(From Evelyn):
I find myself today just trying to rest and unwind from the
busyness of last week. It was a lot of extra work on top of all the things I
need to take care of. Between coordinating Daniel’s care, preparing his blended
meals in the gap between shipments, picking up and delivering his packaged
blends while taking the kids for a visit, plus more, it was a lot to do.
I’ve been wanting to write this blog post for what seems
like a long time. I hope you’ll enter into what God has been teaching me.
What I’ve Been
Reading and Listening To
Over the past several days, God has been teaching me more
about faith and prayer. I’ve been learning about faith, miracles, and how they
fit into the Christian worldview more precisely from Eric Metaxas’ book,
Miracles.
In the first third of his book, Metaxas writes about the more academic
arguments for miracles, past and present. The last two thirds are actual
miracle stories from either the author’s personal experience or from friends
whom he trusts and verified details. He said he could have included a lot more
stories if he had the space and chose stories from friends of friends.
Also, while I was preparing Daniel’s meds and meals
especially, I spent a lot of time listening to and reflecting on a particular
sermon from John MacArthur, “
The Power
of Faith” based on Matthew 17:14-21. This is the passage in the Amplified
version:
14 And
when they approached the multitude, a man came up to Him, kneeling before Him
and saying, 15 Lord, do pity and
have mercy on my son, for he has epilepsy (is [a]moonstruck) and he suffers terribly; for
frequently he falls into the fire and many times into the water. 16 And I brought him to Your disciples,
and they were not able to cure him.
17 And
Jesus answered, O you unbelieving ([b]warped, wayward, rebellious) and [c]thoroughly perverse generation! How long am
I to remain with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to Me. 18 And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it
came out of him, and the boy was cured instantly.
19 Then
the disciples came to Jesus and asked privately, Why could we not drive it out?
20 He said to them, Because
of the littleness of your faith [that is, your lack of [d]firmly relying trust]. For truly I say to
you, if you have faith [[e]that is living] like a grain of mustard
seed, you can say to this mountain, Move from here to yonder place, and it will
move; and nothing will be impossible to you. 21 [f]But this kind does not go out except by
prayer and fasting.[i]
What I’ve Been Learning
Miracles
Reading
about the modern day, vetted stories of how God is doing the miraculous in the
lives of His people was so very encouraging. You can’t just do a Google search
on miracle stories and expect to read the truth. That is why I was excited to
learn that Eric Metaxas wrote this book – because I knew he is very careful
with the facts (he wrote two very popular biographies on William Wilberforce
and Dietrich Bonhoeffer). He didn’t want to write this book at first, but the
non-Christian editor who wanted the book said he’d get someone else to write it
if he didn’t because the editor was adamant the time was ripe for this kind of
book. At that point, Metaxas said he had to write it because whoever else might
write about miracles might take a very New Age approach to it. He wanted to
take a very biblical approach to the subject matter, but in a way that isn’t
just written to Christians. Anyone can interact with his book.
One of my favorite concepts in Metaxas’ book comes at the
beginning of his section on healing miracles:
The Bible says clearly that God
wants us to ask him for help when we need it, and it is clear that asking for
healing when we are sick is part of that. Whether he heals us is another story,
but if we don’t ask for it, we are preempting the very possibility that it
might happen. So we should ask.
I really appreciated his emphasis on the extent of our role
in miracles – having faith and asking God – but also knowing that a miracle is
ultimately up to God. I also liked how Metaxas didn’t write the stories in
isolation, but gave the context and how God then used the individuals by giving
the reader a glimpse of the purpose of the miracle.
Faith
As an aside, we need to differentiate between biblical faith
and counterfeits. It’s not the type of “name it and claim it” bad theology
where one thinks he or she has the power of creation in one’s very words. Only
God has that power. Acknowledging and being reminded of a promise of God by
talking about it is one thing (and a very good thing to do), but “claiming” it by
speaking certain words to somehow mystically make it real is just not supported
in the Bible.
Our prayers are only effective because of the God to Whom we
pray, not because of the actual words we utter. Our God is not some impersonal
force in the universe that we must cajole and manipulate with our words and
thoughts to get what we want. He is a magnificent, personal Being Who is both
holy and loving, and longs to be in relationship with us; but on His terms,
frankly, because He’s God. Please be careful not to allow ancient paganism and
New Age,
The
Secret type practices into your doctrine.
