How to Have a Home Church (Part 3) – Becoming the Body of Christ Together

Some books to read. Some videos to watch. But a question that should be asked of every person, whether or not we have the nerve to do it, is a different matter. You’re here in this fellowship. You’re going to have problems. Do you mind if someone comes and helps you over the hard spots, the hard places? And you know, I don’t care what that person answers. I will tell you the truth. The true answer is no. Don’t mess with my marriage. The best thing is for that person to seek help on their own. This is the thing we need to say to someone: You are going to have problems. Seek out someone. But in the name of sanity, don’t pick out the person you figure is going to agree with you the most. If we have the word eldership, we should go to people who are not just elders in age, but elders in maturity.

What about coming to me? Let’s tell you exactly what will happen if you come to me, whether you be an individual or a couple. We’re going to block off three hours. There’s nothing I hate worse than having a really good Christian counselor—I haven’t found one yet—but a really good Christian counselor. You make an appointment; it’s for 50 minutes, and just as you’re beginning to get somewhere, all right, finally, see you next week—eighty dollars as you walk out the door. See you in two weeks. I’m going on vacation. I’ll see you maybe in three weeks. In the meantime, you work on that.

Well, the church needs to extend help to families. Now, this is not all I have to say about this. I’m just touching on every one of these, and I’m listening to all of you. I want all of you to listen. I’ve got something else I want to mention here. Man, I have mentioned this to you folks earlier, but we’re doing this in a very tight circle here and healing in the church. And this time I’m going to share my feelings. I’m speaking now to the church right here. Let’s say you’ve got some dread disease, and the doctors told you you’ve got two years to live. In the meantime, we’ve got a bottle of poison here we want you to take every day. I think you all identify with that. There’s a lot of awful stuff they’re sending you.

Do not come to me and say, “Pray for my diseases,” and expect me to pray for you. I have a sign that says, “I will pray for your infirmities, but you will have to do what I tell you to do.” And I absolutely will not compromise on that. Within a few feet of this building—and I’m saying this knowing the angels are listening, but my views are not Pentecostal—within a few feet of this building, a man came down with lung cancer. I was inquired of, not asked, what’s your feeling about this? Would you go pray for this man with lung cancer? I said, has he stopped smoking? And they said, no. I said, well, I won’t go. I would walk in and say, will you quit smoking right here, right now, this day, completely cold turkey, in the presence of fasting and praying and the Lord’s people taking care of you to get through the next ten days? If he says yes, I will do that. But if he says no, I will say, then I will not pray for you. But Gene, that’s cruel. That’s awful. God might heal him. I don’t question that one bit, but I have a feeling that he’s going to come back needing to be re-healed from the same disease. It’s just like marriage. Are you willing to be helped?

You heard me say recently in the matter of healing, I stand with Paul of Tarsus. I heal. He said, I heal people. There are signs and wonders. Oh, by the way, I also have a full-time medical doctor (Luke) who follows me wherever I go. I think that the people of the first century had greater problems with nutrition than we do, had worse diseases than we’ve got, and sanitary conditions must have been horrible. So I’m speaking against myself when I say, you want to be healed? Then let’s find out what it is. Let’s let the doctors tell us, and whatever they tell you to do, do. But if there are other things you can do, are you willing to do them? If you are, and you really mean it, then we will put our hands on you, pray for you, and not stop until you are healed; we will keep looking for more and more things.

I have sent help to so many dear friends of mine by mail and by phone, hoping they would respond. Yet everyone says, “I want to be healed,” but they want it like a light switch. I want it free. I want it now. I want it complete and total. Then go to a Pentecostal preacher and let him pray for you. Do not expect to see him again as long as you live, and he won’t care whether you live or not because he won’t even know your name. But we are a community, and we are the church. We’ve got resources nobody else in this world has. We’ve got the church in a living, breathing reality. We will pray for…and we will practice…healing the saints. The church will decide how to do that. But here in this place, for as long as I am present, I will pray for… You know that 98% of all the things you go to the doctor for, you’re going to get well anyway. Mainly, you need to be reassured it’s not some dread Chinese or Eskimo disease that nobody else has ever had. The other 2%, sometimes we get healed, or mostly we die.

