On Prayer (Gen 20:17-18)

“Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, his wife and his slave girls so they could have children again, for the Lord had closed up every womb in Abimelech’s household because of Abraham’s wife Sarah.”  (Gen 20:17-18)

In the summer of 1881, AB Simpson found through personal experience that God can miraculously heal.  His personal healing would become a foundation stone in the movement that he began just 6 years later. Today, that movement has within it 6 million believers and works in 80 countries around the world.  It still holds to a central tenet of Christ as Healer.

That doesn’t mean however, that all of the members of that movement (now called the Christian and Missionary Alliance) are, or have been, divinely healed.  Indeed, most have not.  So what stops them from receiving such healing?  Is it that they just don’t have enough faith?  Is it that they haven’t prayed the right words?  Is it that they haven’t had someone else pray for them, or that the people praying for them aren’t godly enough?   What is the secret to praying healing for someone else?  Such questions come bubbling to mind when we consider the supernatural and our own lack of experience.  All the while, the answer to such questions is right in front of us in the Bible. 

In Abraham’s day, anyone who had control of large flocks and a large family was effectively a man to be reckoned with – and if such a man shows up in your neck of the woods, one way to make sure you have an ally on your hands instead of an enemy is by taking a wife from his family.  This is exactly what Abimelech does.  Now Sarah would’ve been about 90, so he might well have married her by adding her to his household for political reasons, but not have planned to immediately consummate the marriage.  Some time passes, and Abimelech notices that his harem is not producing children.  Perhaps he himself had some problems in this respect  - we are not told that, just that later he is healed (v17).   Abraham prayed, and Abimelech and his household were subsequently healed.  That’s a great summary, but it’s not the whole story. 

The whole story is that Abimelech was only healed after Abraham testified about God’s own work in his life – how He feared God and how God had told him to go (v11-13), and after that, when Abraham prayed.  Effectively, Abraham brought him the blessing of God as God had instructed in Gen 12:3.  But Abraham only brought that blessing under duress, and only after God had divinely prepared Abimelech and his household to receive it.  Indeed, as long as Abraham acted out of fear, and spoke only of what was his (his wife and his rather unique way of seeing his relationship with his wife), there was no blessing – only trouble.  It is when Abimelech confronts Abraham with divinely given words of knowledge of the prophet’s own disobedience & lack of faith that the path to restoration begins. 

It was God who gave those words of knowledge.  It was God who told Abraham to go to start with.  It was God who long ago commissioned Abraham and spoke the blessing to him by which he might bless others.  It was God who told Abraham to pray, and it was God who gave Abimelech the words that Abraham should pray.

Simpson wrote, “There is no power in prayer unless it is the prayer of God Himself. Unless you are in contact with Christ the living Healer, there is no healing. Christ's healing is by His own Divine touch. It is not prayer cure, but Christ-healing.”  (The Fourfold Gospel)   It is not the prayer that Abraham prays that heals.  It is the will of God that moves the providence of God to move us to pray to God that moves the Spirit of God to exercise the power of God that heals.  Such is the mystery of prayer.