Understanding God and His dealings with His Servants
Let me start from a personal experience. I saw my father blessed with an amazing healing gift from the Holy Spirit. He will pray for the sick and they will get healed. Some were healed immediately and others too were healed later. So it became a strong evident in his life, the workings or dealings of this healing grace on him.
But as he was traveling through this life, he fell sick along the line. We couldn’t figure out how to cure him. Medically it was a sickness with no cure. It has to be managed by his doctors or the medical profession. The church prayed for him yet he was not totally healed.
I had the opportunity to be around my father 24/7. Helping and supporting him because most of time he was very weak and couldn’t do anything for himself, even self-help activities were most of the time impossible to be done on his own. Then a lot of questions were running through my mind. He was weak and out of shape such that he couldn’t even pray on his sick bed. So I began to encourage him to pray and to talk to his heavenly father.
When he even regained a little strength physically, I saw him fast and pray on his sick bed. I thought I will now see results; God will definitely heal my father. So when the sickness remained and eventually got worse again. I ask my father is anything he will like me to know. Imagine a son asking the father such question because he can’t figure out a man carrying a healing grace of healing the sick, sick in bed. Where is that grace, why is it not working for him but it is working for others.
I literally ask my father to confess, if there is anything to confess. It was difficult, very difficult. My father looked at me and smiled. He said; I never wrong anybody, I have no skeletons to hide, I have never consulted any power or authority apart from the God of the Holy Bible. There is nothing to confess. But rather told me the things that God through him had done.
I felt so ashamed and embraced yet very confused. I know many people ask the same questions in different ways. Why is that a Pastor, a man of God or a woman of God prays for the sick to get healed and yet when he is sick he seeking medical attention.
In worse case scenario the same sickness or disease he prayed to God to heal someone is probably the same sickness or disease killing him.
An answer to aid our confession is that no true power or authority is meant to serve anyone’s individual needs or himself/herself. The position and authority conferred on any individual in any organization or institution is NOT meant to serve an individual need and purpose. But rather it is to serve others.
The authority of lecturer or tutor is not meant to serve the lecturer individual needs and purposes but rather to use that authority to serve the students. The authority of a medical doctor is meant to serve his patients. The establishment of any business is to serve is customers in exchange for money. The authority of a political power is meant to serve the citizens of the nation or country.
But because we have failed to uphold these ideals as a nation and in the entire world, the new norm which has become the order of the day is to seek power or authority and use it benefit oneself but not serve others. Gone are the days people will serve in high places of authority and Power and make their exit with no personal gains or rewards except their monthly rewards and pensions and the amazing impact on the lives of people they served. Now it is a taboo to be in a position of authority not use it to benefit oneself.
The authority invested in man by man can be perverted for selfish gains easily. But the authority and the grace of God invested in any man by God Himself cannot easily perverted to serve a selfish agenda.
I therefore came to the conclusion that the grace of healing that God has placed upon my father’s life was not for him to use it to serve himself but to serve others. I knew that on the sick bed if my father had an opportunity to pray for anybody who was sick, the Person will have been made whole.
God invest His grace, His Power and Authority in a man for that man to use it to serve the needs of others and not oneself. So the grace of God, His Power, His Authority that is working in the life of any man of God is not meant to serve the needs of that man but rather to serve others.
Pastor Henry Owusu-Mintah 