Healing comes from Faith

Scripture:
A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, "Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean." Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. "I am willing," he said. "Be clean!" Immediately he was cured of his leprosy. (Matthew 8:2, 3)

For years I sat under a theology that believes that miracles do not happen today. However, over the last couple of months, believing that "faith comes from hearing the Word of God," I have been studying the scriptures asking God to anoint me with the power of the Holy Spirit so that my faith would grow and I would have divine understanding about miracles that would lead people to Christ. One of the first things I did was to record a number of scriptures about healing on to a CD so that I could listen to them in my car while I drive. This passage in Matthew was one of them. Now I have never seen what leprosy looks like so I researched the Internet a bit. It did not take too long to find many pictures of people suffering from this disease. http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=leprosy&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2

One of the first ministry websites that I found was a ministry that built homes for lepers. http://www.indchurch.org/Leprosy-colony.html This is a wonderful ministry of compassion. Then I began looking for testimonies of lepers that were healed. I found lots of websites that "explained" this passage of scripture and many other websites about testimonies regarding all kinds of miracles. But I only found one place where it actually said that a leper was healed. http://www.breadsite.org/wpj96012.htm (There might be more I only looked quickly.)

There are two things I see in this passage: 1) The leper demonstrated his faith in Jesus' power to heal him by going to where Jesus was and 2) Jesus demonstrated his compassion for the leper by healing him instantly. The same seems to be true with the centurian who went to Jesus to ask that his servant be healed, but this time, the faith of the centurian was strong that Jesus did not even go and touch the servant and he was healed. (Matt. 8:5-10) It is obvious that faith is very important if we want to see miracles of healing. Jesus also said, "if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." (Matt. 17:20) I can't move mountains, can you? Even if we look at this passage figuratively, which most theologians do, I still can't move mountains.

What does this lead me back to? To the Word of God and that the more I saturate my life with it the more my faith will grow, and the more my faith grows, the more I will have the power of God to accomplish the will of God. Jesus said,"You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it." (John 14:14) I know I want more faith to see God do great things in my life.

Request:
That God would grow our faith so that He can accomplish great things in, and through, our lives as we continue to spend time saturating ourselves in God's Word

Prayer:
Heavenly Father, we come to you as little children desiring to see our faith grow so that you can do miracles through us and lead many to know that you are the only Savior who can help them in this world and the only Savior who can get them to heaven. Help us to get rid of those insignificant things that consume so much time in our lives and fill us with your Word so that our faith grows. In Jesus' name. Amen