I met Oscar at church one night in Panama, several weeks ago. His body was wracked with a fever, stomach pain, and he was throwing up; his normal 10-year old boy energy was replaced with the lethargy that comes when someone is truly ill. As we surrounded him to lay hands and pray for healing, all I could think was, “Here we go again.”
Here we go again, asking, pleading, praying, and seeing nothing change.
I’m tired of asking for healing and seeing my prayers come back empty. I’m sick of pleading with God, asking in faith, stepping out in boldness only to be left exactly where we started. I’m tired of encountering the girls trapped in prostitution, the women unable to walk, the blind men, the alcoholic, the hungry, and lonely only to leave them exactly in the same circumstances they were before we came along in the name of Jesus.
Isn’t it Your will to be glorified, Lord? Is it that my faith is insufficient? Didn't You send Your Son to set the captives free?
So we started praying over Oscar. As the words of the team surrounded me washed over us, I kept thinking, “Does Oscar know Jesus?”
Because if he doesn’t, then seeing his poor, sick body healed isn’t the most important thing we should be asking. If Oscar doesn’t know Jesus, then his body could be healed and he still wouldn’t be restored into a relationship with his Heavenly Father. If Oscar’s fever broke, he stopped throwing up, and his stomach no longer hurt, but he never knew that Jesus wanted more for him, then Oscar’s body will eventually die and he’ll miss out on eternity at the feet of God.
When we stopped praying, I asked Oscar, “Do you know Jesus?” He looked up, startled. I went on to explain to him that we believed in Jesus, that He could heal Oscar’s body and that He loves Oscar. My Spanish didn’t stretch far enough to explain more: that Jesus died for us, rose again to life because He conquered death, that Jesus loved us with a vast and endless love that conquers illness, sin, and death. But I would have told Oscar all that and more, if I could have.
As Danny preached that night, he voiced the exact thing that the Lord had been speaking to me only an hour before. The truth is that the greatest miracle we will ever see is not seeing the lame walk, the blind see, or the dead rise. The greatest miracle we will ever be a part of is to proclaim the gospel so that the spiritually dead come to eternal life.
If Oscar had been healed that night, the true miracle wouldn’t have been the healing of a body destined to die anyway. The true miracle would have been seeing the healing of Oscar’s soul and the redemption from sin towards intimacy with Jesus. No longer will I pray for physical healing before I proclaim the gospel and share the Truth of Jesus to a desperate and dying world.
Why won’t God heal? I believe it’s because He cares infinitely more about the healing of our spirits and our relationship with Him than our physical bodies that are destined for the grave eventually. I’m tired of praying for physical healing that never comes when I have the ability to take part of a greater miracle – from eternal death to eternal life.
