Putting Faith into Action

The theme for this week has most definitely been faith, and I'm being given plenty of opportunity to exercise that faith. For one thing, over the last few days I've been asking the Lord to help me build my strength in preparation for chemotherapy tomorrow, and the Lord has answered in a remarkable way. As ever, God never answers in half-measure, for over these last three days I've actually felt the supernatural power of the resurrection in my life. Of course, my faith is not based on feelings, but the feelings are wonderful when they come!

I've also experienced some measurable differences:

1. I've had greater reserves of energy (although I still have to be careful I don't overdo it). I've been taking long walks and, amazingly, even had enough energy to jog for a short while (again, taking it very easy). I cannot tell you what a wonderful feeling it is just to have the energy levels returning, even if they are still only a fraction of what I'm ultimately asking for.

2. I've had a strong appetite. This morning, I had breakfast with Alwyn Wong and even he was amazed at how much I was able to eat! I got through half of a major plate of eggs-over-easy, mushrooms, hash browns and toast (sorry if I got your mouth watering ;-).

3. I've put on approximately 2 kg (about 5 lbs), bringing my weight back to a healthier 68 kg (150 lbs).

Prayer is an extremely practical exercise. James 5:13-16 gives us some basic guidelines on how we should respond to specific situations in life:

"Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective."

With his characteristic turn of phrase, Eugene Peterson rephrases James 5:13-16 in The Message:

"Are you hurting? Pray. Do you feel great? Sing. Are you sick? Call the church leaders together to pray and anoint you with oil in the name of the Master. Believing-prayer will heal you, and Jesus will put you on your feet. And if you've sinned, you'll be forgiven - healed inside and out. Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed. The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with."

Faith is ultimately expressed on two important levels:

• In prayer - asking (Jude 1:20).


• In obedience - doing (James 2:14-26)

Both of these levels of faith have been important for me this last week. In prayer, I've been seeking to flex the spiritual "muscles" of my faith, and in obedience, I've sought to exercise that faith in practical ways.

These two expressions of faith are also reflected in the following two passages of Scripture, which have meant a lot to me today:

1. Faith through prayer (Philippians 4:6-7) - "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus" - In the light of tomorrow's chemotherapy, I've had a measure of anxiety, but over the last few days, this mild apprehension has been replaced by great expectation! I know this is going to be a unique opportunity for the Lord to move in my life, countering the flood of toxins and enabling that supernatural power of his resurrection to truly outwork in my mortal body.

2. Faith through obedience (James 2:17) - "In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead" - My faith, expressed through prayer, also needs to find practical expressions each day - in terms of my attitude to life and obedience to the promptings of God's Spirit. I'm seeking to put "legs" to my prayers of faith through my actions each day.

Just before I share some of the practical steps of faith I'm taking at the moment, I first want to share a couple of stories. Both these stories are examples from my own personal experience of the effectiveness of faith-filled prayer, and they illustrate a little of the background against which my present faith is operating.

Experience #1 - The Attack of Malaria

When I was eighteen, I travelled with my father through the jungles of Thailand and Burma, preaching the Gospel from village to village. The region is known as one of the worst malaria areas in the world, and so we had prayed and asked the Lord for his protection. It was during the rainy season, and for the entire three week period that we were in the remote jungles areas, it never stopped raining. Each evening I would wash my clothes and hang them up to dry, but the next morning they would still be wet and I would have to don them once more. (Three weeks later, when we got back into Maesot, in northern Thailand, my dad and I had to scrub the fungus off our bodies, and get rid of all the lice in our hair).

One day, we had arrived in a new Karen village and were just preparing to eat dinner when I began to feel violently ill. I asked to lie down, but soon I was shaking violently, with a raging fever, exhibiting all the symptoms of a serious bout of malaria. I managed to drag myself to where my dad was talking with the village elders. He immediately said, "I'm going to pray for you."

