The Healing Power of Love


02/27/2011 - Becoming a Healing Community



When I was sixteen years old I was in a serious car accident that looking back on it now, I believe, changed the course of my life. I didn't know it then. In fact, when it happened it made me very angry because it caused a major interruption to my summer plans and my plans for college. I've told you about it before.

It happened on the way home from swim practice the summer before my senior year of high school. I was broadsided at an intersection and my little Volkswagen Beetle collapsed like an accordion. I was knocked unconscious and broke my left femur which landed me in the hospital for a month and then in a full body cast for another nine weeks and rehab after that.

It certainly wasn't what I had planned for the first summer I could drive. I was planning on working out twice a day and hopefully earning a swimming scholarship to a top notched division one school. But all that changed on the evening of July 1.

And I can remember lying in that hospital bed day after day looking up at the ceiling wondering, "What's this about, God? I don't get it? Why did you let this happen to me? Why didn't l leave swim practice a minute earlier or a minute later or take another route home? Why did I even go to swim practice?" Practice had ended early that night because of a severe thunderstorm. So maybe I should have just stayed home. But it happened as life so often does. Life just happens

And thank God I had a very supportive family and a bunch of good friends and a church community that prayed for me and sent me cards of encouragement and balloons and candy and came to visit. And one of those visits was extra special.

One day a teenaged guy walked into my room whom I had never even met before. He quickly introduced himself, gave me his name, and told his story. He said that last year he had been in the very same situation that I was. He had broken his femur in an accident and spent time in traction and then in a body cast and in rehab, but now he was doing great, walking around on two good legs, living a normal life.

Apparently, one of the nurses had asked him to stop by my room sometime and he did. It was wonderful thing for him to do and when he left I remember feeling this surge of hope that I'm going to get passed this. I'm going to get better. I'm going to heal and be able walk again, and swim again, and get back to a normal life just like that kid. I'll never forget the power of that visit and the hope that it gave me. Hope. That's what we all need. We all need hope for healing, don't we?

This morning we wrap up our series calledThe Healing Power of Love with a teaching I've called "Becoming a Healing Community." Throughout this series we've emphasized the fact that the church is a hospital on a mission. Our mission is to bring a little bit of heaven to this earth, to make a difference in this world, to expand the kingdom of God in word and deed and hopefully we accomplished a little bit of that yesterday with the coat drive for the people of Mongolia and last summer for the mothers in Liberia through the baby kits that we sent to Africa.

The church is meant to be on a mission, the mission of Christ. But the church is also meant to be a hospital where wounded, broken people like you and me can find hope and healing.

This week I got an email from a friend named, Bob. Bob and his family were part of the original core of this church and were under the oak tree at Valley Forge National Parkthe very first Sunday we met in September of 1993. They have since moved out of the area but have remained very supportive of what God has been doing in our church over the years.

Bob sent me this description of the church that he said made him think of Valley View.

"We believe that people desperately need the hope and healing found in Jesus Christ. Rampant loneliness, suicide, domestic violence, substance abuse and depression all around us points to despair within in our culture. The church can bring hope and healing to many of these areas by seeing herself as a hospital. In a hospital, the doors are open 24/7 to anyone who stumbles in with any kind of illness. In a hospital, things usually get messy before healing is truly found. In a hospital, the patients require immediate care and constant love. In a hospital, the workers are equipped and prepared to bring the proper care to those who are hurting most.

"The church is a hospital to the broken and the dying. We can meet the needs of people if we open wide our doors, expect the messiness of healing the broken, are prepared to offer care, and expect that Jesus Christ can move in the lives of people. For without Jesus, we are all lost, broken and dying. With Jesus, we are promised help for today, hope for tomorrow, and eternal pleasures at God's right hand! The church is a hospital. We trust in Jesus. We care for people."

