As Florida Healings Continue, Charisma Editor Warns Against Wrong Attitudes

Teresa Neumann : May 4, 2008
J. Lee Grady - Faith News Network

"God wants a holy breakout. He intends for all believers to lay hands on the sick and to restore the broken. The same Holy Spirit who anointed Jesus to cleanse lepers has empowered us with a healing touch. Please don't sit on your hands during this crucial hour."

REPORTER'S NOTE: Although there will always be some who go to great lengths to dissect what makes a "true" revival, how many healings constitute a true healing outbreak, etc., John 9:24-34 tempers that tendency, serving as a check and balance in the age-old tension of liberty vs. legalism. In that Scripture, in which a man born blind is healed by Jesus, he puts everything into perspective when grilled by the Pharisees with the simple words, "You don't know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes...If this man were not from God he could do nothing." Indeed, when Jesus discovers that the formerly blind man had been interrogated by the faithless Pharisees, He accuses them of being spiritually blind. Lord help us to be, as J. Lee Grady exhorts us, "willing vessels" in this crucial hour, even at the cost of appearing foolish. -Teresa Neumann

J. Lee Grady, editor of Charisma magazine, has posted a timely message on Faith News Network on the subject of healing. He begins his editorial with a reminder of what exactly Jesus disliked about the Pharisees: primarily their hyper-legalism. "They stayed away from women, children, dead bodies, lepers, beggars, sinners, blood, shellfish, pigs and?especially?people of other ethnic backgrounds," writes Grady. "They didn't want 'unclean' Gentiles to corrupt them."

When Jesus traveled to the Decapolis region and healed a deaf and dumb villager (possibly a Gentile), Grady says, "Jesus broke every religious rule in the Pharisees' hand-washing manual when He performed this miracle....Jesus was making a point. He didn't come to earth to spend His time washing His hands inside a synagogue. His message was not about what not to eat or who to avoid. He came to touch dirty people. He came to cleanse lepers, heal bleeding women, hold children, eat with tax collectors and forgive prostitutes."

"Too often," adds Grady, "we fall under the influence of the 'religious sanitation police.' Religious systems despise healing, and they certainly don't endorse touching the addicted, the diseased, the demonized or the dying...True holiness invades sickness, sin and shame?and overcomes it."

Concerning current revivals with manifested healings, Grady concludes, "God wants a holy breakout. He intends for all believers to lay hands on the sick and to restore the broken. The same Holy Spirit who anointed Jesus to cleanse lepers has empowered us with a healing touch. Please don't sit on your hands during this crucial hour."