Simply Healing.org: June 2012

KINGDOM HEALING WITH MIKE ENDICOTT

BY Colin C M Campbell, PhD

June 3, 2012

On May 4 and 5, OSL Region 8 (Ontario) held a healing conference with the Rev Mike Endicott, as our featured speaker.

Mike opened by presenting his credentials. They were impressive! He had been instrumental in physical healings of every kind - cancerous tumours, gangrenous legs, ovarian cysts - there seemed to be nothing beyond the reach of his experience of God's healing power.

Mike continued by explaining the theological basis for his ministry. He did this by acting in a skit with his wife, Ginny, in which they pretended to be Adam and Eve, though not in the costume of the period! Employing a degree of audience participation, which would be the envy of every classroom teacher, he asked us to imagine life as God had originally intended it.

After declining to become involved in the issue of creationism, he pointed out that the Biblical authors thought in pictures. They used the image of a Garden in which to situate life as God had originally conceived it. The audience cooperated and provided him with a list that included such characteristics as joy, harmony and health. Mike then asked for the opposite characteristics. Again, we obliged with sorrow, discord and sickness.

The first list - the good one- was given to a volunteer, who sat in a chair, representing Christ. Mike and Ginnie took the bad list, left the Garden and began walking towards Christ. When they reached him, they exchanged lists. Adam and Eve represent us. Through his ministry and Cross, Christ takes our bad list and gives us his good one, in what Mike called The Great Exchange.

Armed with the good list, we walk back towards Eden, able to live the kind of life that God intended us to have all along. Our walk towards the Cross and then away from it into the Kingdom of God is central to Mike's theology of healing. It contains some radical consequences that will change the way that some of us do healing.

First, it has revolutionary implications for prayers of petition. These are prayers in which many commonly ask God to change his mind and do something that they desire, which he would not otherwise do. In recent years this idea has been used to justify the concept of "open theism." As Mike points out, God's list has already been drawn up and is offered to us, ready-made. If petitionary prayer is to retain any meaning, it is our giving God permission to perform The Great Exchange within us. Our problem is not to persuade God to heal but to persuade ourselves that he indeed wishes to do so.

When believers have the Kingdom of God rooted in their hearts and minds, they will be able to pronounce God's healing and signs and wonders will follow.

As I reflected upon the teaching that I had absorbed, my thoughts kept returning to one basic issue. Christ never refused to heal anyone, so what is it that is the block in us that prevents healing?

First, Jesus was not able to do any healing in Nazareth due to unbelief. Due to their lack of faith, the disciples were not able to heal the demoniac and Jesus rebuked them for it. Peter only began to sink when he wavered in his faith. So, faith is required in order to heal. As Mike would say, we need to have the Kingdom in our hearts.

Second, in order for the paralytic to be healed, his sins had to be forgiven. The rich young ruler could not be "healed" unless he gave away all his riches. So, there is a strong connection between healing and repentance.

However, apart from the two exceptions of doubt and disobedience, it is clear that Jesus was able to heal every disease and healed all who sought his healing. It is true that he required that his followers take up their Crosses but these were Crosses that came from renunciation of the world and persecution by the world, not ones that were the consequence of sickness. These two types of Cross are the correct basis for the Church's concept of redemptive suffering.

Many of us, including myself, would bear witness that for us to come to faith, it was necessary for us to suffer. We know that we grew through suffering and, for myself, now that things have turned out well, I personally, would not have had it any other way. In this way, my suffering has been redemptive for me.

There is a danger, however. An emphasis on redemptive suffering that is too heavy, can lead people to believe that God does not want to heal them and so they do not seek it. Correctly understood, redemptive suffering should lead to an increase in faith, not a retreat from it. When God does not grant a specific request - which might be a major one in our minds - he will increase our faith by using our service in other ways, Mike being an outstanding witness to this. So, he builds our faith but in a different way to the one that we would expect.

Mike challenged us to think in new ways and to grow in our healing ministries. All the people, who completed the questionnaire, said that they would welcome a return engagement!

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