Does God Promise Healing?

Does God promise healing?

It seems like that question demands a clear cut answer.

Listen to how our Teaching Pastor, Yancey Arrington answers this question in our latest video.

Come To Him

As we embark on our 28 Days of Prayer, I hope you’re joining in. Prayer plays a crucial role in our relationship with God, but it can be intimidating.

Many of us feel some trepidation, uncertainty, or confusion when we think about prayer.

We may feel convicted of a lack of desire to pray. We may feel ashamed about failure to consistently pray in the past. Or maybe we just don’t really know how to begin.

As we enter into this challenge together, let’s remember that prayer is simply an invitation into the presence of God. We are called to come to him.

Here are three ways in which we can accept his invitation.

COME IN CHILD-LIKE FAITH
You can come just as you are to God, messy and broken with peanut butter on your face and a rip in your jeans.

Jesus invited the weary, the broken, the bruised, the thirsty – he’s invited all those in need and all those at the end of their ropes. Your Father desires you to bring your burdens to him. The heart of the gospel is that through Jesus we come to God, not with the assumption we are good enough, but with the knowledge that we are not.

Think about how small children talk to their parents. The conversation never ends! There may be pauses, but children always pick back up again with whatever is on their minds. They just blurt out what they want and what they need. They interrupt. They ask without regard for what it will cost you or where it will come from. They ask because they depend completely upon you. And they keep asking with mind numbing persistence.

Come to your Father in prayer like a child. Children are supremely confident in their parents’ love and power. Instinctively, they trust. They believe their parents want to do good for them. And your Father’s care and provision is perfectly wise, strong, and loving.

You can trust him even more than kids trust their mom and dad.

COME IN COMMUNITY
Prayer is not just for a single person alone and desperate in a foxhole; it’s an outpouring to our Father by our family in Christ. We pray for each other and with each other. There might be times in our lives when we cannot get out of bed or even lift our heads because of the suffering of this world. But still, our family in Christ prays for us. We pray together for those who don’t know God, trusting that God not only hears us, but that our prayers matter, now and for eternity.

We need each other. We are created not only for relationship with God, but for relationship with one another. Prayer is a way of life together as the church. Our faith is personal, but it is not private.

COME IN SURRENDER
When Jesus taught his disciples how to pray in Matthew 6:10, the heart of his prayer was this:

Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Prayer tunes our hearts to God’s will. When we come to him, we are acknowledging our need. Any posture other than humility is just self-deception. If we had it all figured out, why would we come to him at all?

Our prayers are a step of surrender.

We surrender our plans and priorities. We surrender our dreams and decisions. We surrender our very lives, praying that his kingdom would be built rather than our own. That his will would be done, not ours.

Now, God’s will is not always done on earth. Child abuse is not God’s will, racism is not God’s will, the exploitation of human beings through pornography is not God’s will, and teenagers killing themselves with drugs is not God’s will. We realize the world is broken. So, we cry out to him. We surrender ourselves to his kingdom, asking that he would make all things new.

So come to him.

Come as a child, pouring out your heart and trusting in your Father’s goodness. Come together with your brothers and sisters in the faith, lifting each other’s needs to the Savior. Come in complete surrender, seeking his kingdom and desiring his will.

Just come.

131: Curses, Tears, and Worship — Praying with the Psalms

Clear Creek Community Church is taking part in 28 Days of Prayer as a church family.

As part of these 28 days, we are praying through Psalms, the prayerbook of the people of God.

Throughout this book, there are many different types of psalms; each one a different and authentic way of crying out to God our Father.

In this episode, Rachel talks with Tanner Smith, Director of Prayer Ministries, and Denise Ward, teacher of Grief Share and Women of the Word, about the example of honest and intimate prayers in the Psalms and how we can incorporate them into our own prayer lives.

130: What is Spiritual Warfare?

Throughout Revelation, John wants his readers to realize that there is more going on that meets the eye; there is a spiritual reality at work with angels and demons, and God and Satan.

So, what is spiritual warfare?

Is it something we really experience today?

Ryan sits down with Bruce Wesley to discuss Satan and demons, as well as the authority, power, and peace of Jesus.

 

127: End Times Forum Q&A — Part 2

On February 20, we hosted the End Times Forum featuring our Teaching Pastor, Yancey Arrington.

After the main session, Yancey answered questions from the audience, but we were unable to get to all of them.

So on this episode, Ryan Lehtinen invited Yancey to the podcast studio to ask him the rest.

 

126: End Times Forum — Q&A

What does the end of history look like?

When will Christ return?

Will believers undergo the tribulation?

These are the kinds of questions that Christians have been asking for centuries, and in seasons where global troubles increase like today, the questions are even more pervasive.

In partnering with our series All Things New: A Study of Revelation, CCCC hosted an End Times Forum where we looked at the different ways Christians have understood what the Bible teaches about the end of the age and sought to answer some of the most asked questions about one of the most important doctrines of the faith.

 

 

125: End Times Forum — Main Session

What does the end of history look like?

When will Christ return?

Will believers undergo the tribulation?

These are the kinds of questions that Christians have been asking for centuries, and in seasons where global troubles increase like today, the questions are even more pervasive.

In partnering with our series All Things New: A Study of Revelation, CCCC hosted an End Times Forum where we looked at the different ways Christians have understood what the Bible teaches about the end of the age and sought to answer some of the most asked questions about one of the most important doctrines of the faith.

 

 

124: Does What I Do Now Affect My Eternity?

God’s judgment is not only a difficult idea to swallow, it also leaves us with many questions.

Will God judge everyone based on how we live now?

For Christians, are there different rewards in heavens based on how we live?

If there are different rewards in heaven, won’t that leave people being disappointed or jealous?

On this episode, Ryan Lehtinen, Yancey Arrington, and Lance Lawson discuss these questions and how this impacts our lives today.

Why Does God Allow Suffering?

If God is good…

If God is all powerful…

If God is all-knowing…

Then why does he allow suffering?

 

121: Does God Control Everything?

Life is full of the unexpected: both good and terrible. Is God really in control of it all? And if he is, why do so many bad things happen? Are we still responsible for our choices? Ryan Lehtinen sits down with Lance Lawson and Aaron Lutz to discuss God’s sovereignty, humanity’s freedom, and what this means for our lives.

Resources:

Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom by John M. Frame

Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God’s Will by Kevin DeYoung