A Healing Prayer April 8, 2009

I’ve never had to stare down death before.  My life has never flashed before my eyes.  I’ve never had a moment when I’ve wondered if I would be alive in the next minute or the next day.  I am grateful for that.

Death has never come early to anyone that I’m close to.  I was sad when my cousin died in his early thirties, but I barely knew him.  My grandparents were all old when they died.  I have my sisters, my parents, my husband, children, and my close friends.  The only time that I am aware that my life was in danger was in my first pregnancy.  The situation was rectified upon delivery of the baby.  I was too drugged to ponder that I could begin to have seizures at any moment.  Death was not something that crossed my mind then.  

So it is in the bliss of ignorance that I approach this sticky subject.  

Our former pastor has pancreatic cancer.  My heart is grieved over this.  I have prayed for some kind of reconciliation with him over the last couple of years, but I never felt that the timing was right.  I didn’t think I was procrastinating.  I hope that I wasn’t.  I don’t like confrontation, but I despise fractured relationships even more.

Anyway, we’ve probably all heard that pancreatic cancer is bad news.  It almost always kills the person who has it.  In this case, our former pastor  did not seek medical treatment when he first became ill.  He had been in the midst of teaching a series on healing, so he was praying and believing God.  God, that just tears at me.  He was in pain for months to practice what he was preaching.  Not that he would ever tell someone not to go to the doctor – he’s never been like that.  He just thought it was his gall bladder and that if he just prayed and believed, he would be healed.

It was crazy times when Jesus walked this earth.  I can’t imagine what it would have been like to have been there when the blind man could suddenly see.  The woman with an issue of blood who had been sick for many years touched the hem of His robe and was healed.  Oh, and we can’t forget the lame man who was lowered through the roof of a house so that Jesus could heal him – and He did.  The man got up and walked.  So many accounts that it boggles the mind.  And let’s not forget Lazarus, dead and in the tomb for three days.  Lazarus, come forth!  And he did.  

Many will say that there isn’t an account in scriptures where a person asked for healing from Jesus and didn’t receive it.  So that must be the case for us as well, right??  We just need to have enough faith, fast and pray, jump through the hoops,  and definitely don’t admit that you have the condition that is ailing you.  To confess to having cancer or arthritis or anything else is speaking it over yourself, so therefore, you won’t be healed.  Jump through the hoops.  Play the game.  Manipulate scriptures.  Demand that God heal, dammit!  

I saw a woman that I used to attend church with yesterday.  I asked her how the pastor was doing.  Her immediate response?  He’s healed in the name of Jesus!  I used to utter the same things (and usually felt foolish doing so).  I used to buy into the same scheme.  I struggled to keep a straight face in front of her, but I’m afraid that anger probably flashed briefly in my eyes.  Yes, it angers me.  It angers me to think that people are dying believing that they did not earn healing.  People are suffering through chemo with the ridiculous assumption that they just need to find the right spiritual formula.  It is damaging to the soul, and it taints the truly miraculous healings that occasionally take place.  

Why is one healed and not another?  I don’t know.  I have no answers.  I have to trust that Father sees the big picture, and that maybe healing is not all that we understand it to be.  Easier said than done, I know.  I already said that I’ve never been faced with any of this myself.  I also am pretty certain that western living, with too much fast food and not enough exercise is a large part of this picture.  We live in an imperfect world, and most of us really don’t take proper care of ourselves.  I am included in that category.  We live in physical bodies that can only take so much.  

I certainly don’t write this to hurt anyone.  I find it absoutely freeing to not have to jump through hoops to earn my Father’s love.  And I don’t believe that I’m jaded where He is concerned.  I certainly am a bit jaded where the institutional church has damaged God’s children.

So I am praying for our former pastor and his family.  Statistically speaking, his chances of surviving this are not good.  Is God powerful enough to heal him?  Absolutely.  Do I expect this man to roll over and just give up?  Absolutely  not.  He has three kids that I’m sure he desperately wants to be with longer.  He should have so much more life to live.  

So I pray for this man who dropped everything to rush to the hospital when we were faced with the premature birth of our first child.  I pray for the man who performed our wedding ceremony and baby dedications for both of our kids.  I pray that he rests in Perfect Love.  I pray that he is surrounded with peace.  I do pray that God would heal him.  I can ask for that, but we aren’t always given a yes answer.  I pray that he would live every moment to its fullest.  Whether he has six months or thirty years, I pray for all of these things.