I thought that was great and fits with what we've been saying all along in this series. It fits with our vision statement called Imagine a Community that says things like... we want to help people ... we want to look out for each other ... we want to learn to live like Jesus and love like Jesus ... we want to be transformed into better people ... we want to grow through failure and suffering ... we want to take time to address the roots of our anxieties and pain ... we want to be a place where we can find help and healing and the power to change no matter how desperate our situation may be.

So let's explore what it takes to be a healing community. If you have a Bible turn with me to a desperate situation found in 2 Corinthians 1. In this passage, written by the apostle Paul, I want to show you some ways that Valley View can be a healing community.

Look at 2 Corinthians 1:1-2 , Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, To the churchof God in Corinth, together with all his holy people throughout Achaia. 2Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is the introduction to Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, a group of Christ followers living in Corinth, a city in southern Greece. This is Paul's most vulnerable letter in the New Testament. It's filled with raw emotion and all kinds of references to suffering and pain, struggle and heartache.

But like the lament Psalms we talked about last week we don't know all the reasons why Paul was suffering so. He doesn't always share the specific circumstances surrounding his pain, but he opens up his heart and reveals his desperation to us along with the strength that he finds in Christ and in God's people.

Skip down to verse 8, We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. 9Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death.

This is Paul's way of saying, "I was at the end of my rope. I couldn't deal with any more stress and pressure in my life. I thought I was going to die!" Have you ever felt that way? At the end of your rope? Exhausted? Hopeless? Completely depressed? If you have, you're in pretty good company.

Look at verse 9, But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. 10He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, 11as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many.

Paul made it through his struggle with God's help. He learned to F.R.O.G., fully rely on God, not himself. God delivered him from whatever threatened his life and he gives God all the glory for that. And he's confident that God will continue to deliver him. His hope is in God. But he also thanks God's people for their prayers. He connects the dots between his deliverance and the many prayers of God's people for which he's so grateful.

Prayer is a powerful thing. And I believe prayer is a necessary part of the healing process. If we want to be healing community we need to be a praying community. In many situations prayer is not the least we can do for one another, prayer is the most we can do for one another. I believe that prayer does change things and how comforting it is to know that others are praying for you.

This week I visited a man in the hospital who was also delivered from a deadly peril. His name is Bill and he's 86 years old and he had open heart surgery last Saturday which is life threatening for a man his age. He's the man I told you about last week. On Friday he had been on the operating table all prepped and ready to go for his bypass surgery which had started four hours late.

All his lines were in. He was intubated and under anesthesia when his heart surgeon was called out of the OR for a family emergency. His father he was told was in critical condition and could die at anytime. So he took off and Bill was left on the table without a surgeon. He was wheeled back to his room and when he woke up he thought it was all over and said, "Wow! That wasn't so bad. Not even an incision!" And then he was told that he didn't have the surgery and would have to go back under again the next day. How tough is that!

Yet when I visited Bill and his family this week they were so full of praise to God and were so grateful for the prayers of God's people. They were thankful that the surgery had been delayed four hours on Friday and that the surgeon hadn't started cutting when he was called out for his own family emergency which would have happened if the surgery had started on time.

They were praising God that the surgeon's father was doing better and hadn't passed away. They were praising God that Bill was doing better and hadn't passed away. They were praising God for opportunities to share their hope in Christ with others in the hospital. They were thankful for people literally all over the world who were praying for Bill. They were able to connect the dots between Bill's deliverance and the many prayers of God's people.

Prayer is a necessary part of the healing process. A healing community needs to be a praying community. We need to be a praying community. If you want to get a copy of our weekly Prayer Update let us know. We'll put you on the email list. It goes out almost every week. If you want to be part of the Prayer Team let us know. We want to see that expand. We're going to start offering prayer each month after our second gathering. We want to be praying for one another in this community and connect the dots between the prayers of God's people and our deliverance. But there's another important part to being a healing community.

Look back at verse 3 where Paul says, Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4whocomforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. 5For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfortabounds through Christ 6If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. 7And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.

