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Introduction

by Charles E. Moore

My friend and fellow pastor, Richard Scott, had just been diagnosed with cancer when he addressed our congregation: “People facing serious illness or death must ask themselves: What am I going to do about it? Will you allow it to change you? Or will you resist and avoid God’s will for your life?”

I have to admit those words bothered me. In what way did my friend need to change? He was one of the most humble and committed followers of Christ I knew. Besides, I had been taught that those battling serious illness needed to get well. Only then could they be of use to God, and to anyone else for that matter. They needed comfort, support, medical assistance. They needed life to get back to normal.

This was my first reaction. Yet deep down I knew that what Richard said was true. I had brushed against the stark reality of death before, when my wife was diagnosed with cancer at the age of forty. Everything stopped, everything changed. God was speaking to us, and we knew, though we never spoke about it, that her physical well-being was not the most important thing. Thankfully, through prayer, support from friends, and medical help, she recovered. But perhaps even more importantly, through this difficult experience God gave us a gift: something from above, something eternal, something lasting between and within us had become our main focus.

In our scientific age we are pounded with a different message – namely, that pain, sickness, and death are evils to be resisted at all costs. The marvels of modern medicine are trumpeted as the antidote to whatever might ail us, and there is almost always another available course of action, another treatment that holds promise. Even so, all of us have to contend with bodies that are frail and vulnerable to all kinds of disease, not to mention the inevitability of aging. And we know that having a healthy body is one thing; living a full and meaningful life, at peace with ourselves and others, is quite another.

There comes a time when each one of us has to face eternity. When this happens, our whole life is laid out before us. Richard experienced this when it became clear that his cancer was incurable. Yet despite his grim diagnosis, he lived as one who had experienced God’s healing. Again and again he pointed me, and many others, to the freedom and peace that come when we confess our sins and can stand before God with a clear conscience. “Ultimately, healing is given when we repent,” he once said. In his last days, he seemed more alive than ever before. He had embraced God’s will, and was at peace.

How did Richard come to this place of acceptance and inner certainty? And where did he find strength to hold on to it as his disease progressed? During his last months on earth, he often turned to the reflections you now hold in your hands (which I was sending to him and his wife to read as I discovered them). Written by two men of deep faith who cared for countless suffering souls during their lifetimes, the selections in The God Who Heals can help us today to live more fully, and with more purpose, despite our suffering. They show us what we need most in times of sickness.

Who are the Blumhardts, whose words have helped so many people? Johann Christoph Blumhardt (1805–1880) was a pastor in Germany. Early in his life it was obvious that he was destined to be used by God. This can be seen in his ability to turn his childhood peers to faith and in his early work among hardened youth. Blumhardt took on a small parish in Möttlingen, a remote village near the Black Forest. Here he came face to face with the evil forces of sickness, addiction, mental illness, and other afflictions he could only ascribe to demon possession that bound some in his congregation. When the local physician asked Blumhardt who was going to care for his patients’ souls, Blumhardt took up the challenge armed with prayer, patience, and persistence.

This spiritual battle began in earnest in 1841, for a young woman named Gottliebin Dittus who suffered recurring nervous disorders and various other strange and inexplicable “attacks.” Blumhardt embarked on a two-year-long struggle that ended in victory over demonic powers. He never could have anticipated what happened next. Almost overnight, the town of Möttlingen was swept up in an unprecedented movement of repentance and renewal. Stolen property was returned, broken marriages restored, enemies reconciled, alcoholics cured, and sick people healed. An entire village experienced what life could be like when God was free to rule. Jesus was victor!

Word spread, and soon Blumhardt’s parsonage could no longer accommodate all the people that streamed to it seeking healing. Eventually, because of restrictions placed on his work by church superiors, Blumhardt left his pastorate and moved his ministry to Bad Boll, a complex of large buildings that had been developed as a spa around a sulfur water spring. At Bad Boll, many desperate individuals burdened with mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual maladies quietly found healing and renewed faith.

Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt (1842–1919) was barely a year old when his father began his prayer battle for Gottlieben Dittus. Nevertheless, this experience would stand as a backdrop to everything he would experience in life. When his family moved to Bad Boll he was ten years old. Eventually, Christoph worked alongside his father, and after his father’s death, he carried on his father’s task.

Troubled by the publicity surrounding ­miraculous physical healing, Christoph retired from public preaching altogether. Although he continued to experience the healing powers of God, he came to believe that what the prophets and Jesus wanted most was a new world: the rulership of God over all things. God wanted to transform both the inner and the outer person, both individuals and entire societies.

No other writers have influenced my faith in God’s goodness and in his healing power more than the Blumhardts have. With bold confidence in the God who works miracles and a childlike acceptance of God’s will in all things, these two men point us to look beyond our physical condition to Jesus, who heals and brings life to both body and soul, and to his kingdom. For them, the redemptive reality of God’s healing love not only comforts us in our affliction but has the power to renew our spirits, providing us with the peace that passes understanding. They assure us that even the most material remedies can be improved by means of prayer, and that when we completely surrender to God’s will, much greater things will take place. This is good news indeed, especially for those who know firsthand the limitations of medical science and the impossibility of a pain-free life.

This is why I turn to the Blumhardts again and again to gain new courage and a fresh perspective. I’ve also shared their insights with friends and acquaintances who, in times of terrible suffering, felt bereft of faith and hope. Their words remind us that it is sometimes only through suffering that we come to understand and know the healing touch God wants to bestow. When we are confronted with our mortality, God wants to free us and show us that neither sickness nor death is the final power.

I trust that you, the reader, will find this book a comfort, but also a challenge to live more fully for God and more surrendered to his will. I also hope you will think of others who might benefit from reading it. Only in Jesus is there real and lasting help. He is the true healer, the one who will not only raise us up to eternal life, but who will restore all things. He alone can bring the abundance of God’s unending life here into our earthly lives.

The God Who Heals

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