The Mustard Seed
In the passage on which John MacArthur preached (and its
parallel passages in Mark and Luke), nine of the disciples aren’t able to cast
a demon out of an epileptic boy. Jesus returns from the Mount of
Transfiguration with the other three disciples and encounters a crowd of people
– the disciples, the boy’s father, sneering scribes, and onlookers. Jesus
instantly heals the boy, but not without substantial frustration at His
disciples’ little faith.
In private, the disciples are bewildered why they couldn’t
heal the boy when they had been given the power to heal and cast out demons
earlier. This time it didn’t work, and they probably tried several times! Jesus
responds by saying that their faith was too little – or short-lived. They gave
up too soon. In John MacArthur’s words:
Little faith is the kind of faith
that believes in God when you have something in your hand. Got it? Oh yes, I
believe God. Oh yes, the Lord provides. Here it is and I'm hanging on to it.
That's little faith. But little faith can't believe God when it doesn't have in
hand its resource, that's little faith. Great faith says I believe God without
anything in my hand. I believe God in the middle of the storm. I believe God
though [the] wind is howling.
In other words, Jesus gave them a harder test, a miracle that required
from them persistent prayer. The first miracles that they were empowered to do
came instantly, but that takes very little faith. Jesus wanted to start
“weaning” them off of Him in preparation for His physical absence. MacArthur
says:
What the disciples should have
done when they didn't heal the man the first, second or third time, was to keep
on praying and keep on trusting and keep on believing God till their persistent
prayer broke through and reached its point where God wanted them to learn, and
then God would have responded. It isn't that they had to batter down heaven to
get His attention, it is that God knew exactly what He was going to do but He
withheld it in order that they might continue to stretch their faith.
Even though we as Christians today don’t have the apostolic
gift of healing that the Apostles had (which was to verify their words and
witness as genuinely coming from God), Jesus’ principle of faith like a mustard
seed is incredibly applicable to us today. But the problem is so many people
misinterpret the point of the mustard seed. The average faith healer today will
tell you you just need to have “enough faith,” in some subjective, baseless
quantity of feeling.
That is not what Jesus is talking about. Earlier in Matthew
13:31, Jesus talks about how even though a mustard seed is the smallest of
seeds (that they had in that region), it grows to be a plant large enough for
birds to rest in its branches. Did you catch the point? It’s not the size that
the seed starts from, but the fact that it grows! Jesus is telling us that
faith is only real and effective if it grows.
But how does our faith grow? Well, that’s where trials and
suffering come in, and not just trials that have an immediate resolution.
MacArthur says,
I believe there are many things
that God desires for you to experience in your life that God desires to
accomplish in your life that are available to you through the exercise of His
divine power. But that power will never be tapped until you have the faith that
starts small. And when it meets with resistance and when you don't see it
happen, the faith doesn't die small, it gets larger and larger and larger. And
you continue persistently in prayer… He wants you to persist in prayer because
that's the extension of your faith. You see, if you just said, "God, I
want this..." (snap) you've got it...you'd never learn [to strengthen]
your faith. You'd never be ready for the trial, would you? And so the Lord asks
us to persist and persist.
A Few Final Notes on
Matthew
Regarding the “mountain” that Jesus is referring to, it is
clear from the context Jesus was speaking figuratively as teachers in His day
often did when speaking of moving mountains. He is talking about a seemingly
insurmountable problem.
And as far as “nothing is impossible,” in the context of
Matthew the disciples were promised to be able to heal, and so it would be
possible for them. MacArthur says, “It's only possible, first of all, if it's
within the framework of God's will and God's promise.” For us, the principle
still rings true. Promises that God has made to His Church in this age will not
be impossible if we persist in prayer.
The sticking point is that so many Christians (my past self
included) take promises from the Bible that were made to other people in other
times that weren’t meant to apply to them and say that they “claim” that promise.
But that’s another topic for another day. Watch
this
video and read this
article
for a fuller explanation. There are PLENTY of promises God has made to us, His
Church, without us having to steal promises from others and end up disappointed
and alienated.
