*this is a(n UNEDITED) letter that I wrote to a friend about some personal revelation that I had concerning the discouragement of seemingly “unanswered” prayer. *
The Lord is longing to heal you, and He has a plan and a perfect time to do it. He ALWAYS heals His children, whether it be in our timing (immediately) or in His timing (immediately, in the near future, or in the long-term future). We just aren’t aware that when we receive our new bodies at the resurrection of His bride (us) that that is healing in its fullest form.
He will heal you one way or another. That may be today; it may be tomorrow; it may be 30 years from now, but if it’s none of the above, it will definitely be when He returns for a second time and we all go to heaven.
I learned all of this when a little boy that I was praying for (and had FULL faith would live) died. I struggled with the Lord with prayers like … “Lord, YOU told me that he would live! What the heck are You doing? You’re not proving to me that You are real and that I actually hear Your voice.” When I was praying for this little boy, my heart was so broken and I had full faith that he would pull out. I told the Lord that this was going to be my test of His existence (dumbest thing EVER lol … I had like a little Gideon moment there … the Lord must have been like, “oh my little Olivia! What am I going to do with you? I love you so freakin much!”).
Anyway, the boy died, and when I asked the Lord why, He taught me that the boy actually died a looooooong time ago when he gave himself to Jesus and ever since then he had been living his eternal life. He was still living it on the day that he died, and he is still living it now.
Good god I’m long winded! Haha. Sorry! But, in all honesty, I think I might be writing all this out for my own sake, so you can stop reading if you want. : )
Long story short, the Lord actually did prove His existence to me in all of that. He answered a huge question that I’ve had for a long time: if the Bible guarantees healing for prayers offered in faith in Jas 5:15, then why do some of my prayers (in faith) for healing not “result” in anything? Am I just not faithful enough? But what about the mustard seed verse? Doesn’t a little faith go a long way? The truth is this: He will always heal when we pray in faith. Sometimes that’s in the here and now, and sometimes it’s when we get our resurrected bodies. The Kingdom is already but not yet.
I think it’s bad for us to think “well I just must not have enough faith to heal this person” cause two things result: (1) you stop praying because you’re sick of seemingly unanswered prayers, and (2) your self-image is way wacked up – and that’s exactly what satan wants.
We CANNOT think that we have too little faith to have affective prayers. How jacked up would a parent/child relationship be if the kid asked their dad for things all the time fully knowing that the dad would never actually give them anything. Then when he actually does give them something, the kid’s like, “well this can’t be from my dad, cause he NEVER actually does anything for me”. The kid has to start making excuses for why he got a gift. “Well I must have gotten this from my good ol’ uncle Joe!” even though both the kid’s parents are only children. The child has to fabricate something that is unreal to explain something that is real.
I think that this is a major reason why the church stopped believing in supernatural healing, and only believes that the Lord heals through natural means. HELLO!!! The Lord can (and does) both cause He created both! We start to think that aunty “mother nature” is the only good gift giver, but truth be told, God is the only true good gift giver. And because that is true, supernatural healing is just as much a reality as natural healing. In fact, it is intended to be just as much a normality as natural healing also!
Anyway, enough with my little (or big, actually!) word vomit … I might end up putting parts of this up on my blog. Haha, thanks for making me write again! It feels really good.
