Last night we had our weekly church service on the YWAM base. It is on Friday night so that people from outside the base can come, whether or not they have a church they go to on Sunday. And the speaker last night asked if there was anyone with a temporary or permanent need for prayer; I raised my hand with many others on the need for healing from a permanent ailment. I have been struggling with a limp as an aftereffect of my injury 12 years ago. It is due to the left side of my brain being affected and that is the reason why my right side is slow to respond.
(I can best show that by quickly opening my hand on the left side, whereas it takes my right side longer time to respond. My brain is telling both sides at the same time, but it is the right that reacts at a slower speed. The video below shows the difference:)
My journal this morning goes as follows:
I have been wondering why I was not “healed” last night from being lame. I have been prayed for by two random people with YWAM on different days, and also was prayed for my roommate here and by a new Aussie friend at the service. When I walked around after prayer, I was still shuffling. I feel that might have been a huge disappointment to each of them—that God had not healed my falter at that moment.
I began to wonder if it was a lack of faith, but I remember someone telling me that my faith was not the issue. Our faith does not determine what God will do; He works all things together in His own timing. And for last night, and every time someone has prayed for me over that issue, I have been fine with God healing me. I tell Him that every time.
Still though I see advantages at having a hobble: then I am able to tell others about my TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) and that I am in awe of what He’s done with me so far. The fact that I’m able to talk and walk normally is a miracle. And I praise Him for that.
But honestly whenever I am in a moment like that—with people praying for me and with them expecting to see miracles—my mind is too busy with not being sure if I hear God’s voice or not, with many sentences all happening at the same time. And yet this morning as I was wondering about that, I felt God say “I will heal you in my own time.” And that truly eases me. I feel like telling everyone who prays for me that—that I’m so thankful for their prayers, and I feel God will answer that… just in His own time.
And I’m not sure when that will be. Does He mean this life or the next? I know surely I will be fully healed, in every sense of the word, in the next life, but will I still keep limping while I’m on this planet? Who knows.
And I still want to keep wearing my Bioness device, because after all, it took so much effort to get the new one and I’m so thankful that workers comp payed for it. (The Bioness device looks like a brace I wear right below my right knee and it “stings” me so that my leg reacts sooner, taking the stagger away.) At times though I wonder if wearing it is a lack of faith and that God would heal my walk without that device at all.
Because after all, if the Bioness solves my problem that would give glory to man—for him being the one who “created” it. But then again God was the One who created such a creature like man to have a brain that could come up with such a device at all. It’s not as if man created the device from nothing at all… instead man just puts 2 and 2 together to obtain a 4. And if Bioness did help me, it would give hope to others, who possibly have no ability to recover, that they will be able to walk again. Therefore if Bioness played a part in my healing, that wouldn’t be catastrophic.
And thus I feel next time someone wants to pray for me, I will let them. At the end, I will thank them immensely, but tell them not to be disappointed or doubtful if they do not see an instant healing. I have been told by Him that He will heal me in His own timing. He has done a lot for me in the past—like being able to walk and talk after having a TBI—and I know He has more to come… whenever He feels like it.
I feel like Paul in 2nd Corinthians 12:7-10. He says that “a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
I long to be like Paul and say with him that “when I am weak, then I am strong.” So I pray that my own weakness makes God’s power more evident—that He has shown His love and His grace for me in the past… and will continue to do the same: in His own timing.