Book Recommendation - Healing by MacNutt

I'm going to talk about a book, but before I do, let me tell you more about my interest in this subject of healing.  As I mentioned in a post earlier this year, I have long struggled in my Christian walk with the issue of miracles and healing.  I have always believed that God can and does heal, but I struggle because it seems so rare, while the Bible makes it sound like God heals people all the time, almost every time we ask (Mt. 21:22, Mark 11:24, James 5).   While logically I know God can do miracles, I am plagued by many doubts.  I don't enjoy having doubts; it's really frustrating.  Every time I hear a miracle or healing story, my skeptical mind goes through all kinds of rationalizations to explain how the diagnosis must have been wrong in the first place, or maybe the person never was sick at all, etc.

Much of my doubt comes from learning how to be skeptical and doubt everything the Bible says while I was in college.  Thankfully I no longer struggle near as badly as I did back then.  But I realized recently through some good conversations with people on the farm and through quiet reflection with God, that much of my struggle is very personal and has to do with my relationship with my grandpa, William Stob.  All of my grandparents were missionaries in Japan, the Sytsmas and the Stobs, and they were all my heroes.  As you can see below, when Grandpa Stob wasn't doing ministry or giving my family a Bible quiz, he made time to play legos with me. 

He was a Christian Reformed minister, but also became heavily influenced by Pentecostal Christians.  When I was growing up I heard all kinds of miracles stories from this grandpa while he did ministry in Japan and Sri Lanka.  I accepted these stories with childlike faith and was convinced that God was doing miracles and healing people and delivering people from demons all the time.  Of course, I now realize that this wasn't quite the case.  Having just read my grandparents old prayer support letters, I now see that many, if not most, of their prayers for healing were not answered in the ways they wanted.   But as a child I still got the impression that they were practically a daily phenomenon for my grandpa.  And his wife, my grandma, at one point was remarkably healed by God, the story of which had made a big impression on me. So I grew up with strong faith in God's power to heal people and that God was indeed doing so regularly.

But then when I was in early high school my grandpa got sick with pancreatic cancer.  He and my grandma came back to the US and lived in St. Johns right near my family.  For one summer, every single day, my whole family went over to their place and prayed for hours each day for his healing.  It's hard to imagine how we possibly could have prayed more than we did.  We sang, we worshipped, we thanked God, we pleaded with God, but grandpa was in constant terrible pain, getting weaker by the day and he went on hospice care.  But still I, and the rest of my family, fully expected that he would be healed and go back to his unfinished ministry that we viewed as so important.  One day, we came over and he said he was healed!  He was up and around and full of energy.  It was an unbelievable change.  He wanted to throw out his medications.  We had a great long time of prayer together thanking God for his mercy and healing.  I remember we even talked about how to give God glory for this healing, whether we should call up the newspapers or not. 

But later that day, we were called back to my grandpa's house.  He had suddenly fallen over in the hallway, and appeared to be dead.  The whole family prayed over his body for 2 hours, prayers and tears mixed together.  At this point we still expected God to heal him and even to bring him back from the dead.  We knew God could do so.  But it didn't happen. 

At his funeral, I was sad, but I processed it well.  But I now realize that this event scarred me in a way I didn't realize back then.  It was not so much that I was angry with God for my grandpa's death.  I knew my grandpa was with Jesus and though I missed him, I really did not have bad grief.  It was more that my faith in God healing people was shaken.  If God would not heal him, this missionary, after so much prayer, then who would God heal?   Since that time I have never doubted that God can heal, but I have struggled with believing that God regularly desires to do so, or indeed that he actually does so very often.

Because of all of this past history, I have always been incredibly interested in hearing miracles stories and stories of healing.   I want to get over my doubts.  I want to understand why God doesn't always heal.  I want to understand how to pray for healing.  I want to see God heal people.  Thankfully, in the past seven years I have grown immensely in my understanding of God's sovereignty and providence.  I have grown much in my understanding of why God sometimes allows suffering in our lives and how he can comfort us through it.  In fact, I am so deeply comforted by these important doctrines, and trust so strongly that God works all things for good in our lives for his purposes and for his good plan for this world, that I am at peace when God doesn't do the miracles I want or heal the people I ask him to heal.  But I still don't feel like my heart is right on this issue of healing, and I feel like if I could witness just one amazing healing that was obviously only by God's miraculous unordinary intervention, then everything would be great and this wounded part of my faith would be healed.

