I cry out to Jesus, and he heals me; but, there is a requirement - I must believe that I am healed. Furthermore, there must be no doubt within me that God can and will heal me. It may sound like simple rhetoric, but it isn't. There is a deep foundation here. God can do anything. ANYTHING. I am willing to believe it? And, once I have become willing, am I ready to stand on that belief?
Yes. My faith waivers, and my healing seems to waver as well, yet the last 3 years+ out of 19 years since my auto accident, I have been healed a great deal. Most of the time I am in faith for myself...but all around me are wounded, tired, mourning and weeping people that are in pain, and I cannot help them. I pray, but I do not know that my prayers for them are answered, or will be, because I do not see their faith, and the outworks of their faith in them.
I speak in faith believing, and declare my faith, and rebuke the sicknesses, and even the attacks of the evil one; I strive to be more and more in the mind of Yeshua, to get my will in alignment with YHVH's will for me. He has said He will heal me, and I believe Him...I do not know if this healing will be completed in this life, but I know I will be perfected in the next, and have no more pain, no more exhaustion, and inability.
It is all well and good to believe intellectually that I can stand on the water as Peter did, but how often do I step out upon the waves?
I step out daily, and I lean on the Word, and I claim those words over my life and my body, and I continue to get better. I do more than I did last year, and my mind is clearer, and a damaged body is being repaired, but sometimes, I think of this quote:
3 John 1:2-3 (NKJV)
2 Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers.
3 For I rejoiced greatly when brethren came and testified of the truth that is in you, just as you walk in the truth.
I am still learning obedience, still learning to get my mind in order, to think in and walk in truth only, and to do love towards my brethren, and to those that are not my brethren; I give tithes and alms...I am not boasting...merely stating truth. More and more the Holy Spirit moves me away from the World, and confines my view to my little oasis that I live in, protected and sheltered by YHVH, blessed with the Holy Spirit with godly friends to help me as they can.
I see that YHVH uses me here and there as a listening ear, and a writer, and even as a person needing the help of others, and to be in prayer for others, but the slowness of this healing is very hard on my spirit.
I am not criticising the question. I can hear your pain. I get it. I suffered from an incurable disease which had been with me my entire life. And then God came and decided to pour something into me that wasn't there before. Yet I have discovered that although I am free by His grace, I can walk back into the prison cell any time I stray from the source of that freedom. I am healed. Am I ready to be healed?
Yes.... I am grateful that you were healed. Are you staying healed? Are we able to be healed once and for all this side of the Kingdom, without Yeshua or the Apostles on the earth? I know people that have been healed from deadly things, but I do not know how it was done.
Even though perfect love casts out fear, God sometimes still terrifies me. I believe this expresses the flaw I carry within me.
When Satan whispers in my ear and I allow doubt to enter into my mind, I walk back into sickness and darkness of my own volition. On the other hand, when I listen to Christ and stand on His word, embracing the promise and picking up my shield - I walk in the light. How can I explain this in terms you will understand? When I first heard about 'healing' I was filled with anger. I wondered why God would heal others and not me. Why must I suffer!? I cried over and over again. Until I realized that my own suffering taught me an invaluable lesson about his suffering.
Sometimes we think of Christ as the healer, but forget that he also suffered greatly while on this earth. How are we to understand the scriptures and his character if we do not take this into account? Maybe in my own life there is a reason for my infirmity. It has already been said in this thread that...
Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong. (2 Corinthians 12:10)
This is the key. When I come to the place of dependence upon Jesus Christ, I experience something greater than this world. We are only here for a short time. What is a hundred years in the span of eternity? A drop in the ocean. When I realize that the power comes not from me, but from God - this is where I need to be. I can flick my bic and produce a flame, but God can call a pillar of fire. When I am concentrating on the tiny flame in my hand I lose sight of the pillar of fire. I start to believe that the flame in my hand is all there is and all that can be.
Remember Elisha's servant?
And his servant said unto him, Alas, my master! how shall we do? And he answered, Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them. And Elisha prayed, and said, LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the LORD opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha. (2 Kings 15-17)
In the end, we will cross over to the spiritual world that many can't see; and, the dependence upon God that we have learned in this life will be crucial to us.
I cannot see the whole picture, but I know how I got to where I am...from ignorant innocence into being abused, from baptism into wickedness of all kinds, and then year by year in learning...so slowly learning the Word, and what it means, and how it works in my life, and the world. I have passed from repentance to repentance, faith to faith, and I am being healed even as I am being changed. I lean less on my understanding in the human sense, but I want to understand as Yeshua understood, and the Apostles He taught. Does anyone nowadays know and understand and believe enough to be healed, or to heal others in an instant and complete manner?
I do not understand glorying in suffering...tolerating my suffering, maybe, but not welcoming it, for my suffering is not for the name or honor of Yeshua, nor from proclaiming the gospel, nor to save others.
I can understand a healing after much pain and suffering can be a witness to the glory of YHVH...I am willing to suffer if that were the result, that I would learn how to be healed, so that I could teach others.
What frightens me is that even though I am doing what I can to be healed, and faithing, and working to put on the mind of Christ, those around me do not see enough healing in me to do the same...they are impatient with the "how to be healed" work involved, and their troubles in living successfully, in health, in a modest prosperity, with friends alive and not in pain or suffering. I have no great healing to show people...only a small, growing, increasing healing. It shows only if you look at how I was a year, or two years or three years ago. And before that was 16 years of all kinds of pain, anxiety, depression, fear and self hatred. And before that different kinds of pain, anxiety, depression, fear and self hatred...only the extent and type changed.
When miracles are small and gradually done, people do not see them. I have and am experiencing tiny miracles...a crumb here and an inch there, and they add up. I am impatient sometimes, but not as impatient as those around me with their own lives.
Their burdens, and heaviness, and mourning are heavy, and I do not know what to do there, for that heaviness weighs on my own healing as well.
I speak against spirits and powers, I rebuke, and cast out; I speak to my mountains; I pray for assistance, and enablement and the power to Amen a real healing, and have it be so if not in me, then in others.
But I have a broken body in a broken world, and there is a great deal of that other reality out there to be pushed against, and a great deal of spiritual pressure to fight against. I am not without hope, only tired of the long enduring nature of my physical self. There are others that suffer more than I do, and bear it better.
Being not healed feels like lack of faith, and a persistent ignorance in how to be changed that I may be healed.
So I turn back again to hear the Word, because faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of YHVH. And I know that if I do not get enough faith in this life, I will get it upon my ressurection, for I know where my hope is.
Praise be to YHVH.