Can anybody guess Paul's point here? I think it has something to do with comfort don't you? In five verses Paul repeats the word nine times. Paul is saying that our God is the God of all comfort. He's the one who comforts us in our troubles so that we can comfort others who are going through similar struggles. That's what the guy in hospital did for me. He brought me comfort and the hope of healing by sharing his story of healing.

If we want to be a healing community we need to be a praying community and we need to be an authentic community. We need to be honest about our struggles. We need to share with one another ways that God has helped us and comforted us even before the struggle is resolved. God's comfort doesn't always come at the end of the struggle. His comfort comes in the midst of the struggle as well.

I love what Tom Wright says in his comments on this verse. "To say that comfort is on the mind of Paul in this passage doesn't put it strongly enough. It sounds almost like an obsession. Actually, the Greek word he uses is more many-sided than our English word 'comfort.' It means to 'to call someone to come near' or 'to treat in an inviting or friendly way.'

"The whole idea of the word is that one person is being with another, speaking words which change their mood and situation, giving them courage, new hope, new direction, new insights which will change the way they face the next moment, the next day, the rest of their life. And when you put all that together in a bottle, and shake it up, and pour it out for someone in the middle of their deep suffering, the best word we can come up with is 'comfort.' It meets people where they are, and brings them to the point where they are strong enough to see new hope, new possibilities, and new ways forward." God is an expert at that and he does his work through us.

One way that we become a healing community is by sharing our pain with one another and sharing the ways that God has comforted us in the midst of our pain. That's being a good steward of our life experiences. That's a big part of being a healing community. God intends the stuff that we've been through in our life to be used to help others. Some of the best ministry that we can give to each other is sharing our weakness and our pain, not sharing our strength and our successes.

Later on in this letter Paul will write in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 , Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. 10That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Paul wasn't always delivered. He didn't always have his prayers answered the way he wanted. Three times he pleads with God to remove his "thorn in the flesh." Again, he doesn't tell us what it is. Many scholars believe it was some kind of chronic illness, perhaps an eye disease that he alludes to in his letter to the Galatians. We don't know for sure. But whatever it was, it wasn't taken away. Instead, God gave him the grace and the strength to handle it. That's how he was comforted. And he discovered that God's grace was sufficient for him.

When I look around at the Valley View community I see a lot of people who haven't been delivered from whatever it is they're praying for. But I also see many of them being comforted by the grace and power of Christ in the midst of their struggles. And that comfort often comes from the prayers and the love and the concern of others.

So how do we become a hospital, a healing community? By being a praying community and by being an authentic community, sharing honestly with one another our own struggles as well as the comfort that we've experienced from God. And sometimes that comfort comes after our struggle is over and sometimes that comfort comes in the midst of our struggle.

I said that that car accident changed the course of my life. And I really believe it did. On the day I got out of that body cast I went swimming at the Y and could hardly bend my left leg. But over time it finally loosened up and I went on to swim my senior year and even improved my times, but I didn't achieve my goals.

I didn't end up swimming fast enough to get a scholarship to a high powered swimming school. Instead I stayed local and went to a college right here in Philadelphia. But on the weekends I came home from school and stayed very involved in my church community. And during those years I developed a real hunger for the Scriptures that eventually led me to seminary after college and then into church ministry. And now I'm so glad that happened.

So God took what was a tragic circumstance for me and turned it into a triumph because that's the kind of God we have. He is the God of all comfort who does that a lot.


Questions of the Week

  • What does it mean to have hope? Why is hope important to a healing community? How can we develop the virtue of hope in our lives?
  • What role does prayer play in the life of our community? How is it important to the healing process? How does it help us to have hope?
  • What do you think an authentic community would look like? What is the connection between authenticity and comfort? How can we be a more authentic community?
  • What do you find encouraging about the idea of being a healing community? What do you find challenging? What are some things that we can do to live out this vision of being a healing community?