Part of the problem is that every time God does heal someone as a result of my prayer, I still manage to find ways to explain it away.  For example, while with family for this Christmas, my dad's eye suddenly got really cloudy.  We looked up information online about it and got worried and thought about taking him to the emergency room.  But we prayed for his healing, and within an hour his eye was back to 100% and the strange cloudiness had gone away.  This is probably one of many times God has answered my prayers for healing, and yet I am ashamed to admit, that after he was healed, part of me thanked God for this wonderful healing, and part of me rationalized that it was some random eye event that went away on its own apart from any work of God.  Sometimes I just have to cry out to God like the man in Mark 9:24 - “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”  I wish I was free of stupid doubts.

I have always continued to pray for healing for people.  I never gave up on that.  But I think I had grown to expect that God will not answer those prayers.  And the book I just read has helped me greatly with this problem.  After reading this book, I feel like my faith has been greatly strengthened.  I'm now excited to pray for healing for people with eager expectation, rather than as a duty expecting that God will do nothing.  The book is "Healing" by Father Francis MacNutt.  On the cover of my old copy it says: "The most comprehensive book ever written on healing through prayer - Forgiveness of sin, inner healing of emotional problems, physical healing, deliverance: exorcism."   I had never heard of it, but found it in the farm's library.

The thing I appreciate most about this book was that it was so well balanced.  It avoided most of the errors that we tend to associate with some healing ministries, such as rejecting medical science, or saying God will always heal if we have enough faith, and so on.  The author was a Roman Catholic priest influenced by charismatic evangelicals.  I can't say that there was nothing in the book I found strange, but overall it was really good and level-headed, not to mention grounded in Scripture.

I was going to explain a whole list of things I learned from this book, but this post already got long.  So I will just mention a couple things I thought were helpful, and you can read it yourself if you wish :)

I really appreciated how he unpacked the biblical passages about faith, and what kind of faith we need.  Our faith is not in ourselves and in how much belief we have, our faith is in God.  And our faith in God can be divided into four parts, when thinking about having faith in God to heal us. 
        1. Faith in God's faithfulness, that he is faithful to his promises.
        2. Faith in God's wisdom, that God knows what is best.  Sometimes in ignorance I pray for something that is not good.  Sometimes the results of my prayer will surprise me.  Sometimes it will seem like God is letting us suffer for no reason but somehow it fits into his good plan for our lives.
        3. Faith in God's power.  God can do anything, even raise someone from the dead.
        4. Faith in God's goodness.  God actually likes me, he loves me.  He desires good for me.  We should expect that God wants to heal us, instead of always thinking God wants us to suffer.

Thinking about faith in this way is so concrete and helpful.  Some people argue that we need to have faith that God WILL heal us for sure, and if we don't then we won't be healed.  But the author of this book nicely points out that this would mean we need to be omniscient knowing exactly what God will do.  Instead of trying to get myself to believe I know the future, I can think about having faith in who God is and his loving and powerful nature.  Faith in God's goodness was what I most needed to read about in this book.  I have believed in God's wisdom and power especially, but I've had trouble thinking God actually wants to heal me or others.  I've trusted so much in his sovereignty which is good, but sort of went around thinking of God as someone who wants all of us suffering all the time.  I needed rekindled faith in his goodness, that he delights to see us well and healthy, and will act to make us so, not only in the age to come, but even now in this life.

A second thing I learned from this book was a helpful distinction between demonic oppression and demonic possession.  The author argues that demonic possession is extremely rare, and even in some biblical stories demonic oppression is actually what is being talked about.  He says that demonic oppression happens all the time and can even happen against Christians.  It was a convincing argument.  This would explain why we don't see people demon possessed all the time, acting out in ways such as in the movie "The Exorcist", or like the demon possessed man hanging out in the tombs during Jesus time (though of course that still happens sometimes).  But just because we don't see possessions all the time, we can't be blind to demonic oppression, and the importance of freeing people, including fellow Christians, from demonic oppression and influence.

