Time is flying by. Wow.
It’s been another interesting month. I am unable to share lots of details, and yet I want to share a little bit.
The family member who had the heart attack… God worked a miracle. Many miracles, in fact, culminating in the doctor’s disbelief that his heart is now so healthy and in the changes that God makes in lives in the process.
But that word “process” is, for me, vital. What the physical heart went through is only a small part of the overall picture. And God’s view, I’m sure, shows far more than what I’m looking at!
I’ve felt for a very, very long time now that every time a prayer is unanswered… every time we “stand in faith” and nothing happens (or the “wrong” thing happens)… every time we see something other than the grace of God at work in our lives… all of that very well might happen because we are not in sync with His will. We have not humbled ourselves and acknowledged that our knowledge is limited in regards to His will, His ways, His Word, and reality. We have not simply asked what He would have us do or pray… and waited until He showed us.
So since I’ve felt this way, I have endeavored to humble myself and ask more. Sometimes that’s meant not praying what others might say was “obviously” God’s will. Often it means praying in my prayer language only.
This process that was happening over the last two months and that’s still happening… I actually don’t think I can adequately explain how amazing it was. I have tried five times here, and the words just won’t come. The Spirit would give them if He desired me to explain it, so I’ll let it go.
Instead I will share that, the whole two months, I had one conviction deep in my soul. Only one thing I was “standing on.” I recognized it as faith… and not the fake kind we try to summon up. The Bible says faith is a gift. That means it is only something we can receive.
God did not give me faith for perfect healing or anything along those lines. Instead, He gave me what I’ll call a vision, for lack of a better term. I saw – and still see in my spirit – something in the future that is vague and shadowy, but glorious. Something that this physical healing is only a very small part of. Something that only God can do, but something that He gave my soul conviction – faith if you want to call it that – in the reality of.
You see… faith is the evidence of things not yet seen. It is not what creates the unseen thing. Faith does not change the future. True faith is the proof that the future is going to be different than what it otherwise appears.
Think of a crime scene… the evidence is used to construct what already happened.
Faith is a gift of God, because only God lives outside of time. Only God can supply the evidence of something that hasn’t yet happened.
The vision He gave my spirit is exactly that… evidence of something that is in a future orchestrated by this God outside of time. This God who can soften and harden hearts. This God who knows all things. This God who can open doors that no one can shut and shut doors that know one can open.
I knew precious little outside of that vision. I didn’t even know for sure that his heart would be healed. And so I prayed precious little with my mind. I didn’t ask God for his healing… I asked God to show me how He would have me pray. Most of the time, I simply prayed in my prayer language and praised Him for what I saw in that vision. When I sought Him on what else to pray, I heard nothing… and so I prayed nothing else, trusting even this to my Heavenly Father.
Please know that I am not saying that those who prayed differently from me prayed wrongly. Not at all. Why would God have to want everyone to pray the same things all the time? If he led them to pray for healing sooner then me, then they’d better do it! I am merely talking about how I endeavored to pray only what I knew He was leading me to pray, and nothing more than that.
And then came the morning when I discovered I had a new conviction deep in my soul. It is time for his heart to start working properly. Then… and only then… did I begin praying and commanding that.
If I had prayed differently, circumstances probably wouldn’t have been any different. God had plenty of people praying, after all, and I’m sure many of them were following His leading as well.
What was different was all inside of me. I’m convinced that if I had not waited to begin praying for healing, that I would not have noticed that new conviction. Thus I would not have been able to hold fast to that conviction when he ended up back in ICU two weeks later. Instead, I discovered that it is possible for my mind to have no clue what is going on, yet my spirit to rest securely in two convictions that God had given me.
Now, with the doctor’s confessed inability to explain why his heart is now so healthy, I know God used the prayers of dozens, if not hundreds of people. But this post isn’t about why or how God healed that heart.
This is all about how He allowed me to learn a little more about following His leading… limiting myself to His shadow… and the indescribable differences it made throughout these two months.
I will close with Psalm 21:7 which the Lord gave me this morning:
For the king trusts in the Lord
And through the lovingkindness of the Most High he will not be shaken.