Tag: Nathaniel Johnson

The Lord Who Heals

b74f1d7b6164ca85860f0639b5f46152

Number 19

How many devotions have you ever read about a chapter in Numbers? I know I haven’t read hardly any at all, so I’m excited to be writing one for all of you to enjoy!

What’s the best way to get healthy? Trick question! Don’t get sick in the first place. This might seem obvious to us. We’ve been raised knowing that sickness and disease are caused by tiny germs that we can’t even see. Germs can be transmitted through air, water, food or surfaces. Though it’s common knowledge to us, nobody thought this was possible until about 500 years ago and wasn’t commonly accepted until just over 100 years ago through the work of Louis Pasteur. (If you haven’t heard of Pasteur before, try checking your milk carton for his name.) Now we know that if you want to prevent sickness, all you need to do is wash your hands frequently. Doctors didn’t even start washing their hands until 1847!

Even though the knowledge of germs is very new in world history, Moses, who was living 3000 years before germs were discovered, seemed to know some good ways to prevent disease. In verse 11, we see that touching a dead body makes you unclean. Maybe that law is a little too obvious. Touching a dead body is obviously going to make you unclean. But if you go further down the chapter, he says that even if you are near someone who dies, you are unclean. How could Moses have possibly known that? The answer is simple; God gave Moses knowledge that surpassed the understanding of humans. To us, we can think of how a person who just died might have a disease that we could catch, but the ancient Israelites would have had no idea that diseases can be passed on through the air. Therefore, Moses said that any open container (vs 15) is unclean. Germs could have contaminated the contents of the jar.

I think you all get the point. God gave laws specifically to prevent us from getting sick. And in a way, that is a form of healing. God says in Exodus 15:26, “If you will listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in his sight, obeying his commands and keeping all his decrees, then I will not make you suffer any of the diseases I sent on the Egyptians; for I am the Lord who heals you.” Prevention of disease is a direct consequence of following God’s laws. He created the world and he knows better than any man how to keep us healthy.

To receive the healing of prevention, all we have to do is look to modern hygiene, the same practices that line up with the laws that God gave over 3000 years ago. God is the God of science and nature. He gave us our minds to be able to reason and learn. Because their teachings line up with the Old Testament laws, we should look to the doctors that God gave us for the best health practices. Brush your teeth, wash your hands, shower regularly, don’t touch dead animals, watch your diet, exercise regularly and commit yourself to only one spouse.

-Nathaniel Johnson

 

Devoured by a Lion

1 Peter 5 8

1 Peter 5

So far this week, we have looked at the physical healing of a blind man and the mental healing of a demon possessed man. Today we’re going to look at emotional healing.

Let’s start by looking at verse 8. It says that the Devil, our enemy, is hunting for someone to devour. How many of you have ever felt like you’ve been devoured? I’m sure none of you have ever been eaten by a lion, but I don’t think that’s what this verse is talking about. This verse is talking about being devoured by the world, by our obligations, by our worries. I know I have felt absolutely overwhelmed by my school work, pressures from my friend groups and parents. If you want to talk about being overwhelmed, just look at Jesus’ life.

In verse 5 it mentions the sufferings of Jesus. We know that Jesus had the burdens of the entire world placed on him. That puts our problems into perspective a little, doesn’t it? While we worry about who we’re going to eat lunch with tomorrow, He was worrying about being betrayed by one of his closest friends. While we worry if we’ll be able to play on our school’s basketball team, He was worrying about being sentenced to death by the world that he was supposed to save.

I don’t draw attention to this to diminish our feelings, but it is important to put things in a proper context and to humble ourselves. In verse 6, it says that we need to humble ourselves so that we can be exalted at the proper time. Sometimes it feels like we are being devoured for so long without receiving any help from our God. We think that no one knows how much we are suffering under the stress of our worries and we doubt that God cares. But God does care, and you are not alone. We need to be firm in our faith that God will heal all of us of our emotional pain (vs 9).

