Supernatural healing
God does one miraculous thing for me, and I’m thankful for a while. For days. Maybe a couple of weeks. But at some point, I put that in the past and look to the future. So what are You going to do for me next, God?
Is this faith or is it greed?
I’ve written before about how a medical issue affects my reaction to stress. When I’m feeling the strain of a new challenge in my life, my physical weariness increases. A little more, and the mental fog thickens. Pile additional trauma on top of that, and my emotions go haywire until they reach a point that I refer to tongue-in-cheek as my “insanity.”
Over the last four years, so much stress has built up for me (as it has for many Americans) that I’ve been getting to that painful emotional stage far more often than in the past. It takes longer to die down than it used to. Sometimes it feels relentless.
So I make a commitment at the beginning of 2022 to be extra diligent about taking care of myself in hopes of restoring what I’d lost. By the end of the year I can see a definite improvement. I’m about halfway back to normal.
Of course my efforts are accompanied by frequent prayers. Requests for strength and health. Thanksgiving for the energy that I do have (as limited as it is), for signs of gradual improvement, and for the ways God’s been drawing me nearer to Himself through it all. But for months He says no to a sudden, supernatural healing.
Until He says yes.
I read a brief comment in Tim Keller’s Walking With God Through Pain and Suffering. It strikes a chord deep inside. And suddenly, unexpectedly, out of nowhere, the emotional “insanity” ends. Just like that. It never comes back, in spite of my circumstances.
I’m stunned. I’m thrilled. I’m more thankful than words can describe.
But I’m cautious. I’m not sure how long it will last. I play the usual mind game of “Don’t show any signs of doubt, or He might take it away again.” As if it all depends on my imperfect faith, not His perfect grace.
Prayers of thanksgiving replace my prayers of agony. Months go by and the healing continues to be confirmed. My mood drops lower than normal and my anxiety climbs higher than normal when I’m caught up in some new trauma, but I don’t crash into those depths of fear and confusion that have been with me so often during these last few years.
The next step
As time passes, I go from frequent praise throughout the day to expressing my gratitude a couple of times a week. And then I get used to this new state of affairs, and I start thinking about the present and the future.
I’m still stuck in the second phase of my stress reaction. Each morning the mental fog rolls in earlier and thicker than it did in the past, reducing my ability to do what most people my age would consider normal everyday activities.
I make that natural human transition from wonder and joy over God’s supernatural healing to discontent over the suffering that remains. My thoughts turn from “Thank You, thank You, thank You” to “Please, please, please.”
I want to believe that I’m demonstrating great faith in a great God. But maybe it’s just my greedy heart saying, “Give me more and more and more.”
At what point should a sense of contentment take over? At what point should I accept my current physical status as God’s will, rather than continuing to ask for better health? When I was younger, the answer seemed to be, “Of course I should keep asking.” I had responsibilities that required strength and energy.
Aging and praying
But as aging takes its toll, most of us develop chronic health conditions. Is it faith, or is it a love for the things of this world, that goes to God and asks for supernatural healing from the natural deterioration of our bodies?
I once knew a man whose wife developed early onset Alzheimer’s disease when she was in her fifties. One day he asked a group of us to pray for God to cure her. My automatic reaction was a sense of disbelief.
Can we, should we, expect to be relieved of the ravages of aging? Was my friend demonstrating greater faith than mine by making this request? I don’t know.
I did pray a few times, but each prayer was deeply drenched in “Your will be done.” If her healing depended solely on my faith that God would do as I asked, then it wouldn’t happen. She lived fifteen years or so after her diagnosis. Her mind continued to deteriorate. She’s now home with Jesus.
Maybe the Lord could put an end to all these questions if He would just do like He did with Paul whenever we ask for healing that isn’t within His will. Paul pleaded with Him three times for relief from a thorn in the flesh that was tormenting him. Nothing happened.
Then one day Jesus said to him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:7-9). No instant cure. A call to greater dependence on Jesus’ grace and power instead.
Sometimes the answer to my prayer is obviously either yes or no. Sometimes I get some sense of His will, a sort of internal leading. But it would make life so much easier if I could just hear His voice speaking to me as He spoke to Paul. Then I would know His will for sure. Then I could face my challenges with contentment.
That would be the contentment of knowledge, though, rather than the contentment of faith.
As I circle back to the question of my motive for asking for additional healing, I know I want to be living in gratitude, not greed. And I know that faith is the key to it all.
Am I asking with faith that God understands my needs and my heart, and that He’ll do what’s best for me and for those whose lives I touch, whether that means suffering or relief? Do I have enough faith to be content with His decision? Is my faith strong enough to live a life of thanksgiving even if He says no to my next request? That’s the kind of faith I want to have.
