← The Wake-Up Call
The Wake-Up Call
Jesus Healed the Sick; We Can Too
00:19:35
In this episode, Dan Wilt begins with a prayer of consecration, inviting listeners to focus on their spiritual journey with Jesus. He shares personal experiences of praying for healing, recounting moments where he witnessed both gradual and immediate recoveries. Dan emphasizes that the essence of healing is not just about physical restoration but about experiencing God's love. He reflects on the teachings of Dr. Steve Seamands, highlighting the importance of understanding the ministry of healing as an act of love rather than a demonstration of power. Dan encourages listeners to embrace the mystery of healing, acknowledging that while not everyone may experience physical healing, everyone can feel the love and presence of God. Dan further explores the theme of healing by discussing the role of faith and the importance of discernment in prayer. He stresses that healing is a partnership with God, where the focus should be on love and compassion. Dan shares practical advice on how to p...
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Good morning Sower Nation. Today is Sunday, June 7th in the year of our Lord 2026. I'm Dan Wilt and this is your wake up call. Wake up sleeper. Rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. Let's pray our prayer of consecration as we begin today's meeting with Jesus. Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you. And we're praying in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. Well, today's entry is titled Jesus Healed the Sick. We can too. The text is from Matthew 12:15. Hear the word of the Lord. Aware of this, Jesus withdrew from that place. A large crowd followed him and he healed all who were ill. Consider this at the encouragement of one of my earliest kingdom mentors, I believe I've prayed for healing of the heart, the mind or the body for an estimated 1,000 plus people since I've been a follower of Jesus. In the few cases where I've actually seen a physical healing, it was marked by one overriding emotion for both, of joy. While not all my prayers have resulted in a clear healing, a few that did bring me joy whenever I think of them. Once, two friends and I prayed for a man who was blind in one eye. After we prayed for him, his sight slowly began to return. Now, in contrast to that, another time we prayed for a woman with stomach cancer, which is a very different type of illness. And that week the doctor said it was completely gone. So one was a slow beginning of healing. Another was what seemed to be a complete healing moment. In each case, it was obvious that the person previously trapped in the isolation and despair that suffering causes felt known, seen, loved by God. I don't believe each was mostly excited about his power, they were excited about his love. Most of the miracles of Jesus in the Gospels are healing miracles. When we see the disciples following in his footsteps, first the 12, then the 72, then the entire early church, we see healing miracles forming a significant part of the ministry of the body of Christ. The Gospels and the books of the New Testament are my all time favorite books on healing. But I have a second favorite. It's called Follow the Biblical and Theological Foundations for healing ministry by Dr. Steve Siemens. It is truly my favorite book on healing because of what I'm about to share. These different ways that God heal heals us in this beautiful book. I didn't realize I'd Been waiting for it all my life until I'd read it. Dr. Seamons articulates why it's so important to understand why we have the ministry of healing before we get caught up in the how of healing ministry. He emphasizes that the ministry of healing is not our ministry, but the ministry of Jesus. We simply participate with him as in that ministry as we learn to, as he says, follow the healer. It's at this point we can notice something about all the things that Jesus did in his Kingdom of God ministry. We can notice that every act of healing can be understood as an act of love. We in our day, JD Talked about this. We're fixated on power and power, language and hierarchy and who has the agency and what's happening. And we love power. And I've been in many, many church environments where power was the leading theme and love was secondary. I believe it's the other way around completely. We can notice that every act of healing can be understood as an act of love, bringing a hurting soul to the belief that they are loved, seen and known. That doesn't mean that those who are not healed or not loved. It's the very opposite. God's love is for us all. And it is a mystery why some are healed and others are not. We must live in the tension of the now and not yet of the kingdom. Quick parentheses here. This is why it's so important when we're praying for others to be compassionate and caring, to really embody the love of God to them. Because if they're healed, glory to God. They experienced his love. If they're not healed, glory to God. At the very least, they should experience the love of God. That's the glory. That's the praise point. We want people to feel like they're seen and known and loved and valued by God, no matter what happens. Because as I've shared before anything can happen, we can see miracles. We can also see things that end in more pain or death. And in his book Follow the Healer, Steve does an incredible God, incredible. An incredible job of talking about all the ways that healing can come and from all the way to a miraculous moment to a victorious death. And it's a powerful book, so I encourage you to get a hold of it because it's important for this conversation. So everyone that Jesus touched in healing was healed as far as we know, for us, as was most probably true for the early church, not everyone we pray for is healed. But as I was taught, everyone we pray for, at the very least, should leave with a deposit of the Love of God in their hearts. We want to keep from falling off the horse on either side of how we interpret now. Answered or not yet answered prayers for healing. We don't want to say that God always heals, and if you're not healed, it's because of a lack of faith on your part. I'm just being honest. Hyper faith movements do this. And while I don't believe those movements are all bad, I do believe they're often wrong. In this particular idea that this is your fault, your lack of faith, I just don't see it in the scripture. I understand the passages. Your faith has healed you. We see all of that. But there is some mystery in all this we have to leave open. Because I've come with to God with as much faith as I know how to have. Even having seen these transformative miracles, true signs and wonders and people aren't healed. I've seen others pray for people who aren't healed, but they all experience or can experience the love of God in the moment. Sometimes the healing is gradual. Sometimes what Jesus is after in the moment, we think it should be this disease or this issue. And what Jesus is actually always after is the heart. And that's why discernment is so important when we pray for people. Because he may be saying, I want to deal with the heart right now. I know this is what everyone says we want. This is what the person says they want. But actually it's their relationship with their mother that I'd like to speak into right now. That's why we listen and discern as