Here’s the beautiful part of this chapter: it feels like we must wait forever to receive emotional healing, but God promises us right here in verse 10 that He will personally restore, establish, strengthen and support us after we have suffered. He will heal us.

Today I’m going to leave you with some additional verses. Just read them and soak in all they promise.

Revelation 21:4

Psalm 147:3

John 14:27

Psalm 34:17-20

Matthew 11:28

Psalm 34:19

 

-Nathaniel Johnson

Another Kind of Healing – When Pigs Fly

Mark 5:1-19

(But no one is stopping you from reading the whole chapter)

How many of you have ever seen a scary movie? I don’t recommend them. Being scared is not fun, but sometimes we can’t help being scared. Today we’re going to talk about something scary, but fear not! This devotion has a happy ending.

In this segment of Mark, we see Jesus healing another man, but this time, he is casting out demons. This wasn’t an ordinary casting out of demons either. This man that Jesus encountered had an unclean spirit that consisted of thousands of demons (5:9).  The man had been so out of his right mind that he was cast out of normal society and forced to live in a cave where people had tried to chain him up, but not even chains could hold this man down. He would scream and cut himself day and night (5:5). This man is clearly not okay. Yet Jesus still let the man seek him out.

Notice how Jesus is being approached by a man that can literally break chains, but he doesn’t seem to be worried. That is exactly how we should feel knowing that we have the God of Jesus on our side, too. The demons in this man fear Jesus and respect his authority. It says in verse 13 that Jesus “gave them permission.” They obey Jesus! Now the next part of the story is a little weird, but it is very important. The demons went into a herd of pigs and subsequently flew off a cliff. Okay, maybe they didn’t fly, but it’s still an odd thing for pigs to do.

This story is a little different from the story of the blind man that we looked at yesterday. The man who was healed in this story didn’t have a physical impairment; he was healed of a sickness of the mind. These kinds of sicknesses can be even scarier than the kind that affect us physically. One such mental sickness that has become very prominent lately is depression. I know firsthand just how many people suffer from depression these days, especially teenagers, so I want to share with you the story of when I saw pigs fly.

When I was younger, I had a close friend who suffered from severe depression and harmed herself in ways like the man that Jesus healed. Many times we think that self-harm is unique to our generation but this story really says otherwise. This was a really painful experience for me just by knowing that my friend was going through this. I urged my friend to talk to a trusted adult and to see a doctor because I knew that I was not qualified to counsel on this subject. However, there was one way that I was able to help. I offered my prayers. Prayer became a constant for me in this period of my life. I wanted nothing more than to see my friend freed of this demon, her depression. One day, I wanted to pray with my friend, so we went out to a park and sat together praying for hours. I remember my prayer: “God, I know that you have the power to cast out demons. Cast out this demon.” After repeating this many times, my friend looked up and I could see a difference in her eyes. Pigs flew, and her depression has never bothered her since then.

I don’t know whether an actual demon was involved in this story, but depression certainly acts like a demon, taking over your thoughts and actions. Whatever the cause of depression may be, our God is bigger and more powerful and there isn’t anything in this world that disobeys His command.

Don’t forget the ending of the story in Mark. After the man was healed, he wanted to follow Jesus, but he was turned down. Jesus told the man to go back to his family and testify to them. This is just like what we saw in John yesterday. After you are healed, Jesus wants you to make sure that the people you know can see that you really were healed.

Tomorrow I am going to go into the role that modern medicine plays into the healing that we can receive from God.
-Nathaniel Johnson

 

When Sickness is an Opportunity

john 9 3

John 9

There is so much information in this chapter that could make good devotions that it’s almost hard to focus just on the healing! In this chapter, we get to follow the story of a man born without sight. It goes like this: the man is blind, Jesus restores his sight, the man testifies about the healing he received, the man is cast out by the Pharisees and the man is accepted by Jesus.

