You do not have to face your suffering alone, because God weeps with you in your pain. Trust that He desires to heal you and bring restoration to your brokenness. Come forward today and let Him touch your life with His compassion.
Welcome to the Real Church podcast. Our mission is for you to know the love of Jesus and live out your God given purpose. Now join us and listen in to the latest message from pastor David John Phillips.
I'm really excited about this word today, you guys. It's been building in my spirit, and I feel the Holy Spirit in it. I wanna thank pastor David for asking me to to preach today. You know, since the moment I met pastor David and Courtney, they have served me. They have served my family, and I've seen them radically serve this church.
So I'm I'm so thankful for them. I'm thankful for their friendship and their leadership. If you guys don't know, it's pastor appreciation month. So if you haven't shown them appreciation, I just wanna encourage you to do that. They didn't get to be here today, which is I'm just glad that they have some time away to be with their family.
They're just doing great things for the kingdom. So I'm thankful that I get to take the spot, you know, take this day. When I was asked to preach, was really surprised, and I still am. But I think it just proves that God wants and desires to use anyone and everyone. And just keep that in your heart, he wants to use you.
The question that I chose because we're we're gonna continue doing this series called "Asking for a Friend", and we've been doing it for a little while. So if you haven't been doing watching it along with us, just know that what it's happening is people in the church, we ask questions about the Bible, about God, things that we were wondering, and from there, there were messages that were built off of that. So the question that I chose, it's gonna propel us into a deeper understanding of the heavenly father. And I'm so thankful that this question was asked. It's so good to know the father, and the Bible says, Seek and you will find.
So we're going to seek him and find him. So the question for today is, Why do children have to suffer? Cancer, sicknesses, evil. This question, it reveals the heart of the person who asked it, which is a compassion for children, and I think it's really beautiful. I think a lot of us can relate to this question.
And maybe we've asked this and we followed up this question with, why doesn't God stop sickness? Or why doesn't why doesn't God stop bad things from happening? And I've even seen people run from God over this question. They've said, I can't believe in a God that would allow children to suffer. That doesn't sound like a loving father.
This is a really deep question, so we're gonna go deep. Hold on tight. I'm gonna start with the story of Lazarus. It's in John-11, and I'm gonna kinda get us, through the premise of the story. But turn to John-11 if you have your Bibles, and we'll pick up in verse 12.
But let me just set the scene. Mary and Martha, they had just sent word to Jesus. They said, Lazarus, our brother is sick. And Jesus, he responds to this news by saying, this sickness will not end in death. This sickness will not end in death.
And he stays in the town where he is for 2 more days before he decides to go to the town where Lazarus is. And when he decides to go, he tells the disciples, this is in verse 11, so you can follow along. Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to wake him up. His disciples replied, Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better. *Jesus* had been speaking of his death, but the disciples thought he meant natural sleep.
So then, he told them plainly, Lazarus is dead. And for your sake, I'm glad I was not there, so that you may believe, but let us go to him. I love the patience that Jesus shows the disciples here. He has to tell them plainly. He's constantly giving hints that he's the savior of the world, and the disciples who lived with him, they still have to have faith and believe.
They're given this option. Every once in a while, the disciples, they show just how truly unaware they are, and Jesus has to tell them plainly. And even though the disciples, they lived with Jesus and they were given this option, they could have said, you know, he was just sleeping. They're given this choice to believe that there's really a miracle that's happening. Jesus is going to raise this man from the dead.
I'm sorry. I gave away the end of the story already. We'll get there. But he raises this man from the dead, and he's telling them he's not sleeping. He's actually dead.
So with every miracle, there's this option that you have to believe that it was really a miracle. And I think we do this with the word coincidence. We say, you know, I I thought of somebody today, and they were on my heart, so I decided to give them a call. And you know, they needed a friend in that moment. They needed prayer in that moment.
Maybe you stop somebody from committing suicide. There's there's things that happen that you wanna call a coincidence. Give God glory for that. Some of you, you've seen these miracles. And Jesus does big ones like raising a man from the dead.
