Hello to All,
We continue our trek in the valley between suffering and healing. The journey is a paradox of normalcy and reality, sacrifice and selfishness, faith and fear, hope and despair, endurance and fatigue, expectation and resignation.
Life seemed pretty normal last Monday when we ate corn dogs and funnel cakes at the Texas State Fair and when we fled the city on Saturday to hang out at a nearby state park with several families from church. Reality hits every morning when Ann puts on her wig or as her eyebrows continue to thin.
I was struck by the depth of my own selfishness over the weekend, getting angry about little things with both the kids and Ann, rather than "keeping no record of wrongs." I could excuse myself, assuming that it arose from stress or fatigue, but the bottom line is that there is a lot of sewer in my heart that still needs redeemed (Matt. 15:17-18).
On several occasions recently – usually after some time in the Word – Ann has expressed a measure of confidence that God would physically heal her. She is accepting Beth Moore's challenge to "Believe that God can do what he says he can do." On other occasions – like this morning – Ann lies on the floor weeping, overcome by fear and hopelessness. She identifies with Beth Moore's quotation of a fellow traveler, "It was just too exhausting to maintain a spirit of expectation."
We will leave for Houston after work on Wednesday. The scans are Thursday morning and we will meet with the doctor on Friday. Will our "lull" continue or will it come to a screeching halt?
Confessions of a Skeptic:
Duane Miller's dramatic and instantaneous healing occurred while he was teaching a Sunday School class and it was providentially recorded on tape. He recounts his story in the book Out Of the Silence. On the back cover his pastor, the senior pastor from Houston's First Baptist Church, testified, "Every syllable you will read and hear in this book is true. I was there when it happened."
Why was such a testimony necessary on a book cover? Is it because the excesses of "faith healers" have caused many of us to be skeptical of all healings? Is it because our theology has constricted God to a box smaller than appropriate? I know that I had an easier time believing Duane Miller's story because of his pastor's assurances.
The following two episodes from Richard Foster's Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home were a tremendous encouragement to me as I wrestled with the validity of healing for today.
St. Augustine:
St. Augustine "doubted the validity of Healing Prayer, stating in his early writings that Christians should not look for the continuation of the healing gift." In 424 A.D. a brother and sister were miraculously healed in Augustine's church at the beginning of a couple of worship services. He was convinced that these healings were genuine and proceeded to set up a process for recording and authenticating miracles. Nearly seventy healing miracles were attested in the two years that followed.
Richard Foster:
Foster chronicles in how own life how his "prejudices against physical healing begin to crumble." He was working in a counseling center and was convicted that his success with patients "was completely explainable by human techniques of psychological manipulation." The experience that challenged him was when he prayed for a World War II veteran who had suffered from fear and bitterness for 28 years. After that prayer, the vet slept peacefully for the first time in decades and was "totally and instantaneously healed" from the hate and sorrow that had imprisoned him.
Other authors, who journeyed from skepticism, are Beth Moore (Believing God), Michael L. Brown (Israel's Divine Healer), James L. Garlow (God Still Heals), and Michael S. Barry (A Reason for Hope).
There are at least two dangers of holding too tightly to a theological system. First, no system accounts for all the biblical data. Second, the trickle down effect from scholar to lay person is often ineffective. For me, the practical outcome of a holding a theology that asserts "some gifts of the Holy Spirit such as … miraculous healings were temporary" was that I no longer really believed in healing miracles at all. My first response when hearing that someone was "healed" was skepticism. In theory I believed that God could heal; in reality I doubted that he ever would. Specifically, I was convinced that he had no intention of healing Ann.
Psalm 30:1-3:
I will exalt you,
O LORD, for you lifted me out of the depths and did not let my enemies gloat over me.
O LORD my God, I called to you for help and you healed me.
O LORD, you brought me up from the grave; you spared me from going down into the pit.
Prayer Requests:
- That we would have the necessary courage to return to Houston for the scans and the doctor's appointment. The reality of our situation often overwhelms us as we walk through the doors of M.D. Anderson.
- That our family's relationships would be characterized by patience and forgiveness, rather than arguing and anger.
- That God would physically heal Ann so that she can teach our kids and grandkids that "there is nothing our God cannot do."
- That God would demonstrate the reality of the resurrection from the dead by delivering Ann from the grip of death.
Thanks for praying and caring.
Love,
Howard & Ann
PS. If you know of anyone who needs encouragement to persevere, then feel free to point them my sermon "I Quit" at the following link: http://www.nhbc.net/previous-sermons.php. The date of the sermon was August 12, 2007. You can listen to the sermon via Real Player or iTunes.
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