Will the Real Gospel Please Stand Up?

I just heard through the grapevine that someone I know has been "miraculously" healed of cancer. Great. I'm glad they've had the healing--cancer isn't fun for anyone, neither the family  nor the victim.  However, the thanks wasn't given to God for the healing. No.... thankfulness was given to prayer.  C'mon, I know you've heard this before, "That's the power of prayer!"  Never, 'That's the Power of God!!" So... if  our healing lies in the power of prayer, why do we need God?

Another misquoted phrase I've heard, when asked for clarification about this, is that "Our words can speak life or death!" Ah... so our words bring life or death upon people? And here all this time I thought our life came from Jesus Christ Himself.  How can folks not see how this premise is off? Do we give God the glory, or do we give our works the glory? Our prayers, our words, our work. See the difference in the focus? 

Of course, there's always the, 'In the name of Jesus I command you...." phrase. That doesn't always do a good job, because the demon often returns later on to harass us. Seems that if "the name of Jesus" was powerful, then whatever illness or demon we "commanded to be gone" would stay gone. Instead of going to the "name" of Jesus, why not come to Jesus himself?

Please don't get me wrong. I'm not against supernatural healing, I'm not against uplifting our brothers and sisters in prayer for encouragement. What I am against is us heaping the glory and credit onto ourselves instead of God. Usually there's so much emotion surrounded by whatever prayer got answered the way we want it, we have a tendency to gloat about the 'power of prayer',  instead of turning our eyes to the God Who worked it out. 

There's an old hymn that I refer to a lot--"Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus".   I wholeheartedly agree. The next time God does "something nice" for you, remember to give HIM the credit and not MAN's prayers.