What Does the Bible Say about Jesus and Healing?

The same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead.

Are you surprised that so few Christians ever refer to Jesus as "The Great Physician"? Jesus’ role as "physician/Healer" is so pervasive in his biographies and so essential to Jesus’ mission that he cannot be understood apart from it. The crowd instinctively saw Jesus as a"physician, and It’s a title he clearly deserves. One has only to skim through the biographies of Jesus to note the remarkable attention he gave to healing the sick. 

He was a healer whose was consumed with encounters with people who were sick, blind, lame, deaf, leprous, paralyzed or mentally ill. Each of the biographies portrays Jesus in this way. 

We cannot read very far in any of the Four Gospels before we hear about healing. What did Jesus heal? Turn to Luke 4 and find that He quoted Isaiah 61 and then claimed it was written about Himself. 

Go to our web to get a book about healing the whole person. I call it The Healing Release of the Holy Spirit.

Dealing with Sin and Trespasses

Good theology is essential to good health individually and corporately. Good interpersonal skills are also essential to health and peace and power. Theology forms the basis of our beliefs about life and God. Good skills prove that we are living according to our beliefs. 

Speaking the truth about God and His Word is essential in life and church. Living that life is evidence that it works. To proclaim something as truth but deliver a totally different product is called FRAUD. Are teachers and preachers committing fraud at times? 

Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted. 2 Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. 3 If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves. 4 Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else, 5 for each one should carry their own load. 6 Nevertheless, the one who receives instruction in the word should share all good things with their instructor.

Galatians 6

This passage in Galatians is very important to growth and healthy living for us Christians. It requires good theology and good interpersonal skills. Help me unpack it and think about what it requires us to do.

See my books The Healing Release of the Holy Spirit and Hope and Change for Humpty Dumpty for guidance.

Help Us Win the Cincinnati Innovates Contest

I hope you already know about our entry into The Cincinnati Innovates Contest to see what innovative product will be chosen as the best new initiative in our area in 2015!

Vote Here for us to win at Patient Home Advantage, L3C, registered as Family Resource Builder!

While on their web page, watch our professionally produced 90 Second Video done by Bob Brubaker. It is terrific.

We have developed a tremendously innovative process and tool set designed to allow Caregivers to get deeply involved in assessing and designing the treatment for their loved ones.
It can change Health Care by Empowering Patients, Families and Care Givers who are largely ignored today.

Take a look at our web page at frb30.com 

With your support we will stay in front of an aggressive group of innovations! Help us please!

Gary Sweeten

Does Your Church Welcome Difficult People?

With the current firestorm in America over sex, marriage and faith, it seems a good time to ask a question about change. Does your church go beyond morality to transformation? Would you have welcomed a guy by the name of Saul into your fellowship when you knew he was a terrorist and killer with blood on his hands?

Imagine the scene. James, the Chief Elder of the House Churches in Jerusalem, came to the secret meeting place of the Gathering of Elders with a request. It went something like this.

Well, Brothers and Sisters, things are going well in some regards ever since Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to dwell with us and in us on the Day of Pentecost. It seems that in the ten years since that each house group has been effective in reaching our families and friends with the good news. 

Several of you are multiplying and separating so we can accommodate more people into our homes for The Lord's Supper and prayers. We seem to be safe from the Romans and the Pharisees that caused us so much trouble. 

I recently received a letter from our Brothers and Sisters up in Damascus. One of the former dwellers in Jerusalem has come to faith in the Risen Lord and wants to return here to visit with us. Which of you would be able to take this Brother in and care for him? 

After some discussion it comes out that the "Brother" is Saul of Tarsus, the terrorist and persecutor of so many martyrs. What kid of discussion would you imagine the Elders would have about inviting Saul to their homes and secret Elder meetings? 

Is your church a welcoming community?

Christians Were Scared of Counseling

                     
                       A Christian Ministry Building a New Apartment 

When we began our new clinic we thought naively that Pastors and Christian leaders would welcome us with open arms. Was I ever surprised to discover that many did not believe in Counseling because, in their perception, "It was developed by ungodly people and we can consume and use things that are only developed by godly people.

Even worse, since I had been doing Pastoral Care at a large church, I "Had left the church to selfishly make money with secular ideas".  One of my Pastor friends asked me, "Gary, now that you have left the church do you still believe in God?" I said, "More than ever!"

Let's do a thought study now: Are Christians commanded to never buy or use anything created by ungodly people?

Are all Christians commanded to work only in churches?

Can a person that works in a secular job still believe in Jesus?

Do you think all Counseling is heresy?

How did the Early Church grow from 12 Disciples to 35 Million Disciples in about 300 years when none of them "Worked in a church structure? Every one of them was a volunteer or Lay Christian. 

Buy my books and see if I am a heretic! 

Multiplying Ministers and Ministries

         Leigh Fopma with the Christian Discipleship Folders


I was able to chat last night with several long time friends and colleagues at the 25th Anniversary Party for Life Way Counseling Centers. Maurie and Lorraine Loomans drove out to the party and we were able to reminisce about the years we spent in ministry at CHPC.

Lorraine was one of our most faithful and effective Peer Helpers a the Teleios Center. She was often partnered with Rev Paul Cocklin, Pastor of the College Hill UMC and they handled many,many "Hot Potatoes" with love and truth!

Maurie was extremely busy and wonderfully gifted as an Elder in Community Ministry, The Monthly Healing Ministry and our Discipleship Ministry that presented most of the equipping workshops around the world. I depended on Maurie to "hear the Spirit speak" when we needed direction or correction.

Hundreds of young people came to Christ through the Community Ministry and thousands received substantial healing at the monthly Healing Services. All of this was the foundation we build Life Way on.

Our goal was to make our church and other churches into "Healing Growth Communities" and our prayer, work and equipping efforts were largely successful because of people like Lorraine and Maurie. 

Peer Power! 

Unleash the Laity!

Ora et Labora

               Karen and me at the Life Way Christmas Party

Consider and think about joy when you encounter trials! The testing of your faith will produce endurance.

Let endurance have its completed and mature effect so you can become mature and complete yourself. James 1:2-3

I was 52 years old when in a comfortable position when I was led to start Life Way. I had dark brown hair and happy at College Hill Presbyterian Church. I loved the people and was treated extremely well by the staff, Elders and members. My stress level was low and I was ready to settle in to several more years of ease in Zion. Then the Holy Spirit intervened and I started a wild new organization. At 52!!!! Crazy, 

Over the years at Life Way we faced so much resistance, so many personal, spiritual, financial and insurance related attacks that my joy has reached unbelievable heights! (Sarcasm!) But we did grow in faith.

As my hair grew white and my resolve failed, we learned how to lean on and trust God plus work like crazy. With the leadership of staff and prayer partners like Steve Griebling we borrowed a slogan: Ora et Labora.

It is the slogan adopted by Franciscan Friars when they went to France to fight diseases and discovered that mosquitoes from the swamps were some of the main culprits. Their slogan, Prayer and Work was perfect for us.

Instead of staff meetings we helped weekly Miracle Meetings because we kept going only if God showed up and we could pay the bills. We prayed, we worked and we marketed ourselves to a skeptical Christian world.

Yes, not only were the agnostics against us, so were many Christians.