Slow Faith

I am working through what I believe about healing. Over the past few days I have really been challenging myself to think about what I believe on this issue.

I mentioned previously the movie "Facing the Giants" and how the pastor says that two men prayed for rain and only one man went out and prepared his fields for rain - which man believed God would provide the rain? The one who prepared his fields.

In the exact opposite manner, is it really faith believing for God's healing if I continue to plan for surgery? When I see people and they ask how I am doing and what the plans are do I speak of the surgery plans or do I speak of what God is doing in my life?

Right now I am straddling the fence. In my conversations I give glory to God for the great things He is doing in my life and then say that I am asking for healing but we are looking at surgery in January. It feels really hypocritical!

Last week a sweet Christian sister was sharing with me an intimate conversation she had with God one morning about a tree in her yard. She was enjoying this tree and noticed that all the other trees had been cut down but this one remained in the perfect spot. She felt God speak to her that he put the tree there for her to enjoy. Not only for that purpose but he knew that one day she would drink her coffee and enjoy the beauty and shade of the tree. How much does God love us? Enough to plant a tree for our pleasure? Certainly. I can acknowledge that God would be pleased to see us enjoy his creation.

Yesterday morning I sat in discouragement at my computer looking at my ever shrinking paycheck and this one loan for $550 that I keep meaning to pay but the money is never there. On my gorgeous one hour drive to work I listened to the encouraging words of KLOVE and pondered the ways that God has been providing for my family in the past few weeks. I know that God has been providing for my medical bills and my travel expenses but somehow it does not seem right to ask him to help me out of my own stupid pit of debt - the pit I put myself into. Yesterday when I got home from work there was a gift from the school where my children attended last year. They took up a collection and sent us a check to use "wherever needed". The amount of the check - an even $550 - exactly the amount I had been beating myself up over in the morning.

What is God trying to say to me in this? I hear his gentle voice speaking to me "I love you!" Love is defined by rules and guidelines. Love can give a shade tree, love can provide to cover a multitude of sin, love is symbolized in the blood shed on the cross. The blood that was shed on the cross was in payment for my sin and my sickness. There is healing in the blood of Jesus!

I am wrestling with my heart and with my intellect. Imagine with me if you will two little people, one on each shoulder : Intellect and Faith.
Intellect speaks and says: "You have a birth defect. God formed you and knew that this moment would come. He guided you to find the best team of surgeons in the country and provided for you to travel there to see them. He is providing for you to have this surgery and he will walk through this valley with you. " This intellect is masking itself to sound like faith.

Faith however has an entirely different voice: "You have wanted to see the Almighty God in a real way. This is the pinnicle of the crisis of faith you have been walking through for years. This is the time where you choose whether you will trust God or man. This is it! You have a choice here, walk in the way of faith- scary but exciting, or choose to walk in the way that makes sense. If you truly believe that God is who he says he is - don't have the surgery. Seek the Lord and Trust in HIM not in medicine."

This is not easy. Either way.
Tonight I went to the coffee shop for sustanance and ended up praying with a group of students. I felt the love of God in an entirely new way. I wonder when I will exhaust the ways to feel his love?

Two people have spoken into my life that God's will is for healing. One to my mother in New Mexico and one tonight. Without even really knowing my situation, one man who prayed for me tonight(who was somehow under the impression from our conversation that I had cancer) had a picture of my head breaking through the clouds- being pulled up. I have that picture in my mind but of my brain - that my brain is lifted up and my spinal fluid is restored.

I am still in the baby steps process of this. I need to research my theology on healing and I need to spend some time talking with my heavenly father. Right now though, I can see that I sit straddled on the fence- healing on one side and surgery on the other. I really don't believe that it is my fear of surgery talking here, actually surgery is what everyone expects me to do. Not having surgery will be hard too - especially if the healing is not quick in coming. There will be trials ahead.
There is a song on the radio right now called "slow fade" and it is playing over and over in my head but what I am hearing is a different version that sounds more like this...

"its a slow faith - when you give yourself away
its a slow faith - when black and white fades to gray
choices made, prices to be paid when you give your life away, it's a slow faith"

My faith may be slow in growing but the strongest and longest lasting things are not easy to obtain or quick in the making.