we pray with gentleness, humility, compassion, normal, naturally supernatural, just normal human beings, not all sorts of drama and spectacle. We just enter in to the moment with them. Okay, so again, I just want to go on record. I don't believe those movements are bad, but I do believe that they're wrong in this. And that kind of theology, for me, takes biblical stories out of context. It creates despair and a sense that it's someone's fault if they don't experience the healing. We also don't want to say that God never heals. And we're always hedging our bets because that simply isn't true. God does heal. God heals, as I said in that book, in many different ways. God heals, but God does heal. So we need to bring faith to that moment. The assurance of things we hope for, the conviction of things that we don't see. You and I are signs that God heals. Definitely. Healing the heart, healing the mind. For me, I've shared my story. Healing the emotions, healing the body. God does this. The spirit does this through us. Jesus is doing his ministry of healing through us. We have seen God dramatically heal individuals through simple and faithful prayers from God's people. So we have to hold this tension as we pray for others for healing of the now and the not yet of God's kingdom. There will be resurrection miracles in this world. Anything can happen in the kingdom of God. There will also be suffering and pain that remain in this world. Anything can happen. We can't always control it. But we can and we must, like Jesus, move forward in love to pray for the sick, in body, in mind or in spirit. We can participate with God in seeing healing come as we step out in faith and follow Jesus the healer. A thousand prayers later, we will have seen God do amazing things. All right, let's pray together. Lord Jesus, While I believe that some people have a gift of healing and are used by you often in healing ministry, I believe that every one of your followers can join you in your healing ministry. Teach me to take risks of faith to pray for the sick with faith that they may be healed. In the name of Jesus, I pray. Amen. Here are our journal prompts for today. Have you ever seen someone healed in body, in mind, or in spirit? Did it happen immediately in a spontaneous and powerful moment, or did it happen slowly over time? Write about this and your view of healing from a kingdom perspective. Now let me say this as we do today's as we look at today's activation. When I pray for someone, there are a number of prayers that I draw on. My friend Bud Simon talks about this. Others have talked about this. There are different kinds of ways that we see healing happening, but we often see Jesus using what would be called a prayer of command where he simply speaks to the body, be healed. And we would say, be healed in Jesus name. Sometimes that's where I start. I just speak healing, be healed in Jesus name. And I'll even have confidence from my experience just speaking to the body's systems to be healed, to be restored in the name of Jesus. I do that out of a sense of coming in love and the spiritual authority that comes with being a child of God. Often I will pray like that or I will pray for healing for the person. I will ask Jesus. I will invite the spirit to do healing, to begin to bring healing in the person's body or their mind or their emotions, whatever the context is. And in that partnership in prayer with the Holy Spirit, I'm listening and seeking to go Where I sense the Lord going, there'll be times as I'm going to share with you later in how we pray for people in more detail. There'll be times I ask them, what do you sense the Lord's doing right now? Let's pause a moment in our prayer. What's the Lord speaking to you? I'm less about is this landing? Am I being effective? Is something hap. That matters? It does in our, in our prayer conversations. But I'll pause and just say, what's the Lord doing in you? Because sometimes they'll show with their words that something else is happening and we want to follow that. So there are many different ways to pray for healing. But again, I'm going to be the big fan of we lead with love, we come with gentleness and humility. That's how Jesus self describes. We come with spiritual authority, we come with a listening and discerning ear. And at the very least, we want people to experience in that time of prayer that they are loved by God and truly loved by those sisters and brothers who are around them, who are praying for them in any given moment. Okay, so activation for today as you begin today, and I know it's a Sunday, here we are. Ask the Lord if there's anyone for whom you can pray for healing. And then either today or do it tomorrow, Monday or through the week, reach out to them either to let them know you are praying for them, show a little faith in letting them know, or to find a time to pray for them in person. You could even say, hey, could we just meet for 15 minutes at the end, end of whatever another meeting is, and could I just take a moment and pray for you for healing? Now that may sound like, wow, what a risk can you imagine bearing like I did? And I know many of us have experienced and maybe you have experienced a major illness, excuse me, or a physical issue and you're dealing with that, you know what that feels like. And someone says, could I just take a moment to pray for healing for you? How would you feel about that? I'd be like, bring it on. Thank you. I'll take anything. And that's what I think can help us get through that little barrier that says, I don't know if I should do that or if God will use me. That's being so much more self conscious than spirit conscious. The Holy Spirit has something loving to do through you and we can partner the spirit you know is carrying the Father's love, Jesus, compassion, like it's all there. And we just take A moment. It's powerful stuff. With faith, believe that God is with you as you pray for them to be healed. All right, let's move to our song for today. We're going to sing number 23. Holy, holy, holy. We'll sing all four verses and we'll move into our Sunday.
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Holy, holy, holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty early in the morning our song shall rise to thee Holy, holy, holy Merciful and mighty Almighty God in three persons Blessed Trinity Holy, holy, holy all the saints adore thee Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea Cherubim and seraphim falling down before thee which word and heart and evermore shall be holy, holy, holy Though the darkness hide thee Though the eye of sinful men Thy glory may not see Only thou art holy There is none beside thee Perfect in power, in love and purity Holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty all thy works shall praise thy name in earth and sky and sea Holy, holy, holy Merciful and mighty God in three persons Blessed Trinity.
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What a beautiful hymn. Thank you. Thank you, Lord, for hymns like this that fill our days, fill our nights with songs. Songs that open up our hearts to Jesus. Songs through which he moves. Songs that are meeting places with him to show his love to us, to encounter us, to heal us as we move into the world. To heal others. All right. Blessings to you. In Jesus name. Let's get our seeds and I'll see you on the field for the awakening. I'm Dan.