33live

As a people easily lulled, we tend to become comfortable with who we think God is. We get used to hearing the same descriptions of Him over and over again; we hear the same stories of Jesus’ walk time and time again…and sometimes we forget the wonder in it all. We forget the beauty and surprise of this being we call God. However, after hearing Pastor Christopher’s teaching on the night of October 21st, one can not help but realize that, if you pay attention, there are constant revelations wanting to be had…ones of His character. Namely His love and power.

The students of 33 Live had an eye opener to both of these characteristics as they took a journey back in time and walked through life with “Jesus Our Healer.” By taking a slightly different look at “oh, so familiar” stories, as a group we realized that through healing Jesus testified to amazing amounts of power, and that His heart is overflowing with an overwhelming amount of care for mankind…so much so that He is in the business of healing the entire man, not simply his physical body.

One example is that of the ten lepers. As Pastor Christopher pointed out, there were three points in this story; Jesus came near to the lepers, they were made well, and He sent them to the synagogue. These affection-starved and despised men in society were having a rabbi draw near to them, and there was a claim that he even touched them. Living in a community, I have recently found that most people can barely go a few hours without a big strong hug. Now imagine bring despised for years…no hugs or hands on the shoulder…no one even coming near enough to breathe the same air. But Jesus was moved by the heart of the Father to the point where He was interested in healing their hearts by giving to them what they had lost for such a long time. Obviously, He cared about their physical pain and healed them. Then, to complete the healing in their human triune nature (body, soul/heart, and spirit), He sent them off to the synagogue where they would encounter God for the first time since the beginning of their sickness…their spirits would be reunited to Him in gratefulness. All-around healing!

As the teaching went on, the inspiration and energy grew. Pastor Christopher’s passion was infectious as he began to loudly declare that, “Satan is messing with the wrong youth group!” The seed of faith was planted as he read a testimony from his coauthor, Wayne Batson. Cameron, a young boy about nine years of age, was promised organ failure and likely death at the hand of leukemia. However, after much prayer on both authors’ parts, and many believers in Maryland, the father of the child stood at the door at 11:45pm claiming, “it’s gone…and the doctors are mystified.” There was an urgency in the air to pray with power, and the students were shaken with the image in the statement, “Can you imagine if people started coming to you for prayer before they went to the doctor?!”

To put action to that faith, the service ended with a long period of time dwelling on a song declaring: “I believe that you’re my Healer / I believe you’re more than enough for me.” Not only over themselves did they sing it, but also over another young boy in the area known to have cancer. They now walk through the halls of high schools students asking God, through them, to be the serum to cure the “epic of our generation,” a people with wounded and dying spirits, hearts, and even bodies. Let us look to Heaven and ask that all the hospitals in Jefferson County will have to be shut down, because everyone is looking to a group of on-fire youth that are standing in the gap and healing every one in need, body, soul, and spirit. Amen! lt: