Dr E. Stanley Jones The United Christian Ashram healing service

The very first Christian Ashram healing service was started by Dr. E. Stanley Jones in 1930 with just three people at Sat Tal in the foothills of the Himalayas.  An Indian pastor, an English missionary, and an American evangelist gathered together in unity at the foot of the cross. The term ‘Ashram’ is a Sanskrit word meaning ‘apart’ (a-) ‘from work’ (shram). 

Brother Stanley, as he preferred to be called, would become one of the world’s best-selling spiritual authors and evangelists.  He wrote 28 books, some selling millions of copies.  Many people remember him as the Billy Graham of India who was a personal friend of Mahatma Gandhi, even writing a book about their friendship.  His career lasted more than fifty years, beginning in India and encompassing the globe. Not all realize that the gospel for Jones included the healing ministry.

The Christian Ashram included a healing service from the very beginning. This was perhaps because of E. Stanley Jones’ own previous experiences with physical and emotional distress.  Brother Stanley’s views of wholeness clearly embraced the integration of the physical, mental, and spiritual needs of all people. “Body and mind”, said Jones, “are intertwined until one can scarcely say body and mind, but body-mind. If the soul and mind pass on their sickness to the body, then just as definitely does the body pass on its sickness to the mind and soul. The whole person becomes sick.”  Jones believed that about half of the diseases are mental and spiritual, and half are physical in origin.  He connected worry, anxiety and resentment to the significant increase in heart disease and ulcers. Memorably he prayed, “Give me a mind-purge, free from all fears and worries and resentments so that my body will be purged from all crippling disease and weakness.”

Jones rooted his understanding of the healing ministry in the doctrine of the incarnation.  He saw Christianity as the only faith that took the body seriously. Memorably, he prayed, “O God of my body, I would have it at your best.  You have made me for health and rhythm; help me to present this body of mine for You to make out of it the very finest instrument for Your purposes.”

Stanley’s views on healing were reinforced by his own experience of healing at Central Methodist Church in Lucknow, India.  The hot weather and ministry stress had brought Stanley to the end of his rope, resulting in another ‘nervous collapse’. He had left the mission field, returned to the United States for a year of rest and recovery.  However, when he returned to India, he found that he was not at all well and thought that he would need to abandon his ministry. He was deeply troubled. While attending the Lucknow prayer service, Jones said, “Lord, I’m done for. I’ve reached the end of my resources and can’t go on.”  God said to Jones, “If you’ll turn that problem over to me and not worry about it, I’ll take care of it.”  Jones eagerly replied, “Lord, I close the bargain right here.”  Through surrendering to Jesus Christ, he arose a healed person. He commented, “I scarcely touched the earth as I walked along.  I was possessed with life and health and peace.”  Years later, a marble tablet was put in the Lucknow church with the words ‘Near this spot, Stanley Jones knelt a physically broken man and arose a physically well man.’ Jones commented, “this was more than just a physical touch. It involved the whole person. I was made well and whole – body, mind, and spirit.”  This experience shaped his passion for the healing ministry which has touched thousands of others all around the world.

Dr. E. Stanley Jones taught that healing is available to all: “God does not will disease. God wills health. Disease is an enemy which Jesus fought against and healed whenever he could get co-operation.” What holds back this healing?  Jones said that “the greatest barriers are within us – fears, resentments, self-preoccupation, guilts, impurities, inferiorities, jealousies, and emptiness. These are the things that separate us from one another, from ourselves, and from God.”

Jones once said that he would not pray for the physical healing of a woman in the last stages of tuberculosis, unless she was willing for Christ to heal her soul. Within two months of the prayer, she gained twenty pounds, and became the mother of a lovely family. Jones commented, “I’ve seen tuberculosis, cancers, heart, liver and kidney ailments, and skin afflictions, – the whole gamut of structural afflictions – cured, and cured unmistakably, by prayer in His Name and by His power.”

Sickness often alienates and cuts us off from others. The Christian Ashram helps remove that isolation. Each Christian Ashram begins with the time of the Open Heart. Participants are invited to open their hearts to God and one another. In this openness, healing begins because often we are as sick as our secrets. One woman stood up at a Christian Ashram, sharing that she had nearly choked herself to death by un-surrendered resentments. In giving her resentments to God, her breathing became normal again. She was healed.

