The Rampart

Just as our view can be narrowed as we look upon our own lives, it can also be narrowed as we focus upon God. How easily we get stuck on one little drop of what God did; we fail to see what He is doing or what He longs to do. He’s not a – do-things-the-same-way-twice - kind of God. In my friend’s quest for healing, she has encountered many ministries who claim they have found THE way to get healed. They offer classes, seminars and group counseling sessions with a typed prayer and some form of a guaranteed, fail-proof, seven-step solution to attaining healing. There are some who genuinely do receive healing through these venues, but there are many who wholeheartedly pray that prayer and perform those seven steps and walk away still battling sickness, with the added burden of failure in their hearts. They believe they must have done something wrong because it didn’t work for them. Several of these spend years going through those same seven steps over and over again, hoping that the next time they’ll get it right. When that fails to bring their healing, they seek out the next ministry that guarantees to have discovered the secret to shaking a healing out of God’s hands. There are many incredible ministries who have awesome testimony of God’s divine healing and we wholeheartedly rejoice in each of these miracles. There are definitely foundational truths that can be gleaned from what other believers have experienced. There is incredible power in our testimonies, but God is not the God of formulas and He certainly doesn’t withhold healing from His children simply because they haven’t begged hard enough or jumped through the right hoops.

There is promise of healing in the Word but it is not by our works that healing comes. And as I have read my bible, I have failed to find THE formula for healing. Jesus healed many; in one story He spit in the dirt and covered a man’s face with mud. In another account, He told a proud nobleman to go and bath in a dirty river; yet a woman was healed by simply grasping His robe. One healing came by way of a boss asking Jesus, to heal his worker. Then there is the account of the young child who needed more than a healing, and a resurrection took place after one of God’s prophets literally laid on top of the lifeless body. In some cases, healings came by one Word from His lips, in others, a touch of His hand. There is even a recorded event where people lined the sides of the road with sick friends and family members in hopes that they would be healed simply by a man’s shadow, passing by them. He is not the God who has developed formulas to meet our needs; He is the Formula. He chooses to encounter each of us individually and each circumstance differently. Sadly, many have abandoned their search for Him, to seek a formula.

As we wrestle with the ‘whys’, the ‘why so longs’ and the ‘why some but not others,’ let us remind ourselves that there is a bigger picture than what we can in this moment see.

“Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, saying, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.’" John 9:1 – 3 (NKJV)

I wonder how many times his mother’s heart cried out for her child to be healed. In those days, a blind man’s future was sure to include begging and it is evident that a family who bore a child with an ailment was assumed to be a family living in sin, even in the eyes of those who walked with Jesus. This hardship was not allowed in this man’s life because of sin or lack of faith; not because he didn’t read his bible yesterday; or because they didn’t pray hard enough; but because God the Father had a plan to use his blindness for something great. Can you imagine how incredible it would have been to be that man on the day his eyes were opened? How precious sight was to him, more precious than it is to any who don’t know what it is like to not see. How his family’s eyes must have welled up when Jesus Himself cleared the family name in front of all who had cast judgment upon them. What other families found peace when it was announced publicly that not all children born with abnormalities are born into punishment?

Jesus answered the ‘whys’- ‘It’s not because I don’t love him; not because I haven’t heard him; not because I’m not big enough; not because he is not one of the special ones; not because I don’t care; not because I can’t; and not because I won’t. It is because I have a divine timing for him and his life. Because in healing him right here and right now, You, My disciples, will encounter Me, My power, and My love. It’s because his generation will get a taste of Me, and see that I am good. It’s because I have chosen to put this man’s story in My Book – The Book that will be read by billions of people throughout thousands of years. Because his story will be used to infuse those of a future generation – a people yet to be born – with courage to face the giants in their promised lands and many upon many will read his account and find hope, freedom, life, strength and Me.’

What higher perspective does God have on your life and your circumstances? What are you actually asking God for, when you ask Him to do it now?