First, the man is blind. It might be easier to focus on the spiritual blindness that Jesus talks about in verse 41, but I really want to focus on the physical blindness of this man. The most important thing to note in this passage is that Jesus says “neither this man nor his parents sinned” (9:3). Jesus doesn’t mean that the man has never sinned, but he does mean that the man did nothing to deserve his blindness. I firmly believe that this applies to us as well. Whenever we get sick, whenever we know someone who gets cancer or becomes paralyzed, this is not a punishment from God. We didn’t do anything to earn our ailments. That is just the world that we live in; people get sick. But in the same way that sin exists so that God can show us grace (Romans 5:21), sickness is an opportunity for God to show his power. Yet that still doesn’t make sickness a good thing (Romans 6). In fact, sickness is terrible.

Once we have accepted that sickness is not our fault, we need to seek healing. This can mean many things, but I want to start by telling a story. A pastor that I know has been visiting hospitals and praying for the sick for many years. On one visit, he was with a woman who had lost her sight as a side effect of another sickness. He prayed with her and asked that God restore her sight. She remained blind. He prayed for her again yet she remained blind. The woman asked him to pray one more time. He did. She still couldn’t see. As he left, and he didn’t learn this until a time later, the woman saw his back as he walked out of the doorway. God had restored her eyesight.

I tell you this because I see a command in John 6. After the man is healed, he tells everyone that he knows how he was healed by Jesus. In the same way, I think we have a responsibility to share about the healing that God brings about in our own lives. How can God’s works be displayed (6:3) if we don’t talk about them with everyone we meet?

Don’t forget that after the man testifies, he is rejected by some of the religious community. It can be hard to believe someone when they claim a miracle has happened, especially when we don’t experience it ourselves. I think we could all use a little more faith in our lives sometimes. Don’t let blindness come in between you and the great works of God.

The fact that the man is accepted by Jesus afterwards just points a good ending to the story. The man had already received the sight that he had been missing his whole life; it would be such a shame if he lost his faith immediately afterward because of the disbelief of the religious community.

 

Here are your main takeaways:

Sickness isn’t earned.

Prayer is powerful even today.

Tell everyone of the healing that you experience.

Have faith in your God’s works.

Know that Jesus is there to accept you when you are turned away because of your faith.

 

-Nathaniel Johnson

 

Healing!

matthew 11 5

The blind see, the lame man walks

The lepers spots are healed

The deaf hear and the dead are raised

And the poor are told the good news

Matthew 11:5 (Nathaniels mix and match from HCSB, NIV and NASB)

This week we will look at a few places where healing takes place in the Bible and how we can have healing in our own lives. Sometimes when we read stories about Jesus making the blind man see or the lame man walk, we feel that we are so far removed from that time. We feel that this kind of miraculous healing is reserved for the elect or for those of a different time. This week I am going to challenge that feeling and try to bring to light the healing that is available to us in this era.

 

Nathaniel Johnson

 

 

 

How to Change: Pray!

Saturday, October 7, 2017

Conclusion and Recap

We started the week with a memory verse: 2 Corinthians 5:17. I’ve been trying to show why this verse, to me, is so closely tied with prayer. So let’s go over everything from earlier this week and try to tie it all together.

2 Corinthians 5-17

We started by talking about why we need to pray. The main reason I pointed out is that Jesus explicitly commands it. According to our verse in 2 Corinthians, if we are doing what Jesus said to do, then we will become a new creation, leaving our old selves behind.

 

Then we moved on to talking about what we should do with our bodies when we pray. This was a little different because the Bible doesn’t tell us how we should or shouldn’t pray, although it does give us some examples. Jesus would pray alone, some people prayed in front of others, some prayed in their hearts and some others prayed kneeling. Find the way that you can have the most productive prayer time and follow through with it.

 

On a similar note, we talked about what things we should pray for and what our words should sound like. Our prayers should consist of praises (things we love about God), petitions (things we want and need from God) and Repentance (asking for forgiveness and pledging to turn from our error filled ways). It’s important to hit all three categories and not exclude one because this is how Jesus himself taught us how to pray. We also need to be sure to pray, not to be heard (like the hypocrites who babble) because God already knows all of your prayers, but rather to make these prayers known to yourself.

