Get up, Tabitha!

“Get up, Tabitha!” Acts 9:40

Ever since my mom got sick, I had this desire that God would give me the gift of healing. Like anything in life, I have found that sometimes one is born with it or one has to practice, practice, practice. I started embellishing my prayer journal every day in 2006. I started cutting up a magazine and pasting pictures and words on my journal to illustrate a bible verse. Then I started to make stick figures, painted faces, and now I trace magazine pictures and paint on my Bible. It’s a journey and God is there all the time honoring whatever effort we make. I believe the same is true with the gift of healing. 

In the 9th chapter of Acts, we read about the fledgling Christian communities in Judea, Galilee and Samaria.  Peter visited the new followers of Christ to encourage them and I can imagine that many sick were brought to him. In Lydda, he healed a paralyzed man named Aeneas who had been confined to his bed for 8 years. In Joppa, he prayed over a dead woman named Tabitha, and she opened her eyes. 

I do believe that like Peter we have a mission to heal the sick. After all Jesus said to His disciples, “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.” Was He only commissioning the Twelve? Then why did He say in John 14:12-14, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father…If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.”

If we believe that God doesn’t hear our feeble prayers, we will not attempt to pray over anyone who is sick. But if we persist in praying over anyone sick who comes our way, whether they get well or not, God will meet us where we are. 

In the story of the persistent widow in Luke 18, Jesus teaches that we need persistent faith, faith that won’t give up even if the last person we prayed for died. We need the faith God will gift us with if we press in and on with God, faith that believes God’s Word and expects Him to act. Practice, practice, practice!