Faith and Healing

So yesterday whilst swimming I was listening to Joni Eareckson Tada's book 'A Place of Healing'.  I have only listened to a small amount of it so far so can't really comment much about it.  For those of you who don't know when Joni was 17 she dove into some shallow water and broke her neck leaving her paralysed from the neck down.  Recently she has developed chronic pain as well.  She is a truly inspirational and inspiring women. 

In the introduction to her book she talks about how she regularly gets told that God wants to heal her she just needs more faith.  She was talking about a particular incidence when a man who had heard about her, met her. He wanted to see her healed and asked her if it could be sin that was standing in the way of her being healed.  To back himself up he read to Joni Luke 5:18-19 (Some men came carrying a paralysed man on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus.)  He then reminded Joni that the man was healed and told her she could be too if she would only confess her sins and have the faith to believe it.  Joni knew that she had no sin she hadn't dealt with and she knew that she had a clean slate before God.

She told the man that she really didn't think it was a matter of faith but to him it just didn't add up - as a Christian who has faith and believes and whose sin has been forgiven didn't God want her well, want to heal her?  He told Joni that it must be a lack of faith - she was still in her wheelchair after all these years!  Joni asked the man to open his bible up again to that same passage.  Now in Luke 5:20 it says"When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.”  When Jesus saw their faith - the faith of the paralysed man's four friends.  She simply said to him 'The paralysed man didn't have to do anything it was down to his four friends.  The pressure's off me, but on you!'

I loved this idea of a way to answer people when I get into awkward conversation's about faith and healing ect.  I can just flip the idea and when they are telling me I need more faith I can turn around and say 'Where's your faith?'