TLA (temporary light affliction)

A good friend asked the age old questions:

Have you had prayer for your sickness?
Have you considered being prayed for by someone specifically burdened for your condition?
Would you consider it?

All of these I answer with a resounding YES!

Here are my thoughts on the subject of healing.

When she asked me these questions I was tempted just to groan and dismiss them because I really didn't know what I thought. After a day or two, it seemed that I kept thinking about it. All the doubts and suspicions came rushing back. My main reasoning? God can do anything He wants to. I believe He has the power and (possibly) the will to. But is His will for my healing? Who can say? My mother has been sick all her life. God never healed her, although she will be healed in the next life. As will I. But here and now? God doesn't promise a life free of pain. It hasn't been for a lack of asking, begging, and pleading.

What am I afraid of? If God heals me does that mean He won't heal mom? or that mom may have suffered needlessly? or I may have suffered needlessly? Sometimes I feel that I am the butt of a cruel cosmic joke that everyone gets but me. That somehow, if only I could muster the right faith, the right amount of belief or perspective, that it would be the catalyst for my healing. And God would say, "Finally, you understand" and then ZAP! heal me. I have repented and repented and tried to negotiate and manipulate - trying to find a wormhole out.

All these thoughts and questions though are the wrong ones. They only point to the fact that I have a messed up view of God's character. Because even though these are real questions and are really how I feel, this is not what I know of God. I know God to be loving, holy, and merciful. I also know and trust He knows why and how long I am to suffer this temporary light affliction.

My conclusion? Romans 8:35-39 says:

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
Just as it is written, "FOR YOUR SAKE WE ARE BEING PUT TO DEATH ALL DAY LONG; WE WERE CONSIDERED AS SHEEP TO BE SLAUGHTERED."
But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

But even more, My theme has been...

IF I COULD BUT TOUCH THE HEM OF HIS GARMENT...(mark 5:25-34)A woman who had had a hemorrhage for twelve years,
and had endured much at the hands of many physicians, and had spent all that she had and was not helped at all, but rather had grown worse--
after hearing about Jesus, she came up in the crowd behind Him and touched His cloak.
For she thought, "If I just touch His garments, I will get well."
Immediately the flow of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction.
Immediately Jesus, perceiving in Himself that the power proceeding from Him had gone forth, turned around in the crowd and said, "Who touched My garments?"
And His disciples said to Him, "You see the crowd pressing in on You, and You say, `Who touched Me?' "
And He looked around to see the woman who had done this.
But the woman fearing and trembling, aware of what had happened to her, came and fell down before Him and told Him the whole truth.
And He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your affliction."


With that in mind I have just begun to scrape the surface of understanding God's infinite love for me. The more I focus on my Creator, my lover, my God, the less important it is to find out if I am to be healed or not. But knowing if I could but touch Him, I would be healed. That is the goal I strive for.

The healing has already begun. I have more peace and joy than ever and I am secure in my Father's love for me.