It's a that's a giant. You know, you think that you wouldn't miss that, but he gives you the opportunity to say that he's sleeping, and you have to stand on that and give glory to God for that. Give glory to God for things that you've called a coincidence. So let's hop back into the story. When Jesus arrives, he has realized that Lazarus, he's been in the tomb for 4 days.
This Lazarus is dead. He's been in the tomb for 4 days. And Mary and Martha, they go to Jesus and they say, if you would have been here, he wouldn't have been dead. He wouldn't have died if you would have been here. And when Jesus saw them weeping, it says he was "deeply moved" in spirit and troubled.
Verse 34, we're gonna pick back up. *John-11:34*, Jesus asks, where have you laid him? Come and see, Lord, they replied. And then it says, verse 35, **Jesus wept**. It's the shortest and 1 of the most powerful verses in the whole Bible, in my opinion.
Why did Jesus weep? Why did it say that he was deeply troubled? I mean, Jesus, the son of God, unsure of the outcome of the situation? He had already stated the sickness would not end in death. Was he unsure about that?
It goes on to say that Jesus was deeply moved when he came to the tomb, and he had the stone taken away. He prayed to God, and then he called out in a loud voice, Lazarus, come out. And out walked Lazarus, raised from the dead, wrapped in his burial dressings. Jesus was right all along. This was not going to end in death.
Then why did he weep? Why was he deeply moved? You know, if I were to show up as Jesus in that moment, I would have said, you know, guys, stop crying. It's fine. I've got this figured out.
Give me 5 minutes tops. You're worried like, it's gonna be okay. Stop stop your crying. There's no worries. Did you know that when someone you love is sick, **God cries with you**?
Yes. He does.
And then he desires to heal them. That's his desire. When someone you love dies, God cries with you. And then he he desires to raise them from the dead, either here on earth or in heaven to be with him eternally. That's God's desire, and he cries with you.
*Jesus* cries with you. God loves the person that you're praying for way more than you do. Way way more than you do. He has compassion and love for them. And Jesus cries because his empathy.
He understands what it means to be separated from the 1 that you love. *God* cries when he's separated from you. He hated that his children, that they had to suffer for their own sins, that they had to die for their own sins. He hated that our sins separated us from him, his love for us, his compassion. He said, I He he sent his son to die for us.
He sent his son to die for our sins so that what we deserved, we wouldn't get. So that we would be together with him and so that we wouldn't have to suffer. Isaiah-53:5 says, but he was wounded for our transgressions. Transgressions just means our sins against the law. He was bruised for our iniquities or our immoral acts, the chastisement or punishment, for our peace was was upon him, and by his stripes, we were healed.
See, Jesus took lashings before he went to the cross. Those those whips that he took, those stripes in his back, they healed us. Amen. So if God is compassionate and he sent his son so that we could be free, why do children still suffer? Let's go deeper.
I had this great desire to have a child, and I have him. He is 3 months old, little Isaiah hanging out with his aunt Sarah over there. And if I would have said before, if I would have said, you know, I only want a child that doesn't cry and doesn't poop, I don't want a child that keeps me up at night, I don't want a baby that gets sticky, they just they get sticky, I don't want that, I would be left with a doll. I'd be left with a toy doll. That's the only way to get a a baby that's like that.
But is there any love between me and this baby? I mean, I might love the baby, but or doll, but does the doll love me? No. Is there a relationship there? No.
There's nothing there. So do I even have a real baby after that? No. And if and if real life, if I were to physically force myself on my child who I love to not cry or poop, not only would that not be love, but that would be wickedness. Yeah.
You can't have love without free will. And we're the same way. Without God giving us this real choice for a relationship, this real choice for sin or freedom, we are dolls. We're robots. That's all we are.
We're we're not real children. But he loves us, and he has a real relationship with us. So so this free will that we have has allowed sin into the world. Sin that has repercussions, it affects us and it affects our neighbor. Sin that allows *suffering* in this world.
And for generations, people have chosen sin again and again and again. And for generations, *God* has been waiting with his arms wide open, ready for you, ready for you to to say, I'm done with this. I want the relationship, and in turn, he takes the suffering. So we've questioned, you know, why why doesn't God intervene in a big way? We wonder why God isn't showing compassion or mercy in our situation.