Feel free to comment with thoughts, criticisms, encouragements, or questions.

ECHO Agricultural Conference

In December, I got to go to the ECHO International Agriculture Conference in Florida with other interns from the farm, the farm manager, and his family.  (ECHO - Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization)  It was pretty fun to be somewhere so warm for a week in the middle of winter (technically it was still fall, but you get the idea)!  But I also appreciated being able to learn from some great speakers and small group sessions.

ECHO has a lot of good examples of appropriate technology, like this water pump that I got to try out:


I also saw these examples of easy-to-make shellers for maize (corn) which I might have to try making for myself when we go to Uganda:

And then a much more ambitious project -a barrel oven - which I would certainly enjoy having in Uganda since you could then bake with or without electricity.  There is the question of whether I have the skills to build such a thing, but regardless, I have more confidence in my building ability after this year at WHRI.

I got to see quinoa plants growing, which was a new thing for me.  And I learned that it is related to amaranth.  I had no idea, though I suppose I could have been tipped off by the fact that both produce lots of tiny grains!

The humungous avocados made me look forward to the abundance of avocados that grow in Uganda! 

One of the most fun hands-on sessions that I went to was one where we went out and picked leaves and shoots from a diverse group of plants and then got to learn how to cook them.  It was exciting for me to see how these plants could be prepared in different ways than I knew before.

 You might not recognize a lot of these things, but some of the leaves and shoots we cooked were: passion fruit leaves, winged bean, edible ferns, garlic chives, and katuk. 

By far the coolest thing we cooked, though, was a banana flower.  What, you can cook that?!  (Now, technically it is not THE flower, but an inflorescence or a group of flowers, though maybe you don't care about that...)  Anyway, in case you're wondering what I am talking about, it is that purple thing you see in the picture below.

 So, then, here are some steamed vegetables, a fern salad, and at the bottom, the banana flower salad.

 I am looking forward to learning more about traditionally eaten wild plants in Uganda!

Okay, and then we saw this cool frog.

One evening, we interns drove to the beach and ate a picnic dinner there as the sun set.  Can you find the seventh intern waving from the water?

It was also citrus season in Florida and we got to visit a citrus orchard and eat all sorts of great fruit!

Overall, a good learning experience and one that made me even more excited about going to Uganda and learning more about agriculture through personal experimentation and through talking to Ugandans who have plenty to teach me!

Uganda and the Homosexuality Issue

By Anthony:

Recently a friend alerted me to a new documentary coming out called, "God Loves Uganda."  It's a documentary arguing that evangelical missionaries from the United States have been largely behind the strong passion of Ugandans to outlaw homosexuality.  You've probably read about this bill in the news in recent years.

I haven't watched the documentary yet but I have seen many short clips from it and I think it is important that I give you some information about this controversial issue from my perspective.  I think that the documentary is skewed from what I can tell.

Before I begin my analysis, let me just state my view on homosexuality.  I agree with the Christian Reformed Church that homosexual orientation (that is, same-sex attraction) is not sinful in itself, and most often it is not a choice.  But I do believe that acting sexually on that same-sex attraction is sinful.   However, as Christians we are called to love all people, no matter what sins they deal with, and we should respond to those people with same-sex attractions, with love, compassion, and a willingness to listen.  I also disagree with the proposed bill in Uganda that would make homosexual sex or related behaviors into criminal behavior.  While I think homosexual sex is sinful, I do not think it falls under what a secular government should condemn as criminal.

Okay, now let me explain why I think the documentary is skewed, and in doing so, I'll give you more of the context surrounding the issue of homosexuality in Uganda.

You can read about the documentary and the point of it here - http://www.godlovesuganda.com/film/story/

Next, you can watch the trailer below or watch it here.


This video below of questions and answers about the documentary is particularly enlightening.  This shows me that their agenda is not just to say that the bill is a bad in Uganda, but that the view that homosexuality is sinful, is also a wrong view.  I think it would be better for them to be honest about that up front.  If they believe that, fine, but then don't pretend the documentary is only about whether it should be a law or not.



