People Need and Want the Lord's Help

Pentecost-Come Holy Spirit

Despite the marvelous advances in medicine, surgery and physical treatments of all kinds people who are ill still want and need the Lord's help. I suffered a near fatal heart problem several years ago. I am very thankful for the doctors, nurses and technicians as well as the medical researchers who saved my life. They have kept me alive by medical means for almost ten years.

But I have also relied on prayer, fellowship and God's presence to keep me healthy. My heart damage has improved through prayer. Men who know they are loved last longer after a heart attack. PTL for Karen and my family as well as my Christian fellowship.

It is easy to think that because we have advanced so far in understanding medical interventions that spiritual and emotional interventions are no longer necessary. Both personal experiences and medical research indicate otherwise. By thinking humans are machines we make things worse.

Dr. Tracy A. Balboni, of the Harvard Radiation Oncology Program, studied 230 patients with terminal cancer to find out their spiritual needs. Her findings, published in the February 2007 edition of Journal of Clinical Oncology, found that that 88% of terminal cancer patients said religion was at least somewhat important to them.

About half of the patients had been visited by clergy. Yet Balboni's research also suggests that hospitals, doctors and even religious communities fail to support the spiritual needs of their cancer patients at the end of life.

Almost (47%) reported that their spiritual needs were minimally or not at all supported by a religious community, and 72% reported that their spiritual needs were supported minimally or not at all by the medical system.

The terminally ill, being at peace with God is only marginally second in importance to the desire to ease physical pain.

"This report is a strong statement of a seriously unmet need in the vast majority of patients in our care" wrote Dr. Balboni. ParacleteLetter@yahoogroups.com; on behalf of; Stationedhere [chuck@stationedhere.com]

We are humans created in the image of God who desperately need human contact and spiritual transcendence in the midst of an illness. Is your community reaching out consistently to people in need?

Pentecost Sunday

Today is Pentecost Sunday, a time we celebrate God's presence to the point that the people were transformed from a separated, individualistic crowd to a unified, spiritually alive community. People in pain feel separated from God, themselves and the church. Make sure you bring them into your fellowship.

My last blog mentioned that some churches cry prayer, prayer but do not really pray for healing. Is this double mindedness? Can that produce anything but confusion, doubts and fear in God's people?

People need to trust God and take Him at His word. The Bible is true but truth separated from experince will always remain in doubt to honest people.

Preaching on inerrancy but offering reasons why the Bible doen's really men that any more is an awful way to live. We call such an approach, "Bait and switch". We sell one product but deliver another. On Pentecost why not preach exactly what the Holy Spirit inspired instead of watering it down with secular humanism?