Healing In Essex

Well, what a great day I’ve had. I serve on the committee of the Essex Christian Healing Trust, and today was our AGM. You wouldn’t think an AGM made for a great day, would you? Well, we did the business – accounts, elections and so on – in thirty minutes over lunch. The rest of the day was a wonderful conference, led by John and Gillian Ryeland from the Christian Healing Mission in London.

Now I ought to declare a connection before going any further: Gillian is a friend of mine from teenage days. (Note, Gillian, if you read this – I didn’t say old friend!) We went to the same secondary school, and before she married an Anglican vicar she was a member of the same Methodist circuit where I grew up. We were in a circuit youth preaching team together, where I gained my first experience of leading worship and preaching. I have met her and John on and off over the years – usually at the Christian Resources Exhibition!

Today, John gave us a series of talks called ‘Meeting Jesus – Finding Healing’. You can find MP3s of these talks when John gave them on an earlier occasion here. Essentially, John’s teaching could be broken down into a rough structure, something like this. The first stage was to remind us thoroughly that God the Father, Abba, dearly loves us. He took various word images from Ephesians 1 to reinforce this.

The story I most liked was an illustration he gave of forgiveness. He said that many people pictured the way God takes away our sins as if they are a document he takes out of our hands and places in a filing cabinet. They are not on view, but when we sin again and are forgiven, another document goes into that cabinet. The file gets bigger, and God can bring out the whole file to accuse us. This, however, is contradictory to the scriptural notion that God ‘remembers our sins no more’. Rather than put our sins in a filing cabinet, he said, the office equipment God uses is a shredder. I love that: our sins are shredded.

Having begun with the Father’s love, John’s second stage was to raise our expectation that we may meet with Jesus and hear him speak to us. Quoting John 10, ‘My sheep hear my voice’, he encouraged us to be more optimistic that we can hear the voice of Jesus. Without wishing us to lack discernment, he said that many Christians are more afraid of deception than they are expectant that Jesus will speak to them.

That led to a third stage of interaction with Jesus. If he has spoken, what is our response? It puts the focus away from the problem and onto Christ. It takes us away from agonising over the will of God, because everything is a response to God. Christ sets the agenda.

All this he built into a prayer model that we can use for ourselves or to accompany someone who comes with a prayer request. Firstly using volunteers and later encouraging us to try this with each other in pairs, the prayer minister encourages the person with the need to dwell quietly on the love of God the Father for them. This was like brief, guided prayer. Then the prayer minister asks the person to sense where Jesus is. Some could describe that geographically (“He is right here”, indicating with a hand). Others did so by describing something they sensed or saw in their mind’s eye. Then the prayer minister encourages the person to hear what Jesus is saying to them. This is followed by considering how to respond to that.

I have described the method briefly. This is a summary of three talks, so about two hours’ worth of material. There are some obvious caveats to apply, but I found it a helpful, simple and liberating approach. I had two experiences where I had a clear encounter with Jesus, and he said significant things to me about a major crisis I have been facing over a period of months. I’m afraid I can’t give you any specifics here, because the nature of the issue is that it’s one I can’t discuss publicly. What I can say is, be encouraged. I hope this commends the Christian Healing Mission to you.