Meatloaf, Mashed Potatoes, and a Side of Feeble Faith

PASSAGE OF THE DAY:
Acts 28 (click the link)


KEY VERSE:
His father was sick in bed, suffering from fever and dysentery. Paul went in to see him and, after prayer, placed his hands on him and healed him. When this had happened, the rest of the sick on the island came and were cured. (Acts 28:8-9, NIV)


REFLECTIONS:
Jim introduced himself to me and the lady handing out meatloaf samples at HEB a couple days ago.  He brought up that his neck had been causing him pain and he wasn’t sure if there was anything the doctors could do about it.

So there I was… stuffing my face with my meatloaf sample (grocery store samples are calorie free), thinking, “I could pray for him.” I stuffed the inkling as quickly as I stuffed the remainder of the mashed potatoes accompanying my tiny entrée.  I smiled as he said goodbye, turned and wheeled my cart away feeling sick on the inside—not from the high fat sample, but sick of the unbelief that disables me. Honestly, I am so sick of this right now I can hardly stand it!  I just do not know what to do about it.

There is such a duality in me.  On the one hand, I genuinely believe in the reality of God, his goodness, his power, his presence through the Holy Spirit.  I honestly encounter his presence with some regularity in ways that cannot otherwise be explained.  I believe in his good intentions for us.  I even find it fairly easy to pray with confidence and faith that he will heal and restore people spiritually, emotionally and relationally.  And I’ve seen him do it.

However, when it comes to asking for physical healing, something in me struggles mightily to believe. 

Theological seeds of unbelief sown in early childhood in a religious upbringing that extracted the present power of the Holy Spirit from my reality?

Hard, heartbreaking, personal experience of having prayed with childlike faith for a miracle for Bob Morris, my spiritual father who died of brain cancer in his 50’s?

Empirical observation that not everyone who gets prayed for gets healed, although I believe some do?

I am not sure the cause of my unbelief, but I am sure I want to be free of its disabling effects on my ability to pray for people whose bodies are broken.

It’s not like I never pray for people with physical problems—I do—just not with much faith if I’m honest.  I am able to pray for some knowing it’s up to God and not me and that my job is just to ask, but… I feel so powerless when healing doesn’t come quickly—like there are things about physical healing that I just don’t understand.

Like the thing where the “power” of God was “present” to heal—like there is some timing thing that I’m not tuned into.  Or maybe there is a “gift of healing” that I just have yet to be given.  Or there are factors at play in the spiritual realm that I have yet to understand that come against my feeble requests for physical healing for people.  Or that it’s up to God’s sovereignty who he physically heals on this earth and who are healed when this body passes away and they are given a new one—but should I just ask for everyone or should I wait to get a clear prompting from the Holy Spirit to pray for a particular person’s healing?

Sorry that all I have to offer on this topic is “true confessions” rather than some Spirit inspired insight that would catapult all of our faith for healing the sick.  But maybe I’m not the only one finding myself in this place.  Maybe the first step in our growing in belief is to be honest about our fractured faith and collectively confess, “I believe, help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). And as we cry out to the Lord and wait upon him to free us from unbelief and impart faith that can pray for anybody ,anywhere, anytime who is in  need… meantime, we can just keep asking when we can muster the faith, courage or whatever to ask.

And maybe the Lord will heal our unbelief as we do.


PRAYER:
Lord, forgive my unbelief.  Heal and free me from it!  I know it doesn’t make any sense that I see you and know you in some ways, yet am so untrusting and disabled in this area.  I do not know how to repair this brokenness in my heart, mind and spirit.  I cry out to you for freedom from unbelief and faith to pray with courage and confidence in your love for people and surrender to your sovereignty in how and when and you heal them.

WHO AM I?
I’m Lisa Kirby and I want to live with an ever-decreasing gap between what I read in the Scriptures and what I experience in my life.  I want to believe enough in Jesus that I will not hesitate to say to the person I just met, "Hey, can I pray for you about that?"