Children's Story: Real Healing

Real Healing

Have you've been sick?

How do you feel when you're sick?

Do you feel like going out, running around and playing? Or do you feel like stuffing yourself with your favorite food? No, not usually. When you're sick you're usually feeling pretty icky and usually just want to lie around, sleep, and rest.

Have you ever been so sick that you thought you might die? (Unless there is actually someone present that has been there:) No, I don't think any of you have been that sick.

Whenever you get sick, your moms and dads get worried and concerned. Moms and dads don't like to see their children sick and feeling bad and miserable. We want to see you get better and feel better.

So what do moms and dads do? What kinds of things do we do to try to help you feel better and get better? We might give you medicine, Advil or Tylenol, to help with headaches and fevers. Or perhaps a little bit of throat spray medicine to help with sore throats. We might help you with cool towels or ice if you're feeling hot. We also pray -- pray to God to help you recover and get well quickly.

When Jesus was here on earth, when Jesus was a little boy and a teenager, did he ever get sick? The Bible doesn't say that he did or that he didn't, but I have a pretty strong hunch that he got colds, headaches, sore throats and fevers. I'd venture to guess that Jesus probably knows exactly how you're feeling when you're sick.

In today's sermon, I'll be talking about a story -- not where Jesus is sick -- but when a little boy is sick, and his father comes to Jesus to ask Jesus to heal the little boy. This little boy was at the point of death -- his father thought the boy was going to die. Jesus did answer the father's request and the boy was healed.

In our world today, we pray for healing when someone is sick. Jesus will sometimes answer with healing. But at other times, he chooses not to heal.

Did you know that in the Bible, when Jesus talks about healing, it is more than just about someone getting better from being sick? When Jesus talks about healing, he is also talking about salvation. To Jesus, healing and salvation are the same thing.

When we pray for healing, it's usually for healing from physical sickness -- the things that make us feel icky and bad. Jesus is concerned about how we feel right now, but he is even more concerned about our eternal future. Jesus wants us to pray for the type of healing that brings us salvation. And that kind of prayer -- the one that asks Jesus to save us -- will always be answered with, "Yes!" The only thing we need to do is to choose to ask Jesus for the salvation-healing, and then trust that when Jesus says to us, "You're healed; you're saved," that he really means what he says.