But the reality is, is that God is the author of the *compassion* that's within you. We were made in the image of God. So that empathy, that compassion, that that sadness that we feel for someone, that passion that we feel for that person, that's a godly attribute. That's that that you got from God. He wrote that inside of you.
He sent that to you. So when you're wondering why God isn't intervening and you're feeling compassion, chances are he's asking you to intervene because he's placed it inside of you. It's so important to know God's compassion for you, and we have to know the will of the father. *Jesus gives a really great example of this when he teaches the disciples the Lord's prayer*. Let's just look at the beginning of that really quick.
It says, hallowed be your name. Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your "will be done". Alright. So Jesus is telling us to pray the will of of the father.
That's important. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So there's something that we learned from this. And Jesus doesn't tell you to pray things that are light. Right?
We're not just saying words. This is a powerful prayer that that Jesus is telling us to pray. He's saying we need to be participants in praying the will of the father. That's something we participate in. It's saying that that God's will is always happening in heaven.
It's saying that that God's will is not always happening on earth, but it's his will, it's his desire that it would happen on earth, because we need to participate in praying heaven down to earth. So if earth doesn't look like heaven, then the will of the father is not happening on earth. And that's when we step in, that's when we start acting on that. And I wanna make this really clear. Do you think that there's any pain in heaven?
No. Do you think that there's any suffering? No. Any sickness? No.
Any confusion? No. There's none of those things. You know that already. There's none of those things.
And if Jesus was on, while Jesus was on earth, he said, I only do what the father is doing. I only do what what the father wants. And what did he do? He healed everyone. That's the will of the father, is to heal everyone.
So when he was ministering on earth, he saw the crowds come and he said, look, look, the "harvest is plentiful", but the laborers are few. And he said, I must go so the Holy Spirit, the helper, can come. And that's an important thing because we have the Holy Spirit inside of us so that we can be the laborers, so that we can partake, we can be a part of the harvest. We need to be harvesting in Jesus. He is the head, and we are the body.
It says we are the body of Christ. So Jesus has compassion. He has so much compassion for you. Yeah. And we, being the body, are the doers, the movers.
We go out with the *compassion* that God has given you. So we're gonna shift focus now just a little bit. This powerful question of wondering why children are suffering, it's led us to pursue praying heaven to earth. That's what it's done. So if you've had this question in your heart You know, I should say when.
When you have this question of compassion in your heart, because I know you've had it. I know you've looked at that person and thought, why are they suffering? Why do they have to struggle? So when you have this heart of compassion, I want you to know what to do with it. And I want to give you the tools and the confidence to act on that compassion that you've been given by God.
So at the end of the message, we are going to pray heaven to earth. I grew up in a church where we prayed for healing and miracles all the time. And we saw healing and miracles all the time. I personally, I struggled with asthma for quite a few years. And when I say I struggled with asthma, I mean I almost died multiple times from asthma attacks, and it was really brutal.
And I prayed that Jesus would heal me, and I couldn't run and pray I couldn't run and play with my siblings like I wanted to. And 1 night, I went to a healing ministry night at my church, and I got prayer, and I felt my lungs open for the first time. Yeah. I felt the Holy Spirit. I felt my lungs open.
And and I happened to This is 1 of those coincidences that I give glory to God for. I happened to have a doctor's appointment the next day where he confirmed that I was healed. Amen. That's right. This is this is a big deal, guys.
Amen. And I was I was completely healed, and he didn't know what to say. He was like, I don't know what to tell you. You you don't have asthma anymore. This isn't something you were supposed to grow out of.
Like, he he didn't know what to say. He's like This young girl who had to take medicine day and night, I had the big machine with the hose and the mask and everything, I was going through asthma attacks where I was losing consciousness, and my parents were trying and praying and trying to figure out what was happening. And I didn't have to take medication from that day ever again. I was done. Done with it.
Amen. That's right. That's right. So from that day, I joined the healing ministry, and I was at church. I was at church.
