AUDIENCE: (APPLAUSE)
ART: Welcome everybody! It’s great to have you with us here. And my name is Art Thomas. I’m going to be talking to you tonight about healing. Now what I’ve learned is that when I’m in Africa I really only have to give a three minute teaching on healing, in fact less than that. Really all I teach is Jesus wants to heal. He wants to use you to do it so here’s how you do it. Lay hands on someone. Say “be healed in Jesus name” and then have them test it out. If it works praise Jesus. If it doesn’t do it again. Keep going until you see either they’re done and they don’t want you to anymore or you see it’s healed. Or you find that you’re in yourself you’re striving and so you just have to kind of recognize all right I don’t have the faith for it today. And I just do that. I confess to person I’m sorry. If Jesus was standing here you would be healed right now instead you got me. And I’m not perfectly like Him but I’m growing and I want to be. All right? And I tell people keep seeking healing. Now that is so much more encouraging to a person than when we say there’s probably something wrong with you. Probably hidden sin in your life. Maybe you didn’t have enough faith. Cause now that’s funny to us because we’ve all heard it. But I can’t tell you how many meetings I go to where someone comes up to me in tears saying 20 years ago someone told me I had hidden sin and that’s why I’m not healed yet and I’ve been seeking God for 20 years and He won’t tell me what that sin is. And I’m like I know why. And they go why? I say because it’s not there. You know? That’s not what Jesus did. When the epileptic boy wasn’t healed He didn’t pin it on the little boy. He didn’t pin it on the boy’s dad even. So biblically like family members are even like set aside because Jesus knows the emotional strain on us as family members because we love so much and we care so much. But when it comes to learning faith I always encourage people don’t learn faith in the context of your family because it’s really hard to disengage from the heavy emotion attached to it. Usually we’re like well I’ve prayed for this person 300 times and it’s just not going to happen. You know? So what I do when I teach in Africa, real short teaching and then we see people healed left and right. But when I do this in America sometimes that little statement right there everybody’s like whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up! I’ve got some questions. Which is great. You should question things. In fact the reason I have a whole bunch of answers for you is because I questioned everything. I was the guy that took a whole three whole months of arguing against the possibility that God always wants to heal and I brought every one of those questions to the scripture. I brought all of them to the Holy Spirit. I said Lord this doesn’t make sense. This doesn’t make sense. I was asking questions about Pauls’ thorn in the flesh. Questions about Timothy leaving Trophimus sick in Miletus. You know telling Timothy to drink a little wine because of his frequent illnesses. You know the city of unbelief, Nazareth, where you know Jesus could only work a few miracles. I brought all those questions to the Lord and guess what? He answered all of them. And He answered them so satisfactorily, like I’m a very logical thinker. I like to process through things. If it doesn’t make sense I’m not sold. But He answered them so satisfactorily for me I was willing to stand up in front of people and say yes, it is always God’s will to heal and I have no question about it in my mind. And I can answer every one of those questions. So hopefully we’ll be able to get to a lot of that tonight. That’s what I’m going to shoot for. So what I’m going to do because this is America and because the people watching you know you’re from America maybe you all already believe what I believe but I know there are a whole lot of us who don’t. And so that’s why I’m going to talk to you about getting all the junk from our American thinking out of the picture so that we can simply believe like children. So here we go. I like to say there are four litmus tests for valid theology in general. Number One: it’s got to agree a 100% with the Bible. Fair enough? That’s probably good for your theology. All right? Number Two: it has to agree a 100% with the life and ministry, the example of Jesus because that’s what He came to do. In fact Hebrews 1:3 says that the son, Jesus, “is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being.” So if Jesus perfectly represented the Father, the word “theology” means the study of God, the easiest clearest picture of God that we have is Jesus. We got four whole accounts of His life from different people’s perspectives, different accounts, and they all present the same person, the same loving person who paid the same sacrifice and did the same things. Working miracles everywhere He went. So I think that’s a pretty safe bet for, you know, basing your theology on Jesus. Now the Third One is that it has to agree 100% with the nature of God that is revealed in scripture and we’ll talk a little bit more about that in a bit. But John 14:7 through 10, Jesus said: “If you really knew Me you would know my Father as well. From now on you do know Him and have seen Him. Phillip said “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us. Jesus answered don’t you know Me Phillip even after I’ve been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father. How can you say show us the Father? Don’t you believe that I’m in the Father and the Father’s in Me? The words I say to you are not just My own rather it’s the Father living in Me who’s doing His work.” So even Jesus was saying look at me. You’ll know exactly what Father God is like. See? Now, so 100% with the Bible. A 100% with the life and ministry of Jesus. A 100% with the nature of God and the fourth litmus test: It works! Fair? All right. Yeah. If you’re… here’s what I found. You know I used to have all this theology about healing and all these ideas about why it didn’t work and guess what? I was never seeing miracles. Right? But when I started believing in these things and seeing that Jesus really does want it and He paid the price for it, it instantly started working. And you know I have to be careful with that when it’s kind of the weakest of all of them simply because sometimes you minister once and nothing happens. You give it a try and it doesn’t work. But I guarantee if you will persevere you’re going to see results. No questions asked. So let’s take a look at those four litmus tests. All right? And we’re just going to run through some things real quick. Agreeing a 100% with the Bible. That’s because in Psalm 119, verse 160, the New American Standard Bible says “the sum of Your word is truth.” So not just some little snippet out of context. It’s going to be the whole picture all together. John 14:12 Jesus said “I tell you the truth. Anyone who has faith in Me will do what I have been doing. He’ll do even greater things than these because I am going to the Father.” So that’s why it has to agree 100% with the life and ministry of Jesus. It has to look like Him because He is the low mark of where we should be. He said you’ll do greater works than these. Right? So until my life and ministry looks like Jesus I’m not satisfied. And then once it does look like Jesus I’m still not satisfied because I’m allowed to go more. That was His promise. That’s not pride. It’s a fulfillment of His prophecy.
AUDIENCE: Amen.