 

Making the prayers known to yourself is what I claimed the entire purpose of prayer is. When we prayer, it’s not like God thinks “Oh, so that’s what Nathaniel needs from me!” No. He already knows what I need. We pray to remind ourselves of the greatness of God, to change ourselves and also to be able to turn from our sin. This is how the change comes about; it is how we become a new creation.

 

And finally, I tried to tackle a very big, very difficult question: Why do some prayers go unanswered? My thoughts on this are that the way God set up the world to work many years ago was to be able to function without his direct influence. He created humans with the capacity to learn and to love and he created a universe that makes sense and follows logical rules. I believe that he very rarely chooses to intervene and grant miracles to those who pray for them. Instead, he gave us, his servants, the tools to carry out his will. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes we fail.

 

All of this together wraps up my thoughts on prayers. Maybe you have additional thoughts or even different opinions. That’s great! Just keep studying and looking to Jesus, because when we are in him, we are a new creation.

-Nathaniel Johnson

 

(Editor’s Note: We apologize for the picture that was included on Sunday.  It gave an incorrect reference for the verse.  Today’s is accurate.  Thank you for reading!)

What Happens When We Pray?

Thursday, October 5, 2017

psalm 145 18

We know that God already knows our thoughts and prayers before we ever lift them up to him (Matthew 6:8), so why do we still need to pray? Yesterday, I promised you an answer to this question and today I will do my best to provide you with one.
I first want to start with a story from when I was in elementary school. Back in those days, I was too young to drive, so I would use my bike to get around. For my birthday one year, I got the coolest green bike from my parents. I loved that thing and would ride it up and down my street or take it to my friend’s house. Then one day while I was at my friend’s house, my green bike was stolen out of his driveway. After this happened, I prayed for weeks that God would give me a new bike. Firstly, I don’t know what I expected God to do. Did I expect a new bike to show up in my garage overnight? Did I expect him to take control of my parents and have them go and buy a new bike?  Regardless, what ended up happening was not what I asked for. Instead of getting a new bike, I had a change of heart.

 

After days of praying about this, I realized that what I was praying for really was not necessary. So what does prayer do? God works through prayer to change us. Whenever we pray in Jesus’ name, we are actively being made into new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17). Now there are certainly special cases where God physically interacts with the world to answer our prayers. This has a special name: miracles. I absolutely believe that God has the power to grant any kind of miracle, but I also believe that he rarely chooses to do so. He is our Father that knows what is best for us (Matthew 6:30), and will not neglect us. However, most of our prayers will be a medium for God to work in our own hearts and minds to change us. This is why we must commit ourselves to constant prayer. On the one hand, if we have important issues on our mind and in our prayers at all times, then our actions will start to reflect those things and through our actions, God can answer our prayers. On the other hand, if we spend our time praying for frivolous things, we will be able to realize that by the amount of time we spend thinking and praying about it.

 

This of course leads to one more very difficult question: if God knows what we need and won’t neglect us, than why do some of our prayers, especially those for healing, go unanswered? We will dive into that topic tomorrow. But for today, focus on prayer and being made into a new creation.

 

-Nathaniel Johnson

How to Pray: Words

Wednesday October 4th, 2017

Lord's Prayer

Unlike when we discussed the posture you should have when you pray, the Bible actually has a lot to say about what words you should use when you pray. Jesus gives a great lesson on prayer in Matthew 6:5-15. I want to start by looking at what the Lord’s Prayer can show us.

We can split the topics of prayer into three categories:

  1. Praises (Matt 6:9)
  2. Petitions (Matt 6:11)
  3. Repentance (Matt 6:12-13)

You might notice that this is one category more than we usually talk about when we pray at church. Jesus himself says that we need to pray for repentance, so make sure you don’t forget to add this to your prayers. Praises and petitions are a lot more familiar to most of us, though. When we praise, we thank God for who he is and what he has done and petitions are when we ask God to provide for us.