You can view many more clips and videos from the documentary - here.

Okay, now these are some things that should be kept in mind if you watch the documentary, or discuss this issue of Uganda and homosexuality with any of your friends or churches.

1.  None of the missionaries I know in Uganda are trying to stir up bigotry and hatred towards homosexuals in Uganda, nor do I know of any of them that are supporting these bill proposals.  Maybe there are some out there, but if there are, I think they represent a small minority of missionaries in Uganda.

2.  The bill does not advocate for genocide of all homosexuals.  The death penalty is only for certain severe cases.  From Wikipedia - The bill divides homosexual behavior into two categories: "aggravated homosexuality", in which an offender would receive the death penalty, or "the offence of homosexuality" in which an offender would receive life imprisonment. "Aggravated homosexuality" is defined to include homosexual acts committed by a person who is HIV-positive, is a parent or authority figure, or who administers intoxicating substances, homosexual acts committed on minors or people with disabilities, and repeat offenders. "The offence of homosexuality" is defined to include same-sex sexual acts, involvement in a same-sex marriage, or an attempt to commit aggravated homosexuality.   I think there are great reasons to be against the death penalty in these cases too!  But it's important to have our facts straight when talking about this.

3.  Ugandans have been against homosexuality for a long time.  This is NOT a new passion that American evangelicals have brought to Uganda.  If you know the history of Uganda, you know that possibly the most important heroes in their history were young boy martyrs in the 1800's.  Read about them here - Uganda Martyrs.   These martyrs are more important to Ugandans than I think people like George Washington or Benjamin Franklin are to the average American.  Every year thousands and thousands of people come to Kampala to remember the martyrs.  They are celebrated by Catholics and Anglicans, the two biggest church groups in Uganda still today.  Why were they martyred?  Because as Christians they refused the requests of the king to have homosexual sex with them.  For the past 100 years these martyrs have been celebrated for resisting homosexuality.  The idea that homosexuality should be resisted is not some new thing promoted by American evangelicals!

4.  The violence suggested by the bill against homosexuals is also not new.  In our discussions with Ugandan friends about this issue, we were informed that if someone in a village is found out to have committed homosexual acts, mob mentality would quickly take over and that person would be put to death.  How often does this actually happen?  We have no idea.  But this is what we were told.  Again, I'm not saying this is a good thing!  But my point is that these are not "new" ideas implanted by American missionaries.

So, from what I can tell, the documentary doesn't take these ideas into account.  It seems quite biased, but I will try to watch it when I can.  If it comes out on DVD while we are in Uganda, feel free to send it to me :)

I do think there is some tiny bit of truth in the documentary.  I don't like a lot of what I see going on in Uganda regarding this issue.  And I don't like some of what a couple individual missionaries are saying in the documentary.  But it seems like a very poorly done and ridiculously biased documentary.  Please read this additional review of the documentary as it brings up many other important criticisms of the documentary that I have not addressed.  God Loves Uganda: In a documentary along the lines of 'Jesus Camp,' who's demonizing whom? by John G. Stackhouse, Jr.  It is an excellent review.  After reading it, I'm left thinking this documentary should rank as one of the worst documentaries ever made, almost totally false propaganda.

In the question and answer video above, they said that no missionaries stood up to say that killing of homosexuals is wrong.  Well, we have done so in our conversations in Uganda.  And here I am saying so again.  So let's all be in prayer for Uganda over this complicated issue, for guidance for their leaders as they sort out what to do, and for Ugandans to have the love of Christ for all people.  And let's pray for ourselves as well that we will be people of love and compassion to all.

"Do Not Wear Yourself Out to Get Rich..." Proverbs 23:4

By Sara:

I just finished reading the book "Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger" by Ronald Sider. If you are interested in topics like giving, justice, and poverty, I strongly recommend that you read this book. But in case you don't have the time, let me give you an overview of what it is about and how you can change your lifestyle to help the poor. I can't give all the details, so if you want to know more, I'd suggest reading the book so you can understand Sider's arguments better.

