We should not measure Kingdom success by the number of people healed but by the pleasure it generates in Heaven. Everything we do as Kingdom men and women, whether it is feeding the poor, housing the homeless, setting the captives free, healing the sick and broken hearted, or loving our neighbors must be restorative (that is, creating space and the opportunity for God to restore people back to the Kingdom and Kingdom life) and must point directly to Jesus and the cross. Whatever we do, especially in ministry, must demonstrate the glory of God and glorify God. It is not enough to say “we are doing it in the name of Jesus”. It must be Jesus (in us) who does it.
I think that this final thought is at the heart of what Mike and Helen were sharing. If we only engage the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit through our mind, if we only know Them intellectually through good teaching and preaching, the Church (and my church) will continue to be fractured, splintered, and largely ineffective in the things of the Kingdom. Not that strong teaching and preaching are bad. We need both, rooted in Scripture and the Holy Spirit and speaking the truth of the cross and Gospel. But we need to meet Them experientially. We need to see God manifested in signs, wonders, and miracles. Not for the sake of these. They are beside the point, but still necessary. We need daily to meet the living God in His glory, power, compassion, and goodness to be a united Body, both willing and able to function as His conduit and His partner releasing living water into the world; standing in awe and wonder at His love, sacrifice, and power. We can agree to disagree on theology (up to a point), but we will all fall down and worship the living God together when we see Him heal the sick, cast out demons, raise the dead, and calm the raging sea. These are things we cannot argue about. Compared to these real manifestations of God and His Presence, our theological, intellectual differences seem small and even largely irrelevant. In the presence of these mighty works of God we will stand united with one another and the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as together we take on the challenge of releasing the Kingdom of God into the kingdom of the world. Paul said it well “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power” (1 Corinthians 2: 4, 5).
Www.simplyhealing.org/audio/llangasty/talk2.mp3
This is a link to all (I think) of the talks that Mike and Helen gave at the retreat. It begins with talk 2 (which might have been the first talk. I am not sure) and covers all the talks (I think – I haven’t listened to all of them) we heard over the week. The first talk (talk 2) is about the Fall and the Garden of Eden. To hear talk 3 go to the www. address and just change the number 2 to the number 3 (select only ‘2’), click and a new address will show up with talk 3. Click on that and the next talk will pop up. Mike has given all of us permission to share these talks with our Christian friends.