Questions about healing

[Tatie]

I had cancer 2 years ago and got completely well. I proclaimed God has healed me, because it was so perfect, I was restored to my normal self and felt like I've never been sick. Now it's back and they can't even cut it out, it's stuck to 3 organs and to the old scar tissue. I have spoken to the chaplan at the hospital and she said maybe God has given me 2 years of life as a gift we don't know. Does God heal for 2 years? I don't feel this way, I feel maybe I relied on the doctors and not on God to keep me cancer free and now I should rely on God to heal me, I believe it was His Will they couldn't cut the cancer out because they were going to take all of the organs it touched or got stuch to like half my colon, bladder, ovaries, etc, so I would end up with bags instead of organs. I prayed all day before the surgery for God to guide the surgeon's hand and he closed me up and was not able to cut me up in pieces. This way I have a chance to recover I think and have all of my organs. I need extraodinary faith, what do I do, what do I think now, I am mixed up, did God heal me in the first place, if yes, why am I sick again? Please help!

[godrulz]

Jesus is the Healer. There are no simple answers. Healing can be progressive. We live in a fallen world, and will not have a perfect body until we are glorified. I will believe with you that you will be healed again in the name of Jesus. Life is complex. God is sovereign. Healed again, or not, He is faithful and trustworthy. He knows your needs even before you ask. Do not question yourself nor God. I have found Gregory Boyd's book "Is God to Blame?" helpful for understanding questions like this. He illustrates with a lady who prayed to have a baby rather than continue infertile. She became pregnant, but the baby died?! Again, no simple answers, but he develops a cogent explanation for evil, suffering, etc. It is possible you will not have a clear answer, but I believe God desires your wholeness and is able to heal you. If He does not, He is still God and you are still His beloved child. Seek and love Him. He will intervene for His glory and your good.

[Guest Calamity]

I surely don't know the answer, either. I do know that in the OT, God healed Hezakiah and gave him an additional 15 years of life, before he died.

Just keep praying and asking God's will be done, and ask as many others as you know to do the same.

[nebula]

Hi, Tatie!

I believe faith is a gift. I think there's a verse that lists faith among a list of spiritual gifts. Just as an observer, I have noticed that people who are miraculously healed just know they will be healed. People that aren't have a struggle with this, are confused, etc.

I haven't had this experience for physical healing, but in other areas, I would struggle with fear or some other issue. No amount of praying, being anointed with oil, rebuking spirits, whatever changed anything. But, for instance, there was one such struggle I had given up on and just accepted I'd have to live with it. However, one night there was an alter call, and the people who were up front as prayer councelors had some association with my "issue". I had not thought of this thing, but I had this sense that I needed to to go forward for prayer. I asked, "For what?" Then this issue was brought to my mind. I just knew I had to go forward. I did, and I was given my release. Why did I have to wait all those years? I don't know, at least not yet. But I believe the Lord meant for my deliverance to come at that time, just because of how it worked out. Maybe I will work with such people down the road, and things needed to unfold this way for what I will be doing. This is just a guess.

When I think of healing struggles, I remember the testimony of a man named Demos Shekarian who founded a ministry called Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship, Int'l. When he was younger, one of his sisters had broken her elbow, or something like that. In a church service, he felt the Lord's anointing on him, and he just knew he needed to pray for his sister. So, he went over and laid his hands on her elbow and he could feel the anointing pass from him to her. She was healed! But many years later, another one of his sisters became ill with I think it was leukemia. If I remember right, she was given a healing, but in a vision the Lord showed her that it was for a period of time. Her cry to the Lord had been that her children were still young; and so the lord allowed her freedom from the illness so she could raise her children. After the time period, she became ill again. The illness slowly ate her life away. I remember Demos' words in his book, asking the Lord, "Why [one sister's] elbow but not [this sister's] cancer?" But he was never given an answer. Was there a lack of faith? No. He and others in his church had anointings for healing. People had been healed througout their lives. Was sin an issue? No. The only sense that could be made was that it was "her time" to go be with the Lord.

With all that, my encouragement to you is to move with your faith, that is what you find the faith for, do that, and don't feel guilty about it. If it's a struggle to have faith for something, seeking it will only bring discouragement. I know this is contrary to a lot that you have heard. Same here. I have just learned that there is a difference between what I seek and what the lord has placed on me to seek. Sometimes He may grant "what I seek" but sometimes not, and I get frustrated and confused, and all that. But when I seek His presence, when I commit my faith to Him, when I move in the faith I have been given, I notice the difference. People get all over my case for not doing certain things, but I don't have the faith for it; I've learned doing what I was pressured to do and not what I had faith for has always led to failure and regrets. So, even though my faith "says" to stay in a situation that is tough to live through, to view the chronic sickness that I have as one of my crucibles for purifying the spiritual gold in my life, and to take the slow route through my schooling, I feel more at rest than I would if I moved out, went to every faith healer on the block, and took the measures to get out of school sooner.

Do you understand what I'm trying to say? I'm not sure I'm explaining this the best. I just don't want to see you beating yourself up over what is happening to you. Maybe try this: pray to the Lord, "Lord, I commit myself to You. I commit my body to You. I commit my sickness to you. I commit the outcome of this sickness to You. If I need to do something to be healed, I ask and believe that You will reveal this to me. If it is Your purpose for my body to be given over to this sickness, I ask You for Your peace and Your presence over my life through this." But let it be the words of you heart, not mine.

I appreciate the prayer of Rachel Scott in one of her journals (she was one of those martyred at Columbine High; she has a beautiful testimony printed by her parents called Rachel's Tears.) She was feeling horrid in her stomach and wrote as a prayer:

If this is a sickness, heal it

If this is a demon, rebuke it

If this is of Your hand, bless it

(slight paraphrase on my part for not recalling every exact word).

All right?

Blessings!

[Tatie]

Thank you so much for your posts. I feel I have faith to be healed, but I am afraid to go forward. I am afraid to claim too much, I am afraid to say to the mountain: move away in the name of Jesus! Because that's what the task is. I feel I should do it. I feel that's what I am supposed to do. I feels this is why I am sick - to develop more faith. And it's growing, but I am afraid to be crazy.

[nebula]

Pray for courage???

[godrulz]

God is not teaching you a lesson and hiding His will from you. We need to rest in Him, not struggle with hearing if He is not speaking. It is a daily abiding. I think you should pursue healing in calmness and confidence. Our hearts go out to you. I would not be too introspective if you are not immediately healed. It does not necessarily mean you have sin or lack of faith. There is a mystery why not everyone is healed everytime. Certainly many are, and based on His Word, we should look to Him to meet all our needs (we have a role too): spiritual, physical, emotional, financial, etc.

[Tatie]

Thank you. I agree about the calmness and confidence, I think God is giving it to me. I see more and more that healing is God's doing, everything is God's doing in fact, and the more I realize it, the more I am receiving. Thank you all for your advise. It was very helpful as I just got back from the hospital and was still very week, it was nice to talk to you and share my pain with you.

[traveller]

Tatie, sweetie, you will be in my prayers as well.

[Tatie]

Thank you. God bless you all.