Fear Turned to Faith

Sometimes I look at the contrast between my past and my present, and just about laugh at the irony of just how many things I never thought I'd never be faced with, which, sure enough, God has placed me exactly in the center in. One of these things has been the area of health and healing. See, I had all the head-knowledge on this topic. Not only have I read the accounts in the Bible of God healing people, but I have witnessed His miraculous healing in both of my parents bodies growing up. In 2001 (if I'm remembering the date right), my dad fell while doing tree work in the backyard, and broke his back. Long story short, today he walks, runs, and does all the things he used to (except treework where he'd have to be up in the tree--Mom won't let him). My mom had a growth of blood vessels in her liver for years before one day God up and removed it. (Boy, were the doctors puzzled! There was a hole where the growth used to be, but nothing there.) So, with such demonstrations right there in my life growing up, I had without really thinking it assumed I'd never have a problem with faith for healing, because I had the head-knowledge. But my heart didn't know it until God asked me to trust Him personally.
Before I get to the main focus of this blog post, let me backtrack and explain a fear that once haunted me--a fear which I have a feeling has just about taken over in our American culture: cancer. My first encounter with death occurred just months before my dad had his back accident. Earlier that same year, my grandpa died of brain cancer. I remember the shock of losing him. During the visitation and the funeral, I was inwardly in denial. Grandpa couldn't be dead; he just couldn't. But as reality eventually and painfully set in, grief tore at my young heart. As I got older and began to hear more and more in the news and elsewhere about cancer, different types of cancer, so many people dying of cancer...it truly became a fear of mine. Not that I was particularly afraid I would get it someday, but in my mind cancer became this great, terrible force with the power to rip away loved ones, putting people through slow and painful decline before mercilessly finishing them off. And, try as they might, doctors have yet to find a cure.

Well, today I stand before you in a much different state of mind. God, through ways only He could accomplish, has brought me to a place where I not only am being built in true faith in the arena of healing, but get this: I no longer fear cancer. The word (which, oddly enough, means "crab") that once brought to my mind a sort of image of an insurmountable foe, now instead stirs anger within my soul. Why? Well, there's more than one reason for it. Mainly, it's an inward growl and groan for my God to gain the glory due His Name, in every area. In America especially, we have turned to medicine, to science, to pills...ultimately, to man, for the cure. Rather than turning to the One who created these bodies and knows absolutely every detail about them and how they work and how they were created to function--we look to human beings and their finite understanding, knowledge, and ability. We pour millions of dollars every year into research to try to "find the cure," when the Cure is Himself standing in plain sight right before us (and in many of us, within our own souls!). People hear the word cancer and cower in fear--and I was once counted among them. But I have beheld the One who is far mightier than cancer.
I don't remember when it was I first realized this, but cancer also has a surprising similarity to sin in our lives. Cancer kills from the inside out; it starts with a few cells that are somehow mutated, warped from the way they were designed to function, which then begin to multiply much faster than they are supposed to. Ever noticed that when you allow a "little" sin to remain in your life, it soon multiplies and begins to take over? Here's another similarity: ever felt like the sin in your life was too big to be overcome, too mighty to resist, that you were just doomed to be drug further and further toward inward death by it? Seeing any resemblance between that and what I was just describing about our fear of cancer?
But just as the Blood of Jesus is mightier than sin, it is mightier than cancer. He died on that cross to purchase much more than forgiveness...He won! He didn't just go after sin and death--He defeated them! My position on health and healing is not merely the result of seeing miraculous healing in my parents, or even in my own life when He healed a recurring injury in my foot; it is not based mainly on any of that, but upon the Word, Name, and nature of my God. Show me one verse in the Bible that gives any reason to doubt God is able to heal. Show me one verse that even hints at the idea that it is not His will to heal people. Show me something in the Bible that says healing was only something He did in Bible times. Yes, there are some things that only took place in Bible times, things like having to offer sacrifices as sin offerings, etcetera. But the specific names God gives Himself are descriptive of His nature--and that does not change, ever. Know what one of those names is?

Jehovah Rapha: "the God who heals"

This is our God. He has declared Himself Healer. Will we doubt Him? Or we stand up and believe He is who He says He is, will we take a stand against cancer by looking to the True Cure? I don't care how bleak the situation; my God delights to do the impossible, for when He does there can be no doubt as to where credit is due.

Part of what spurred this post into being is the fact that a dear friend of mine is currently suffering from cancer. It has spread all over, and the doctors have given up. Tonight, I heard she is struggling and in near-desperation, asking God to heal her soon, or else take her soon, because she doesn't want to go through this anymore. Had I been in this situation even a year ago, I would likely have been praying in questions, wondering whether it was God's will to heal her or to take her home. But I know her time has not yet come, and I know my God intends to heal her. This ain't head knowledge. This is the faith that has been forged sitting in the presence of my King and seeking His heart. It is the growl that has risen in my soul for Him to get every ounce of the glory due His Name. The doctors may have given up, but God hasn't. The natural may be screaming it's impossible, but for Jehovah Rapha, it's far from it. God has claimed victory in this situation, and I for one am determined to stand and fight alongside Him until that promise becomes reality in my friend's life. Her name is Anita. Will you pray with me for God's great might to be demonstrated in her life as He triumphs over this cancer and brings her body into alignment with the pattern He set for it? And, on a larger scale, will you fight against the fear of cancer that has such a strangle-hold on our culture?

"What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?" 

 -Romans 8:31