We’ll face any disease there is. I mean every one of them. There’s one person I will not pray for. And you might as well know this. Someone with a severed spine, and I’m going to tell you why. In all of human history, I’ve never heard of a completely severed spine being healed. I’m talking about a total cut of the spinal column, the spine itself. My faith fizzles out there. It may happen someday. It may have happened somewhere, but that’s the only place my faith doesn’t go. I’m prepared to believe anything in this world can be healed. I’ve got real good reasons for that. I’ve got two. I’m living, breathing proof of it, and I have seen living, breathing proof of it.

This week, friends came to visit us whom I hadn’t seen in 25 years. His name is Don. I think what Don did was one of the most beautiful things a Christian can do. He knew his business. He was diagnosed with liver cancer. It got into his lungs. It got into his intestines. His stomach was removed. Most of it was removed. It kept growing. He said, I never once asked God to heal me. I just kept telling Him, “I want Your will, and I know You’re sovereign.” We talked on the phone, and I did not pray for him. He didn’t ask me to, and I didn’t. He took a few treatments of chemo, which doesn’t ever cure anybody of anything, and there are exceptions, I know. Well, you know, he’s real skinny because he has almost no stomach to have. But his doctor told him one day, “You are cancer-free. You won the lottery.” A lot of other people were praying for him. I didn’t want to be taken out of that arena. I stood with Don and what he wanted. Probably one of the simplest things in this world you can ask somebody who’s sick is what he wants, what he wants to ask for.

I think that I’m going to mention one other thing. In times past, I have been very conscientious about adding new songs to the songbook. Many of them I wrote myself. By the way, I like my songs, and I’m going to tell you why. Because they don’t say I got saved and I’m going to go to heaven. I don’t think you can find a song like that. Most of the songs I have written are jubilant, and the rest of them are on the cross, which is not an easy thing to write about. I’m going to do my best to spend more time with the songs, but that means we’ve got to have a songbook. I’m sending this to some brothers in another country that have a funny accent, so let me talk to them. I’m not going to tell you the name of the man I want to talk to, but he bears the name of the first man who had a name.

The songs I gave you at the beginning are mostly opening songs. I gave you a songbook. I think there are four or five of them I put in there that were a little slow or maybe old-fashioned. These are opening songs. They’re rousing songs. They’re quickening songs. And we need them. Now, because I have nothing else to do (sarcasm), I think I’m going to try to volunteer myself as of today. I haven’t listened to Christian music like I used to. I’m not familiar with it. And there are wonderful songs to be… stolen…the melodies. I cannot read music; thank God for those of you who can. You should go ahead and learn Greek and Hebrew while you’re at it, because it’s very complicated.

Now I want to say this to you, all of you. Give us as many songs as you can, and really good, fast ones. Good ones. You know, one that I think was homegrown here- you can tell me where it is. Was it Fiddler on the Roof? How does that go? I don’t know who wrote that, but we could use a lot of songs like that. They’re so excellent. I’m going to try to do something. Every time we come to a topic in Scripture, no matter what it is, I’m going to either try to write a poem or a prayer and, if I can, a song, so that we will have something to either read in the meeting, sing in the meeting, or maybe somebody else can put it to words. Something we can read or sing, no matter what subject it is we come about. So we’re pressing in on that 2,000-page hymnbook that will cover virtually any topic we cover in the Scripture.

I’m open to you writing songs. It’s scriptural, making melodies, speaking to one another in song. What would that mean to any of you in this room, speaking to one another in psalms or hymns, spiritual songs? Okay. Listen to my words. Speaking to one another in songs. Speaking to one another in songs. Okay. I’m going to go a little bit further and say that someone actually…they don’t choose this in the meeting to do this, but know that someone in this room is maybe going through something. You say to that one specific person, why don’t you listen to this? “How firm a foundation, His omnipotent, unmovable hand.” Read it. Talk about it. Exhort it. Cry over it. Whatever. This comes back to how to meet. So we’re discussing songs.