When you pray and healing doesn’t come.
Everyone I know has prayed for healing for someone. And everyone I know has experienced disappointment at the outcome. The pain didn’t leave, the fever didn’t break, the surgery wasn’t avoided. The Bible talks about how Jesus healed everyone He came in contact with. It goes on to say if we believe, we’ll do the same things, only bigger and better!
Friend John came to our Wednesday night small group where we’d listen to CDs or watch DVDs of giants of the faith-those who experienced results when they prayed for people. Listening or watching them built our faith. We believed. John had a rare form of cancer. He had lots of tumors in his abdomen, fatty tumors that kept coming back after they were removed. John believed, as did we. Then one day after returning home from a trip a friend sent an email telling that John had died. I cried and cried. The disappointment was huge.
It brought back to me my mother’s death many years earlier. I had big faith then, too. She’d had kidney cancer that went to the bone. The doctor said it wasn’t terminal, and yet she died. The disappointment crashed over me like a tidal wave sucking the air out of me, tumbling me against the rocky bottom.
How could God let this happen? These 2 wonderful people taken much too soon.
I’ve learned that most of our disappointments are rooted in a belief that God has failed us. I agree with that. We had expectations. We believed. And we fell flat on our faces. It was then that seeds of unbelief and doubt entered in. Why should I pray for anyone else when I get no results?
Picture a young child stomping a foot when she doesn’t get her way. So there! I’ll show you.
I admit it. Many years after Mom’s death, I realized that in the secret places of my heart, I had done that very thing. Shut God out, not wanting to put myself out there again and be disappointed. Why risk it? I didn’t believe He would heal through my prayers.
Even the little girl stomping her foot grows up at some point. And I did, too. I realized our enemy wants to immobilize us, to render us ineffective in the kingdom of God. He steals our joy, our passion, our belief. That is, if we let him.
When I recognized the battle I was in, I made a determination to fight back. And so I have. I have studied those with healing success, listened to their wisdom and instruction, and the first time I prayed for someone and saw results, it was better than Christmas morning in Heaven! Early one December, a little Filipino lady helped me to my car with my groceries. She was limping and I asked her if she was in a lot of pain. “Oh yes,” she said. I told her, “Sometimes when I pray for people they get healed. Can I pray for you?” She nodded and I prayed a simple prayer. After that I told her to move her knee. When she did, her face lit up. “It is gone! The pain is gone!”
It doesn’t get any better than that. I told her Jesus loves her and I drove away rejoicing.
So don’t let disappointment keep you down. Get back up and keep praying and declaring healing over those you care about. Stay in faith and the day will come when victory breaks through.