I was praying for people, and I was in the presence of God most days of the week. Now, that doesn't mean that I'm this great Christian. What that means is I have a really great mom. I have really great parents. They got their kids to church.
They got us there. So I've prayed for a lot of people, and some of them were healed immediately, some of them were healed when the next guy prayed for them, some of them were healed as they went, and some of them were healed in their heavenly bodies when they died. But I know that I'm called to pray for heaven to come to earth. I know I'm called to pray that healings would happen now, that miracles would happen now. That is what I pray that's what I believe for.
I wanna ask that you'd put your faith in the Bible, which is the truth, and not experiences that you let cover the gospel. Alright? I've heard people say these lies that they think fit their experiences. And some of these I've even heard come out of church, and it's not okay, but I wanna address these. Things like, I've heard it might not be God's will, or you're just not a good enough Christian.
*God* is using this to teach you a lesson. God is having you go through this, so you can help someone else go through this. Where did Jesus ever say this in the Bible? Yeah. Right?
He he didn't. Jesus would never say something like that. If it's not in the Bible, we're not gonna create a theology out of it. I'm not gonna rewrite the Bible. I'm gonna pursue living it.
That's what we're doing here. Amen. Amen. So we have this long list of reasons that I've heard of why people don't get healed, and that very easily gets turned into the "gospel of works" when this is the gospel of grace. I've heard people say, you've got to pray harder.
What? Yeah. *Jesus* said, Lazarus, come out. That's a 3 word prayer. Pick up your mat and walk.
Sixth. Sixth word prayer. Say to this mountain, move. Yeah. And if you believe it, it be cast into the sea.
That's a 1 word prayer. This is not about the amount of paragraphs in your prayer. You guys are very capable of this if you're like, I don't know how to pray. Move. That's a prayer.
You could say 1 word. That's totally great. So we've prayed for someone, and if they die anyway, we add another reason to the long list of reason why we think God's not going to heal them, and that's man's understanding, which the Bible calls foolishness. If *Jesus* was in the room right now and someone needed healing, he laid his hand on them, would they be healed? Yes.
Yeah. You can't even question that. Yeah. And maybe you say, well, I'm not Jesus. *Romans-8*, the same power that conquered the grave lives in you.
This is the power that stepped on the devil. This is the power that rose Jesus Christ from the day the grave. This is the same power that conquered it all. Amen. That lives inside of you.
Amen. That's right. Preach it. Yeah. Another lie that I've heard is, you know, you gotta be a good Christian.
I I gotta be a good Christian to receive healing. So my family and friends and I, we would go out and we would do what we call treasure hunts. And all that means is that we'd go out into the public and we'd be intentional about praying for people. And my brother and I, we partnered up. We were at the mall.
I was probably 12 or 13 at the time, he was probably 16 or 17 at the time. And we saw somebody with their arm in a sling. We went up to him, Hey, what happened to your arm? Oh, it's my shoulder. I heard it playing softball or baseball or something.
I'm out for the season. He was so sad about it. And he's there with 3 other guy friends. They're looking at us all like, What are these strangers doing talking to us? We say, I believe Jesus wants to heal you.
He loves you, and we'd like to pray for you. My brother says, Hey, can I lay my hand on your shoulder? Let me just pause there. That's appropriate. The Bible talks about laying on of hands to pray for healing.
That's just an appropriate thing to ask. And if they say no, it's not a big deal. But we believe that the laying on of hands is important. Jesus does it. He laid his hands on everyone, and they were healed.
So that's just something that we do. But we ask for permission, and my brother lays his hand on this guy's shoulder, and the other guys are are stepping back as we're stepping forward. They're like, let's not do this right now. And we pray a simple prayer. Jesus, we love you.
Pray that you'd heal this guy's shoulder. In Jesus' name, amen. And as we say amen, they're like, alright, thanks. Bye. They're trying to get away, and we say, wait, how does it feel?
Does it feel any different? And the guy looks at us like we're crazy. And he's like And he yells the loudest swear word. It echoes down the hallway of them all. He's going, go way.
No blanking way.
No. I couldn't do this.