Another thing Jesus says is to not babble (Matthew 6:7). Repeating yourself does not make yourself heard. Keep your prayers to the point. Especially when you are praying for a group of people. You don’t need to make your prayer sound special and eloquent. God already knows what needs to be said, so you don’t need to repeat yourself. This is not to say that you shouldn’t continue to pray for something.  If something is on your heart, you should pray for it continuously. In my opinion however, the reason for this is not so that God will be more likely to consider your prayers. More on that tomorrow.

Here a few interesting things to note. Discussion can be a form of prayer. In Luke 9:18, Jesus is praying and talking to his disciples. I believe that when we discuss our prayers with each other, we are participating in a form of prayer. Another form of prayer is music. We can praise God in our songs or we can ask for His help; we can even repent through song.

Jesus gives a few more commands regarding how we should pray in Matthew 6.  For one, he says that we should pray in private. But he also says that God already knows what we need before we ask him (Matthew 6:8), so why do we need to make these prayers in private? You’ll have to come back tomorrow to hear the answer to that one, but I’ll give you a hint now. It has to do with our memory verse: being changed.

-Nathaniel Johnson

 

How to Pray: Posture

Tuesday, October 2nd, 2017

PRAY!

Today we finally get into how we should go about praying. I’m sure we’ve all learned different ways of prayer; some of us grew up bowing our heads and folding our hands or perhaps kneeling to pray. For some people, what we do when we pray changes depending on where we are or who we are with. Maybe you hold hands when you pray before a meal. When a group is preparing to leave on a mission, it is common for a church to put their hands on them as they pray.

But what does the Bible say we should do?

As it turns out, there is no single way that the Bible tells us to pray. We can find some examples of how people in the Bible prayed, however. In Genesis 24:45, it says that Rebekah prayed in her heart. If you read this with the understanding that ancient Egyptians (and by implication, the Israelites) believed that the heart was the center of thought and knowledge, the verse says that Rebekah prayed in her mind. So silent prayers are absolutely fine! Matthew 6:5 speaks of praying while standing and in Luke 22:41, Jesus prays while kneeling. If it’s good enough for Jesus, it is good enough for me.

Personally, I have never understood the practice of closing your eyes and bowing your head. If prayer is a conversation with God, then I want to stand tall and meet his eyes, as I would for any person that I respect. If I were to meet the President of the United States, I would stand, shake his hand and maintain solid eye contact. For me, this is the highest form of respect in our culture. For me, when I close my eyes, I look at myself. How can I have a conversation if I’m only thinking about myself? At that point it is a monologue and no longer a prayer.

The long and short of prayer posture is: it all comes down to you! Pray in such a way that you can keep your focus on the prayer. If closing your eyes causes your mind to wander, than open your eyes. If having your eyes open causes you to get distracted by what you see, then shut your eyes. Maybe some of us need to try praying in a different way than we have before. After all, anyone who is in Christ should be a new creation!

-Nathaniel Johnson

Why Should We Pray?

Monday, October 2, 2017

Luke 18-1

I don’t want to spend any time talking about what prayer is or how we should go about it before I even convince you that we should be praying.

So why should we pray?

I think this is a pretty easy question to answer. Jesus commands it. There are a few verses that explicitly command prayer: Matthew 6:5-15, Matthew 26:41, Ephesians 6:18 and Luke 18:1. I want to look a little closer at the verse in Luke today.

”Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up” (Luke 18:1).  If we strive to be disciples of Jesus, then we should always pray. Being a disciple is essential to being “in Jesus,” just like our memory verse says. If we commit ourselves to constant prayer, than we can become a new creation.

Seems like a pretty easy step right? All we have to do is pray! Tomorrow we’ll talk about what that looks like.

-Nathaniel Johnson