A Medic Explores Miracles and Healings, Part 1
By Dr Mark Houghton MB, BS (Lond.), MRCGP
Do you long for healing? Are you seeking to be a better Christian healer to bring glory to Jesus? I am! So, I have set out here to help you see these things happen. I plan to regularly share ‘nuggets of gold’ that I dig up with the Lord’s help. You may not have the time to do a course on the subject, like I have, so I pray that these brief notes will help and inspire.
How I Want to Help You
By way of introduction, I have practised as a Christian doctor for over 40 years. However, chronic pain has afflicted my body for the past 27 of those years. Through prayer I have known outright miracles, lost healings, and countless partial healings, but the last year has been so much more encouraging!
Last summer, I took a break to explore miracles and healings in depth. God found me a wonderful Zoom group of Christians seeking the same answers; indeed, two of us are from the same church in Sheffield, UK. The rest come from throughout the UK and US. Along the way, we British have enjoyed learning Texan vernacular such as “y’all”.
Over a number of weeks, we read together Dr Roger Sapp’s excellent Biblical book, Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt. “Most people have enough faith to be healed. The problem is not faith but doubt,” explains Dr Sapp. As I responded, I saw healings in myself and others locally.
In late September, we began to explore the teaching of the long-established minister Andrew Wommack and his team from Charis Bible College. Roger’s colleague, Eric Hulin, has been guiding the discussions.
Doctors have a healthy scepticism of claims of healings or the latest miracle cures. So before I share anything with you, it will have been through careful verification on two levels. Firstly, is the teaching in line with classical Christianity, based on the whole counsel of the Bible? Secondly, where miracles are claimed, do they stand up to medical scrutiny as valid? Here are my take-home messages from the first session.
If We Ask, We Receive
Andrew is an experienced Christian minister in late middle age. He mixes firm Biblical teaching with engaging stories of people his ministry has helped. These are the instances where doctors like me begin to listen with narrowed eyes. We are trained to examine claims by the evidence alone, and we are sceptical of ‘wonder drugs’.
Jesus of Nazareth not only has more documented healings than any other character in history, but goes still further. He makes bigger promises based on his own name than any other figure before or since. After a long life of careful thought and personal observations, John, the friend of Jesus, recorded some of these promises in the New Testament letter known to us today as First John (1 John).
“This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us – whatever we ask – we know that we have what we asked of Him” (1 John 5:14, NIV). But how do we put that into practice? Is it really God’s will to heal me or you? If so, why isn’t life swamped with wonderful answers to prayer – or maybe it is? Right here in England it only took a little digging for me to discover many answers to Christian healing prayers in 2021, even to my own prayers. I’ve seen good evidence of blood pressure reduced, shoulders healed, long-term constipation cured, and an unborn baby with brain damage—to whom the doctors offered late abortion because the damage was so clear on the scan before birth—born neurologically healthy.
In Conclusion
After studying Jesus, who is the visible image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15), I am convinced that God wants us well far more than we could dream of. I am excited to continue this journey and learn even more.