And he's telling us all the reasons why he shouldn't be allowed to
do this. I went to the doctor.
They said oh my goodness. His friends are freaking out. They think they've just experienced some voodoo crazy thing.
They're like, we gotta get out of here. We gotta go.
And the other guy's like, I've They're trying to run away. He's like, I just experienced the love of Jesus. He wants to run but doesn't know which direction. Do you think that this guy was a good enough Christian to accept this healing? It says Christ died for you.
He took those whips for you while you were still a sinner. Yes. Amen. That love he has for you is while you were still a sinner. He wants, he desires to heal you.
*Mark-16:17* says, and these signs will follow those who believe. It says that they will "lay hands on the sick" and they will recover. I used to work at a grocery store called Meijer. It's in Michigan where I'm from. It's kind of like an upscale Walmart, is what I can explain it as.
But I worked in the tech department, and I loved working there because people linger in the tech department. They're looking at the products, they might have some questions. And when it wasn't too busy, I would make a point to go up to people and ask, Hey, do you have any pain in your body? I was 17, and I'd go up to a little 17 year old. I was littler then.
And I'd say, Hey, do you have any pain in your body? And they'd say, Yeah, you know, so many people are struggling with pain in their butt. Yeah, why are you asking? My back hurts. And I feel like that was a really common thing I got to pray for there.
You know, I prayed for my coworkers. We were walking around on cement floors all day, and their backs were hurting right then in that moment. They were struggling. And I laid my hands on them. Asked permission.
Hey, say a simple prayer. And when I got done praying, their back didn't hurt anymore. Amen. Praise the Lord. Amen.
Do you think that my 17 year old career in the in the grocery store gave me the status that I needed to see that healing. No. That power that lives inside of me, power that lives inside of you is Jesus Christ. Amen. There is no miniature Jesus Christ in me.
There's no miniature Holy Spirit for me, for you, for your kids. So we're gonna pray for healing in a moment, and I I need you to know that it's important that you participate in asking for prayer. You may be hearing a voice right now. This is what happens. You may be hearing a voice that says, you know, it's not very important that I struggle with whatever it is that I struggle with this back pain, or, I only have migraines once a week or once a month.
It's not a big deal. I can deal with it. Or, My doctor has me on the right meds. I have nothing against your doctor. I have nothing against doctors.
But I know that God has compassion for you, and he wants to heal you. That's what I know. I was in the healing ministry, and at this point, I was 11 or 12 years old, and we got a piece of paper with a name on it. This is kind of how we go through the process there. And we'd go and we'd ask the Lord, a group of us, Lord, what do you have for this person?
And the Lord talks to me in pictures a lot, and it kind of works like this. If I said, hey, picture a "pink elephant", you'd have that, what I would call, in your mind's eye. You can picture a pink elephant. So that's how the Lord talks to me. And I say, Lord, what do you have for this person?
And I get a picture of a ballerina in pointe shoes. Cool, Lord. What does that mean? And I just felt like, no, you just gotta share that. You just gotta share that.
And this young girl comes in, she's the same age as me, 11 or 12, and it's her and her mom. And we all share the things that we felt the Lord had for her. And when I share mine, she starts weeping, and her mom starts weeping. And she takes her feet out of her these these giant shoes, giant white shoes, and her feet are deformed. And she's walking on the bones of her ankle, and the skin is coming off on both sides.
They were so deformed. And she said she has to wear her shoes all the time because it's the only thing keeping it from getting worse faster than it is. I have to wear these all the time, and all I want to do is dance. All I wanna do is dance. So we prayed for her.
She had to put her feet back in her shoes because she said, I'm not allowed to have them out too long. Put her feet back in. And when we prayed and she took her feet back out, they were **perfect feet**. Perfect feet. Absolutely beautiful feet.
A year after that, I sang at a conference, and she was the dancer. I saw that image take place an entire year later, where she was in "pointe ballet shoes" dancing. The Lord not only desires to heal you, he's placed desires in you that require you to not be in pain. He desires that you don't have back pain when you play with your grandkids. He desires that you sleep through the night without your hip waking you up.
