Phil Strout, national director of the Vineyard, says the Vineyard teaching of “the already and the not yet” can explain why sometimes our healing prayers don’t work.
“For example, when we pray for sick people like we’re commissioned to do and they’re not healed,” Strout says in the video. “I don’t know about you, but … many people that I pray for don’t get healed. Some of them do. How do I explain that? Do I blame it on the people who don’t get healed? Do I blame it on them? I mean, we may see a demonic influence or something and nothing happens with that. How do we explain that? Why is it that sometimes something happens [and] sometimes it doesn’t happen?
“Well in very simple terms, the kingdom has come. In the coming of Christ, the kingdom came. And at the second coming of Christ, the kingdom will be consummated. We live in the tension of His coming and He is still coming. He came, and He’s coming again. The already—He’s here—and the not yet—He’s not here. The kingdom has come, but not yet fully.”
Strout discusses the tension and frustration of this theological concept, as well as the importance of understanding this distinctive, in the video. Watch it here.