At the time, I remember that all I wanted to do was lie down again. I can honestly say that I had zero faith. But my father laid his hands on me all the same, and I clearly remember his words: "Lord, we refuse this malaria. I command it right now to leave David's body." After dad finished praying for me, I crawled back under the mosquito net and lay down again. But a couple of minutes passed before I realised that my fever had broken. I had stopped shaking. And a peace had come over my body. And yet even then, my faith was hardly up to par. I remember thinking at the time, "Ah, maybe it's because I just lay down...if I were to stand up, I'd feel sick again!" But it wasn't long before I admitted to myself that I had, in fact, been healed. Feeling somewhat ashamed of my lack of faith, I stood up, joined my father at the dinner table, and ate with the village elders.

My point in sharing this particular experience, I guess, is to emphasise that it wasn't my faith that got me healed. It was my dad's faith. And there is plenty of scriptural precedent to show that the faith of another can result in a sick person receiving healing from God. For example, Matthew 9:2 tells us:

"Some men brought to [Jesus] a paralytic, lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, 'Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.'"

On another occasion, Matthew 15:28 records how a mother's faith resulted in the healing of her daughter:

"Then Jesus answered, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted." And her daughter was healed from that very hour."

I wanted to share this with you to point out that the Lord simply responds to faith - whosoever's faith it may happen to be. Of course, there have been plenty of times when I've exercised faith myself. Here's just one example.

Experience #2 - The Attack of Dysentery

Later, in my mid-twenties, I was ministering among the Lahu tribal villages of northern Thailand. I would often be away from the family for a week or more at a time, living in the villages, eating the local food and drinking the local water. As you would appreciate, this meant I was frequently exposed to contaminated food and water.

The local Lahu dish was a vegetable rice-soup, with very hot chilli. Meat was rarely eaten, except for special occasions such as weddings or when honoured guests came to the village, and even when the Lahu people slaughtered and ate a pig, they themselves would often end up with dysentery for the next few days. So as you would imagine, I tried to avoid eating pork, in particular, when staying in the villages. In fact, I absolutely loved their vegetable rice-soup and preferred it even to the banquet meals. And although I took common sense precautions (drinking only boiled water, for example), I still prayed over the food and believed for the Lord's protection over me, as his servant. In fact, I have very strong faith in the Lord's protection in this way - the result of many, many experiences of healing in this manner.

But I want to share with you just one of these experiences. I had arrived in one remote Lahu village with my team and (to cut a long story very short) we had seen the whole village turn to Christ. The village elder invited us to his home for dinner, and even though I insisted that all I wanted was the ordinary Lahu dish of soupy rice, with boiled vegetables and chilli, the elder would not be dissuaded. He had a pig slaughtered and served a banquet for us. And so, as I began to eat the half-cooked pork (I won't go into a full description), I prayed for the Lord's grace and protection. All was well until we were preparing to leave the village. I remember driving out of the village in our SUV and looking back at the village, rejoicing at how we had seen the Lord bring so many families into the kingdom of God. And then it hit me - almost like a sledgehammer in the stomach - and I knew it was going to be very bad.

Without a moment's hesitation, I looked up to heaven and said, "Father, I'm not going to accept this. I'm your servant. I've asked you for your protection. I know you have promised to heal me and protect me as I serve you in the villages. And so right now, in the name of Jesus, I command this dysentery to leave!"

Instantly, the pain was gone. And it never returned.

These are just two examples of how the prayer of faith has worked in my life. Now here I am again, under different circumstances, but with both kinds of faith in operation:

1. The faith of others, praying for me


2. My own faith towards the Lord

And what a powerful combination these prayers of faith are!

So here are some of the practical steps of faith I'm now regularly taking each day:

1. I'm thanking God ahead of time for his healing. Gratitude is one of the simplest and purest expressions of faith (see my previous post "The Reflex of Gratitude").

2. I'm laying hands on my stomach and praying very specifically a) that the Lord's healing touch be upon me, and b) that the blood supply to the cancer will wither up (cancer cannot survive without its own blood supply).

3. I'm eating, even if I don't feel like it, and at the same time asking the Lord to strengthen me physically and to help me to put on weight.

Hebrews 11:6 says:

"And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him."

Jesus Christ is still "the same yesterday, today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8), and so he therefore still rewards those who earnestly seek him. He responds today to faith just as he did when he walked upon the earth 2000 years ago. And so tomorrow - on January 25, 2006 - I'm going to be taking up the invitation he offered in Matthew 7:7-8 and I will ask him in faith for his special touch of healing and protection as I go through my first course of chemotherapy.