THE SPIRITUAL ASPECT – No. 8

As I wrote in my last post, I have written often about the fact that we believe God has said He is going to heal me of ALS/MND. I have often wondered when and where this healing may take place. Twice since my diagnosis we have had great expectations for receiving my healing at a specific event. The first took place about a year ago, and second happened recently. Having written about the first event in the previous post, I’ll now describe the details of the second event…

Our church often hosts leaders from other churches with whom we have a close relationship. One such leader was scheduled to visit recently. There was great anticipation among the members of the church, since this particular man is known to have been used often by God in the miraculous. The whole church fasted and prayed each Tuesday leading up to the weekend of his visit. Our faith was stirred, and we were all expectant of seeing God performing signs and wonders through His servant.

We had meetings on Sunday morning and evening, and we all experienced an almost tangible manifestation of the presence of God in both meetings. During the morning meeting he prayed for me, and then a group of people from our church gathered around me and continued praying prayers of faith for my healing. One man even brought his video recorder determined to capture my healing on video!

The group around me kept praying quite a long time. But despite our high level of faith, the healing didn’t take place.

Again, in this instance, a part of me was disappointed at not receiving my healing immediately, but at no point did I lose the hope of being healed. And again, I came away from this experience with many things:

• I am even more certain that God is going to heal me on this side of eternity!
• I have been blown away by the love and compassion of so many people who are so desperate to see me healed and restored.
• I am convinced that this illness is as much a test of the faith of our church (and the many other people praying for me) as it is a test of my faith.
• I believe that every time an individual or a group prays for me, the healing is one step closer; but I also believe that the healing will be a spontaneous event not taking place amidst a lot of hype and fanfare.
• It has reinforced my conviction not to look to any individual as the source of healing, but only to God.
• It has made me even more determined to seek the Giver as well as His gift of healing.