During my recent trip to Africa I got to pray for people for their salvation and also for God to heal them in hospitals and in the local village, both in Mozambique and South Sudan. It was pretty outrageous.
I have been overwhelmed by what Papa did in me on the trip and after some discussions which brought up different points to view I have felt the need to explore just exactly what I believe about healing, why it happens and especially why it doesn't.
With any journey such as this it helps to start at the very beginning (Maria always said it was a very good place to start).
When I was 15 I was diagnosed with premature ovarian failure. Which basically means I am having miracle children. I also battled with a mental illness (affective mood disorder) for which I took a medication called lithium. At the end of that year my Dad had a serious accident on the Sunshine Coast when he was body surfing at the beach and a big wave picked him up and dumped him head first into the sand. He was flown to Brisbane where he had a massive bleed on the brain and ended up in a 4 week coma, nearly dying twice. Naturally we prayed A LOT for his healing and had many people from church praying too.He was diagnosed with frontal lobe damage and now has an acquired brain injury. He had to learn to walk, talk and eat all over again and isn't the same Dad that I grew up with. I am so proud of him though he is a victorious man who calls himself a Brain Injury Thriver- not Survivor. (if you've ever met him most don't even know there is a problem- it's not until you live with him you notice his idiosyncrasies!). When I was 22 I attended a Tim Hall meeting at Garden City Church in Brisbane (now Hillsong). Tim Hall pointed at me and said that God was going to heal me from a mental and physical illness. I threw my lithium away and haven't needed it since then. I haven't been healed from the premature ovarian failure yet though.
More than anyone I have a personal need to see God heal people starting with me and then my Dad.
Some questions that have been rolling through my thoughts lately... Does healing happen today or was it just a Biblical thing that only Jesus did? Why doesn't everyone get healed? Why does God heal people partially? Do you have to be somebody special to heal? Why.. just why?? I don't profess to have the answers I just know a God who does.
First of all...
Does healing happen today?
Yes! I believe that healing happens today because I have been healed. Mental illness is an ugly battle to fight- especially if like me you thought the whole world knew who you were and were out to kill you!
Yes! I believe that healing happens today because I have heard of people getting healed- credible eye witness accounts of thousands of people who were blind and now can see, who were deaf and now can hear, crutches and wheelchairs no longer neeeded and cancers shriveling and dying. Even people getting raised from the dead! Check out the ministries of Heidi Baker, Reinhard Bonnke, John Mellor, plus cool classic people like John G Lake, Smith Wigglesworth and Kathryn Kuhlman to name a few!
Yes! I have prayed for people and they have been healed. In Mozambique we prayed for a little girl who had back and leg problems. When we finished praying she looked better and so we asked if she could sit up. She not only sat up but started jumping up and down on the bed! In South Sudan we prayed for a Grandmama who had urinary tract infection and was in a lot of pain. She said her pain was gone when we had prayed. In Australia I prayed for a friend who was going to need a d/c after a miscarriage she was in a lot of pain. I prayed for her and the pain left and she had a natural d/c no surgery required.
Why doesn't everyone get healed? Why does God heal partially?
This a tough question. I know some people would disagree however I would say that sometimes we don't know why people don't get healed.
Like any prayer we pray sometimes God says yes, sometimes God says no, sometimes God says wait. Sometimes having a problem makes us more approachable. I know for my Dad he has encouraged and helped a whole group of brain-injured people who are sceptical of well-intentioned whole brained people. He is able to encourage them, pray for them and stand beside them because he has a Brain-injury.
I have a missionary friend who got really sick while serving on the field. Her team prayed for her, but she still ended up in hospital. She was praying about why she was in hospital and the next day there was a new patient in the bed next to her. The patient in the next bed was so surprised to see a white person in the hospital with the exact same illness to her. She'd always thought white people never got sick. Her misconceptions of white people were broken that day and she eventually gave her life to Christ. How cool is that!
2 Corinthians 12:9
But He said to me "My grace is enough for you for my power is made perfect in weakness. So then I will boast most gladly about my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may reside in me. "
I am happy to wait on my healing. I look forward to the day when my future husband says "Check this out everybody we have miracle children!" My wife was told she wouldn't be able to conceive and look at our gorgeous kids!!" I totally believe that heaps are going to come to Christ because of that testimony!
In the meantime I have hope..
It is very easy to get caught up in the" if onlys"- If I had only read one more scripture verse or prayed for 10 more minutes they would have been healed. Maybe it's my fault, I have sin in my life I don't read the Bible enough, I don't go to church every week or whatever.
When I was in Africa I had the opportunity to pray for a lady in the village. We prayed that God would heal her leg and hip plus she had a large hernia on her chest. I was really excited and was believing that the hernia would go. She was healed partially and her leg and hip pain went- but the hernia was still there large as life.
I was so bummed about this and spent weeks afterwards agonizing over what I did wrong. After some discussion and a lot of prayer it really hit me that healing isn't about me anyway it's God at work- not about us. If our lives are being lived the right way in holiness, the supernatural will happen naturally, we don’t need to force it. We have to learn to live spontaneously from our spirit not rigidly from the rules (letter of the law).
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| A quote from the amazing and inspiring Nic Vujic |
Do you have to be somebody special to heal?
Nope! Definitely not- you just have to have mustard seed size faith.
Matthew 17:20
I tell you the truth... If you have faith the size of a mustard seed you will say to this mountain "Move from here to there and it will move.
Do you need prayer? I love to pray! You don't need to be standing next to someone for someone else to pray for you. I have prayed for people by email and over the phone and they have been healed.
Feel free to comment below or email me at flyredbutterfly AT gmail DOT com
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