What do you do when you believe in something and it doesn’t come? When you believe that God will do something, and the breakthrough never materializes?
A belief system crashes. A way of life threatened. A person known for a heart for healing discredited. And a God challenged.
Sickness and death has affected us all. In my own family and life: Cancer has taken my Aunt Susan, and Uncle Timmy. Sickness killed my cousin Shane. My cousin Stewart was struck by lightning and died as a vegetable. Cancer and addiction killed two grandparents, with addiction ruining many of the lives of men in our family. Friends have overdosed, and drank themselves to death. Another was brutally beaten and murdered with a tire rod. Watched my father lose every friend dear to him.
I have watched children I have prayed for die before my eyes. I have labored and anguished in prayer over dead bodies in African hospitals as their families watched in hope of resurrection. Prayed for protection, only to see the enemy bring death and destruction.
This bothered me. I have prayed for men who hadn’t walked in 30 years, and they jumped from their wheelchairs and walked off in praise to the Healer. A young girl’s swollen and poisoned foot shrink before my eyes.
I had no plan B. The Father was everything.
The clay no longer trusts the potter’s hands. Fear creeps in and takes over where faith once reigned. Life smashes you around and you aren’t even sure which way is up anymore.
So, what do you do?
You refuse to let personal experience triumph over God’s Word. You refuse to let circumstance dictate faith.
Each time of perceived failure, I wondered where was God.
But I missed it. I was so focused on the healing, my will, that I forgot about the glory of God. The concept of suffering is lost.
It is through great adversity that our light shines the brightest.
I am called to choose faith over circumstance. Every time.
I will trust that Father is good, and powerful beyond measure.
Living as more than a conqueror and co-heir.
So, I will continue to fight and labor in prayer. I will continue to chase after sickness and death with the light and hope of Jesus. I will continue to trust that He is within me, and with me, even though my faded eyes fail to see sometimes. And I will continue to feel the heart of the Father break for us.
Though the army of the enemy nears, and life’s waves crash around me, I will plant my rod in the ground. Knowing that He has parted the Red Sea before, and can do it again.