This book was a good balance to "When Charity Destroys Dignity." That book left me thinking about how important it is to give wisely, but at the same time, wondering how I could practically do that. "Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger" gives those practical applications for giving. It explains why Christians should care for the poor far more than they already do, yet without causing dependency in the process.

The book begins by explaining, convincingly, why there is a problem in the world. We all know that there is a lot of poverty out there, but do we realize what a problem it is - or how very rich we really are? At least 1.2 billion people live without furniture, extra clothes, food in the cupboards, electricity, running water (or clean water for that matter), books, literacy, hospitals, or monetary savings. Another 1.6 billion aren't much better off. In fact, the richest 5% of the world's people earn 114 times as much income as the poorest 5%. Sider gives far more statistics and information to convince the reader that we are very affluent. And he goes on to describe some rationalizations we might make to give less to the poor.


We may think there are good reasons to keep as much as we can for ourselves, but as Christians, we need to realize that God cares very much about the poor. Sider gives a lot of evidence from the Bible about God's concern for justice and for the rich to help the poor.

So if we are convinced that God wants us to give to the poor so they can live and have justice, what do we do? Sider goes into the many complex causes of poverty. I can't describe them all, but he talks about sinful personal choices, unbiblical worldviews, disasters, inequalities of power, colonial injustice, and structural injustice in economics. He explains how market economies are pretty good, but need changes in the way they operate in order to promote greater justice in the world. Left to itself, a market economy is mindless and will supply what the wealthy can pay for even if that means millions of poor people starve. He describes the problems this causes with the poor and the environment we live in and gives ideas about how things could be improved.

And how do we respond? Well, first Sider says, once we care, we need to examine ourselves. We, the affluent, have, more often than not, made our affluence and possessions our god. Here is one particularly striking quote:
"...we are caught in an absurd, materialistic spiral. The more we make, the more we think we need in order to live decently and respectably. Somehow we have to break this cycle because it makes us sin against our needy brothers and sisters and, therefore, against our Lord. And it also destroys us. Sharing with others is the way to real joy."


Do you know how much the average person in the US gives to charity - all charity? In 1998, it was 2.1% of their income. Church members gave to churches, on average, 2.66% of their income and 0.4% to other benevolences.

If we want to be more generous, Sider gives many ideas about how to do this. Here are just a few of them:
1. Graduated Tithe - give 10% on what you calculate to be the amount you need to live on, then give an extra 5% on each $1,000 you make above that base amount (15% on the first 1,000, 20% on the second, etc.).
2. Live in community so you can share belongings with others instead of owning it all yourself.
3. Balance your giving between emergency relief, development, and broad structural change, but don't neglect other areas of Christian work like evangelism.
4. Question your own lifestyle and work to reduce your budget by spending less on food (like eating less meat, growing food in a garden, etc.), lowering your energy consumption, resisting the appeal of advertising, resisting obsolescence (buy quality products when you buy and keep them a long time), refuse to keep up with clothing fashions, etc.
5. Make sure you evaluate the work of the organizations you give to. Among other questions to ask: is justice rather than continual charity (dependence) the result of their work? And do they use their funds efficiently and wisely?
6. Practice the Sabbath. Rest one day out of seven and do your best to limit the hours you work - turn away from the mad consumerism of our culture.

Sider also talks about working for social change. Encourage our country to have a more caring foreign policy and correct the weaknesses of our market economy. Make international trade more fair, reduce unmanageable debt among very poor countries, protect the earth and empower the poor.

These political things seem impossible to change and you may wonder how you can possibly impact these societal causes of poverty. Well the book does mention some organizations you can support that effectively promote such structural changes. A few of those are: Bread for the World, Debt AIDS Trade Africa, and The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility

Also, as a woman, I want to mention that emphasizing better education and health care for women is a very effective way to combat poverty. A majority of the very poor people in the world are women. And for every additional year of schooling for women in poor countries, infant mortality rates decline by 5-10% and the fertility rate decreases too.


And now you know some specific ways you can be more generous toward the poor in a wise way. Let's go out and give with joy!