Quote:
Originally Posted by Oneness Man
I thought that good old fashion prayer would cure anything. This is getting to be a pill world and that is what is so sad, because all you have to do is to take a pill for any ailment.
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Good old fashioned prayer will do LOTS of things, and then again it WONT do lots of things. For instance "Good old fashioned prayer" will NOT remove your responsibility to use your common sense, even though in areas where the Circumstances are MUCH bigger than you and you are UNABLE to see your way, God WILL send supernatural direction your way.
Good old fashioned prayer will NOT remove your responsibility to go out and WORK to provide your family or even just your own self with the basic neccessities of life though God WILL intervene supernaturally with miraculous provision when you are UNABLE to do so for yourself.
And also Good old fashioned prayer will NOT bring healing to your body when you refuse to use the natural ability and common sense that God gave you to take care of your own health. Two wonderful Bible examples of men of God prescribing the medicinal treatments of their day rather than performing miracles of healing corroborate this.
In the Old Covenant Isaiah did NOT bring healing to Hezekiah through "Good old fashioned prayer" but rather told him to "Put a fig on it"
And in the New, the Apostle Paul who had been used in miraculous healing after miraculous healing did NOT send Timothy a prayer cloth and tell him to lay this on the afflicted area, but rather told him to use his common sense and "Take a little wine for thy stomaches sake and thine OFT infirmities."
The road you are going down with this thinking is absolutely destructive and while worn as a badge of "Faith" by many is really a badge of self righteous ignorance in so many many cases, leading to the orphaning of children, women and/or their babies being lost in childbirth, and great senseless loss of life that the Lord will SURELY require at someones hand!
I personally remember preaching in a church in the central United States. After the evening service the pastor said "Brother come in the office, I need to take care of a few things and then we will go out and eat."
Sooooo, as I am sitting there next to his desk while he is doing the books or something, his WIFE comes in the office (lovely people by the way but in that frame of mind that you seem to be entertaining) and she walks over to me, kind of pulls back her sleeve over her elbow and says "Brother, look at this, what do you think this is?"
I looked at it and saw an ugly blackish mole growing there, oh not even half the size of a dime, maybe a quarter or an eighth.
Her husband is now glancing at the two of us silently. It did not look good, but I also knew they were of that frame of mind that teaches them to do nothing BUT pray about their healing, not to use the common sense that God gave them to do for themselves what they CAN do and leave the UNdoable in Gods hands.
So I said to her as diplomatically as I could, "Well sister, that does NOT look good! Have you had that LOOKED at?"
As quick as a wink her husband jumps in, "Brother we respect your ministry here, but WE trust the Lord and you just pray for Sister ________ 's
healing."
Well I put that all out of my mind, but then several years later had some visitors visiting me, and the pastors wife asked me, Oh, Brother did you hear that sister _____________ passed away?
At first I thought she was referring to an OLDER sister of the same name, but come to find out No, it was the young one, the mother of a seven year old boy!
"Oh my goodness! How???!!!" I asked!
"Well it all started out as a little mole on her elbow, that grew into a tumor and metastisized through out her body...on and on she went. The cancer was in her brain, in her bones, her kidneys...."
All that went through my mind was "This is as close to murder as I have ever been!"
If that woman had gone to a DOCTOR he would have it taken off with a laser and it would have been outpatient work at that! She would almost certainly be with us today! That boy would STILL have his mother! That woman is dead NOT because of the Lord, NOT because of the cancer but because of an *IGNORANT* "Tempting the Lord" kind of interpretation of the wonderful promise of healing provided for at Calvary.
The funny thing is , the Pastor used that as a badge of his "Trusting the Lord" gaining entre even deeper into the group, quickly remarried, and then a short time later HE keels over dead, leaving the boy with neither mother OR father to raise him.
No, good old fashioned prayer does NOT absolve us of doing everything for ourselves that we have the ability to do, working for our daily bread, shopping for our clothes, and using the medicinal means available to us to keep our bodies HEALTHY.
Working is every bit as much trusting the Lord as going to a doctor.
Sorry to be so long, but wanted to share that personal experience with what can only be called a very deceptive UNgodly doctrine that has left a trail of dead men women boys girls and babies in its wake.