when God doesn't seem to heal...

If it happened to me, I would HAVE to deal with it. You cannot escape everything bad in your life. Sometimes the things that have been the most traumatic in my life are the very things that drew me closer to God.

 

Jimbo,

I don't understand everything either. I just have to deal with what comes my way. There is no way for us to understand all the ways of God. You are looking at it from our finite view.

 

It is still a matter of faith.

The Bible says that God is good.
The Bible says that God is love.
The Bible says that all things work together for good to them who love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.

I don't have to understand the specifics.

I choose to trust God no matter what I see, for God says "don't look at the things that are seen, but the things that are unseen. The things that we see are temporary, the things we do not see are eternal.

 

Trust God.

 

I've been through plenty with my daughter and it IS hard, but God is always faithful.

People aren't. Not one offered to lay hands on the child and pray for her as instructed in the Bible. I called churches to find such a place that would be willing to do so. Found ONE out of about 50.

She is doing pretty good now btw.

One another thing I want to bring up is if you have sought medical advice/Christian counseling? There are a number of Christians here on this board, but there are also a number of people who either have good intentions without sufficient knowledge or are a bit messed up on their theology. With the number of questions you have, combined with the medical conditions you have stated exist, I'm afraid you may take advice from this board or use it in place of medical help or counseling. So while I encourage you to continue your fellowship here, please also consider seeking help from those in your area who have more experience with such problems and that will understand your entire situation much more than we ever can from what you simply type on a machine.

Gina

 

God's purpose is not our physical comfort. His purpose is conforming us to the image of His Son. Suffering is a normal and necessary part of Christian growth. "That I may know him and the fellowship of His sufferings."

 

God did not heal Lazarus in Luke 16. God did not heal Paul in II Cor. 12, but told Paul that he could best glorify God through his suffering. The evangelist is lying and presenting a false view of God.

 

God ALWAYS heals a believer but it might not be until the believer passes from this earthly life.

David was a man after God's own heart and yet David sinned many times. God forgave David of his sins but didn't remove the consequences of his sins. Remember David's newborn died even tho David lay flat on his face for a week begging God to spare the child.

Job was a just man and yet when Satan questioned Job's faith, God allowed Satan to cause many horrible things to come upon Job. What did Job say? Tho HE slay me, yet will I follow!

Remember, too, that many diseases and birth defects are brought on by not taking care of our bodies. Even when we turn from those ways, the reminder remains.

 

My sister passed away in September. She had a real rough time for over 9 months.

I can not say enough about the impact she had on others including hospital staff and other cancer patients, and her funeral was truly beautiful. Our family apparently made a huge impact as well, one person said that our family "raised the bar for family love and involvement". My sister did not handle herself perfectly and neither did we, but something about our experience and our relationships made an impression on many many people.

I certainly can not say I understand the reason for all this, I have not even begun to deal with my grief. But my point is, this woman and her son may be touching the lives of others in ways that they do not even realize. There IS a reason for it and they may not know what it is until they see Jesus.

 

An elderly 'past' pastor of our church came and preached last year. He reminded the church members of his wife and how she had lived such a Christian life. Then he said when the doctor told her they'd found a very fast growing cancer and she had only a month or so to live, he asked... 'What are we going to do'. She told him, 'We spent all these years trying to show people how a Christian should live and now I'm going to try and show them how a Christian should die'.

 

If life is supposed to be perfect right now, why would we bother to look forward to heaven?

Diane said "Remember, too, that many diseases and birth defects are brought on by not taking care of our bodies. Even when we turn from those ways, the reminder remains."

Some MAY be discipline for other sins. I said MAY be....I do not know and am not pointing to any one in particular.

Some are simply that God may be glorified....we don't understand why or how He is glorified through these things.

The question is how do we react and respond?

 

In John 9:1-5
1 And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. 2 And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? 3 Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. 4 I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.
In this case it wasn't sin that infected the man. But for the works of God could be manifested (seen by others) so other would belive. Ask yourself these questions. What are people suppost to belive in? The healing part or the salvation part?

There is a miracle that happens to every person who recives Jesus as their Savior. From the moment they believe unto salvation that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. And that Jesus was seen of many, including His disciples after he was resurrected. Then after 40 days assended into heaven where He is sitted on the right hand side of the throne next to His Father.