The final session of the Christian Ashram is with the time of the Overflowing Heart.  People freely share how Jesus has healed them through the opening of their hearts to His love. Jones commented that ninety-five percent of people attending the Christian Ashram go away transformed. He took a photo once of three women healed during a Christian Ashram, one from a twisted neck and face, another from cigarette addiction, and a third from a cyst. 

Jones taught a comprehensive approach to healing: “In the Ashram, we take an oblique approach to disease, approaching it through the moral and the spiritual.” The emphasis is on self-surrender and conversion, rather than on physical healing itself which is a by-product. The entire Christian Ashram experience prepares each person for the healing service that takes place near the conclusion of the event.  Jones taught that Jesus Christ is the living Word of God – love incarnate. Jesus is the healer, not the Ashram prayer team. They are merely lending their hands to Christ for his healing to come through them.  Loves heals. Forgiveness heals. Reconciliation heals.  The love experienced through every aspect of the Christian Ashram is profoundly healing.

Jones spoke of a woman who had a recurring cancer removed from her tongue many times. After she gave her life to Christ, he had an intuition during prayer that God would heal her. After that prayer, she affirmed that she had received a healing touch from God. Later, a doctor’s examination confirmed that she was indeed cancer-free.

For Jones, healing comes both through medicine and prayer. One does not compete with the other. Physicians and surgeons do not heal. They simply clear away obstructions to allow the God-given systems within our body to heal.  However, he taught that the same healing power of the Holy Spirit, which was available in Jesus’ day, is still available to us today.  Surrender is always key: the surrendering of our fears, resentments, self-preoccupation, and guilt. Self-surrender is the theme of Jones’ ministry and the Christian Ashram.  He wrote about a pastor who developed a stomach ulcer after losing his son. When he surrendered his grief to God, he found release from the ulcer.

Healing, according to Jones, and the Christian Ashram movement today, is not only restorative but also preventative in nature. Anger, fear, self-centeredness, and guilt rob our body of its natural immune system. Proper nutrition, vitamins, regular exercise, and prayer were seen by Jones as vital to living a healthy life.  His prayer for healing included an appeal that God would quicken our mortal bodies by His Holy Spirit so that our bodies would more effectively ward off sickness.

What about prayers for healing that appear to be unanswered? Jones never taught that people who were not healed lacked faith or had secret sin in their lives. When physical healing does not occur, Jones held that God would give us the power, not only to bear the sickness but use it to glorify God in the meantime. He pointed to Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane to show Christians the way to be honest in prayer and surrender to a higher purpose. Jesus’ request to avoid the suffering of the cross was denied. However, Jesus’ surrender to take up the cross transformed it from an instrument of death into an eternal symbol of hope and assurance of resurrection.  Jesus’ surrender, suffering, death and resurrection was used by God to demonstrate that the final healing does not take place until the Lord takes us home.  This is the final cure and answer to prayer. In Brother Stanley’s final book The Divine Yes, Jones documents his experience of a paralyzing stroke in 1971 that deeply impacted him physically – but could not defeat him.  A nurse told him that she could see that he was still smiling on the inside. Jones was called to live the principles he had preached – if God does not remove the infirmity, use it for the glory of God.  Miraculously, through prayer, medicine, and physical therapy, Jones was able to walk again, talk again, and describe his experiences in The Divine Yes. 

Jones was concerned to bring the whole gospel to the whole person. Health is built into the very constitution of our being. It is our heritage. Salvation is wholeness, – health of the body, mind and spirit. He taught that a person “is a unit, and he cannot be sick in one part without passing on the sickness to the other parts. The entire person must be redeemed.” 

Healing is part of the inbreaking of God’s unshakable Kingdom into our lives.  Jones called Jesus the King of compassion and healing. Jesus is health. 

Our prayer is that the faithful witness of E. Stanley Jones and the United Christian Ashram might inspire many to once again know that Jesus is still healing today in body, mind and spirit.

– Ed serves on the International UCA Group of 4; they both lead the BC Christian Ashram.

– Originally published in the OJW Alongsiders Newsletter