He desires that you're free from asthma and cancer and headaches. He desires that you're free from your suffering. So we're gonna we're gonna pray for healing, and if the worship team can come up and just make some nice, strumming or something, we're gonna get into worship. But I want to I wanna pray for healing. So I I feel it's very important that we include children in this moment.
So I'm just going to say, 4 through 14. That's what I'm going to say. And I know that there's just a few kids in here. So what I want to have happen is if you're sitting with your parents, parents look at your kids, kids look at your parents, make eye contact. Parents, if you're comfortable with having your kids lay hands on someone to pray for healing for them, I wanna ask that you'd have them come up front.
And this is just really important. See, I grew up in this. I grew up praying for people, and I learned that I have the same faith that moves mountains. I learned that the Holy Spirit that lives inside of you is the same in me. That's what I learned.
So if you've got some kids that wanna come up, that would be great. Just have them come right up here. I'm like, I and the kids. I know I'm putting them on the spot. There's no judgment if you don't want your kid to come up and pray, but I would love to have you come.
Yay. Awesome. Come right up here. I just wanna talk to you. I wanna talk to you.
Hi. I'm Mariah. What's your name? Lucy. Lucy.
Nice to meet you. Okay. Lucy is gonna pray with us. Awesome. So what we're gonna do is stand up if you need healing, and then if you're okay with someone laying hands on you, raise your hand.
And if you're not okay, then then and you need healing, then put your hand on yourself. So if you don't want somebody touching you but you need healing, you can lay hands on yourself. That's totally fine. But if you are comfortable with somebody laying hands on you to have prayer, raise your hand really high. Alright.
So just go and find somebody, and we're just gonna pray a simple prayer. I'm gonna make this really user friendly. So if anybody else, any other kid wants to join us to pray, you can still come on up. If you need a buddy to come with you, that's okay. I don't bite.
I promise. Alright. So if you're close by, somebody with their hands raised. Keep your hand up if you're okay with somebody hands on you because the people around that are comfortable to lay hands can do that. So if you're next to somebody with their hand raised and you wanna pray for them, go ahead and "lay hands on them".
And we're gonna pray a simple prayer. So an example of that is, "In Jesus' name", be healed. So you can pray that prayer. You can say, in Jesus' name, be healed. And before we pray, I want you to think to yourself, how is my pain level?
If you have pain in your body right now, on a scale of 1 to 10, how does it feel? How does it feel? Say, I'm at a 7, or I'm at a 4, or where are you at? And then pray just that simple prayer, in Jesus' name, be healed. Make sure that I see somebody with their hand raised.
If you need to go across the whole place to to lay your hand on somebody, that's awesome. You can do that. That. Alright. So if you have pain in your body and you got prayer, I want you to check it out and see where you're at now.
Does it feel any different? And if it feels any different, wave your hand at me so that we can see. Wave your hand. Check it out. See how it feels.
Yeah. You feel a difference? Can I ask what what hurt where you had pain? You had your spine reconstructed. What was your pain before?
We prayed. Like an 8. Where is it now? About a 5. That's awesome.
Praise the Lord. We're gonna pray again just a simple prayer. In Jesus' name, be healed. In Jesus' name, be healed. If anybody else, too, wave your hands again if you notice any difference.
If you have any pain in your body and you've noticed a difference. Maybe you haven't. Let's just pray again 1 more time. In Jesus' name, healed. Awesome, guys.
We are going to go into a time of worship. I'm so thankful for the change that we've seen. Let's give glory to God for all that he's done. Yeah. For all that he desires to do.
He *desires* to heal you. He has compassion for you. Let's just take some time in the Lord's presence.
Thanks for listening to the Real Church podcast. If you have questions, comments, or I'd like to get to know us, be sure to check us out on social media by searching Real Church Clearwater or visit us online at www.realchurch.us. If you'd like to play a part in what we're doing, you can do so right where you are. Your prayers are powerful and effective. You can also be a part through giving.
Go to realchurch.us and click the give button. Whether you're praying, giving, or serving with Real Church, you are playing a part in every life being changed. Thank you. Until our next podcast, be blessed. We'll see you next time.