Jimbo I don't know if this will help, but heres my testimony about healing and salvation.
For years.... I had the same simular fears going on with me as you have. (Except, I seen where you said you were raised atheist(spelling?).(To make you feel better I was raised Baptist and you'd think I should have had an inside track on salvation, but I didn't. My dad even became a Bap. Evangelist and I still had doubts.) One day I heard Joyce Meyers preaching about healing. (At this time I had a cyst the size of a baseball and the doctors where talking about doing surgery. ) Well at the end of the program she asked the question...Do you want to be healed? (my reply to that was.. "Well sure!") Then she went on to talk about the healing miracle that goes on when a sinner believes in Jesus unto salvation. Well then she said if you want to be healed repeat this prayer after me... As she began to pray and I started to repeate her every word and my thought was ..."Hey this is the salvation prayer!" Then immediately, my next thought was "Hey, but I really need healing!" I said the same salvation prayer that I said with other preachers time after time. But this time it was different and about hour later I checked... and the cyst was gone and did'nt come back! This was a time in my life that I was without hope, I felt like my back was up aginst a wall. I was dreading and in fear of surgery. (Just like Peter when he was sinking in the water. Matthew 14:22-33) The only way I had to turn was to Jesus. (Either to give me peace or to heal me.) He healed me and saved me!
FYI, This happened in 1999, and I have never been the same...I have a hunger for Gods Word and a desire to tell others about Him.

BTW, prior to this I had been listening to Joyce Meyers for approx. 3 months following along and writing down her scriptures and checking to see if what she was saying out of her Amplified Bible lined up with my King James Bible. (Praise the Lord~ it did line up!) (Now some here may have issues with Joyce....but during this time that I listened to her, she stayed in line with the word.) And I believe that God heals, I don't know why some don't get healed but all I know is on that day I had lost hope in doctors to fix the problem that I had and put my trust, my hope and faith in the true physician.

My prayers are with you Jimbo!
Music4Him

 

Jimbo, I raised six children. Five were special case adoptions. The youngest, Chris, got encephalitis after we adopted him and today, at twenty years old, he is profoundly retarded, autistic, cannot speak, and will always wear diapers. His IQ is too low to be measured, which means it is under 20.

We prayed for his healing, too. But that will wait until heaven. In the meantime, I learned sign language because of him and some of my best friends are deaf now. In the meantime, he's taught all of us patience in this hectic world. In the meantime, at the new church we are attending since we moved, several of the people there, including the minister, are saying he is the best thing that has happened there in a long time, for they are pulling together to take turns watching him in a quiet room each Sunday so my husband and I can -- after a long time not being able to do so -- worship together.

I don't know if you have heard of Joni Earickson Tada. She broke her neck diving as a teen and has been a quadriplegic ever since. Her first book, "Joni" is a very special autobiography, but it is her second book "A Step Further" (here on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0310239710/qid=1099847141/sr=8-3/ref=pd_ka_3/002-3676784-2089659?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 )

She fell victim to that 'you do not have enough faith to be healed' garbage, too, for awhile. The book talks about it and the fallacy of that point of view.

But there is something else she says which really brought the whole thing into focus for me, personally. She pointed out that when a jeweler has a single magnificent diamond, he will not put it with all the others in the showcase. Instead, he will put it on a field of black and shine a light onto it.

When our lives feel like that field of black, it is God's grace that is the diamond, and people will be watching.

If all Christians were healed when praying or prayed for, people would become believers for their own sakes -- to get what they could out of it. That is not how love works. If we love God, we love Him more than ourselves -- we care more about His reputation in the world than anything else.

It is, rather, when we are struck just like everyone else in the world, with hurts and pains and sorrows, that God's grace stands out in our lives. It is then that the quiet and calm spirit of the believer stands in stark contrast to a panicking world. We cry tears of sadness and anger and frustration, too, but underneath is the assurance that God is in control and He knows what He is doing, and so it is there we are ALWAYS healed -- healed from our grief and sadness and inner pain -- and it is this the world should be seeing in the Christian.

The body fails, sooner or later, and we are separated it -- which we call death -- and it rots. Thus, any healing of it during the lifetime is only for a short time and for God's express purposes. Not ours.

But the healing which is guaranteed and which is forever is that which goes on within us.

Your friend is hurting. I have been, too, and for much the same reason. The help and support of friends has been one of the ways God has healed that hurt, though, so stand by her, offer to watch her son for an afternoon so she can go out.

I have learned through Chris that God not only does not hate me or ignore me, but that He loves me more than I ever knew. He has used Chris to open doors that would never have otherwise been opened in my life -- or that I would have been to self-involved to have seen that they were open.