"Be Healed in Jesus' Name!"

Yesterday, in my church during the service, a young man was healed of a stomach ailment which he's had since he was a child...He is unable to eat...He is doubled over in pain most of the time, and he looks like a concentration camp prisoner because he's so thin.

Yesterday, the Pastor brought him to the front because he'd asked to be prayed for. The pastor first talked to us about faith...and asked us whether or not we REALLY thought that God would/could heal Matt. Now, the knee-jerk reaction is to say, "of COURSE God can heal him." But when people really, really ask themselves that, I think a lot of times, what they find about their faith, can make them feel very uncomfortable.

We prayed for Matt.
Now, I've seen God do some incredible and undeniably supernatural things before. And He's healed me of some things in my past also...One thing; miraculously. So, I prayed, knowing well that God could do this without effort. I felt comfortable with my faith and my level of certainty.

I prayed for Matt, the intensity of my desire to see him healed causing tears to run down my cheeks. Sometimes I think that my most powerful prayers are just that: simple intense desire to see God do something. They are usually wordless prayers...but they come from the pit of my stomach and the depths of my soul. And I almost always am certain and sure that God has heard and will respond after I've prayed that way. So Iwas pretty sure that something amazing was going to happen in church yesterday as all around me, people prayed with hands upraised and tears flowing.

And it did.

Matt straightened up; took the hand from his stomach where he'd held it in pain; his face relaxed...and when the pastor asked him how he felt, he said. "HUNGRY"...which, evidentally he hadn't felt in a very long time. And at the coffee fellowship following church, he ate. When eating in the past would guarantee him rolling on the floor in agony and a trip to the ER.

And do you know what I thought, when Matt said, "hungry" ?
I thought, "no "WAY!"
I thought, "Maybe Matt feels pressured to act well, in the face of all these prayers, and he is just SAYING that. "
Immediately, I was ashamed. And appalled. And I asked myself..."Is your faith really so impoverished, that you cannot believe he is healed?? And how could you be CERTAIN a moment ago that God could and would heal...and now you question??

I'm not really sure what the answers to those questions are. I think it's something in the area of:
I know God CAN...but I was uncertain that He WOULD.
I have to ask myself "why?" Why am I so hesitant to believe in God's willingness to heal us?
I think it is because I myself have been sick for many many years.
I've prayed with great intensity and desire for God to heal me.
I've been annointed with oil numerous times and had many elders and ministers pray over me.
I've BELIEVED that God would heal me.

And he hasn't.

And in time, I've come to understand that, for some inexplicable reason, this illness and this pain, is God's plan for me - at least for now.
It has given me great empathy for those who suffer.
It has made me long for heaven with an indescribable intensity.
It has increased my "longsuffering" and patience.
It has raised my threshold for pain and for suffering, so I am able to tolerate much more than most people...and more than I used to.
And I believe that it has greatly increased my power in prayer. (odd, isn't it, that a "NO" answer to my prayer would increase the power of my prayers for other people? But it has.)

But why would God's 'No' to me, make me dubious of his good intent towards others? I think it's partly because Matt has suffered for so LONG...and because so many other prayers have been offered in his behalf throughout the years. I myself have prayed for him many times. So I found it hard to believe that God would choose to make THIS time different. Although, I could see from the emotion and intensity of desire around me, that THESE prayers were certainly more powerful. But is God swayed by more or less powerful praying? Doesn't he pretty much do what he's determined to do, regardless?

Ahhh. Here is the very crux of prayer.
Why do we bother to pray?
Why should we pray with clean hearts?
Why should we pray with pure faith?
Why do we bother to ASK God for the things we need/desire?

These things apparently DO matter to God. They carry weight.
So, I wonder...if I went up there....me, for whom people have prayed for years and years....and people prayed and wept for ME, would God "change his mind"?? Would he heal me?
Now, I don't believe we can make demands of God or twist his arm....but what if God has just been waiting for me to take a risk like that...to lay it on the line?

Could I even do that?
Could I bear the disappointment of not being healed?

Could I bear the risk of being healed?