How Enduring is Our
Faith Really?
Wow, so that’s a lot of theological ground to cover. You may
be wondering, ‘So what? Why did you make me read all of that?’ Well, there are
a few main lessons I want to relate to what Daniel and I are going through, and
how you participate in this with us.
Based on the undeniable fact that God still does miracles
today – He still intervenes and injects His creative and restorative power into
our broken world – we can expect to see God do miracles in the future. So, why
is it so hard to pray for them and actually believe that God could do something
miraculous?
I think it’s clear from the passage in Matthew that many
times we allow our faith to be stopped too soon. Remember, it’s not that we
need to somehow manufacture some subjective feeling of “belief” or “positive
thinking” or “good energy” and just try to keep going. That’s not the faith of
the Bible. We need to remember Who it is we put our faith in, and we only know
that from studying the wonderful gift of God’s Word to us. The faith Jesus is
calling us to have will start small, but as long as it’s based on the true
Source of faith, it can grow and get stronger. Real faith starts when human
resources stop.
God has been showing me how He has been growing my own faith
during the past eight months. It is only through this extreme trial that God
could have instilled in my soul and mind the degree of understanding of what
true faith in Him looks like. If God had healed Daniel right away, I wouldn’t
have the strength of faith I do now. To Him be the glory.
What about you? Did your faith quit when you prayed
earnestly for Daniel that first week after he was diagnosed and he wasn’t
healed? The first month? Six months? Does time have the power to kill your
faith in God’s ability to heal?
What about the severity of Daniel’s suffering? Has that
killed your faith? Is your faith still intact knowing that his weight has
further dwindled down to 103 lbs.? That he has an open lesion the size of an
apple on the side of his face and several smaller ones? That the tumor is
growing out of his mouth and he lost another half a tooth this week? That it’s
a near constant job for him sucking out mucus from his nose, mouth, and trache,
plus managing the necrosis from his lesions?
I don’t want your prayers and your faith to be ignorant of
what Daniel goes through. It’s horrible and heartbreaking. My stomach is in
knots even having to write all of that. Do you still have faith that God can
and may heal all of that? Do you really?
We do.
Through many hours spent in fervent prayer and reading the
Bible, God has strengthened our faith. By His mercy, we refuse to let any
symptom, suffering, crisis, or even seeming delay replace our faith with
despair and fear. Has our faith wavered? You bet! And it’s in those moments
that we have to immerse ourselves in more Scripture and spend more time crying
out to God in agony and desperation. We take comfort that God can handle our
emotion; after all, He created us that way. We need to intentionally remind
ourselves of the truth we know and the character of the God with which we have
entrusted our earthly lives and eternity. Plus, the blessing of Daniel’s type
of cancer is that it is incredibly visible – as in, it will be undeniable that
God healed him should He choose to.
Why “Stringy?”
A long time friend of Daniel from Timberline Ranch recently
shared her struggle with the question, “Why Stringy?” – Daniel’s camp name (no,
he didn’t pick it, but now after 22 years it’s just a part of him). Why does
Stringy have to go through all of this suffering when he’s been so faithful in
serving God?
The answer I gave her surprised her and she asked me to
share this on the blog. I said that, yes, I have asked that question, but I
haven’t dwelt on it. The reason is because God in His mercy has shown me the
obvious answer.
It had to be Stringy. In all of the ways God is moving (and
God has only given us a glimpse of that, which is still amazing), these things
could have only occurred because of the connections Daniel has and those
people’s connections, because of the legacy of ministry God has given Daniel,
because of how God has been preparing Daniel for this season. And it is only
because of the utter severity of Daniel’s suffering and that of our family that
so many are taking notice.
God is actively mobilizing His Church to do what He designed
it to do, as well as giving unbelievers a picture of Who He is because of what
we are going through. Daniel wouldn’t have the ministry in the hospital he has
if he wasn’t sick.
Does that make it easy? Oh…no. Every single day is a battle
and struggle to take each next step, whatever the challenge may be for him and
I. But because of our faith in the one, true God, we know our struggle is not
in vain. We trust God for His sustaining mercy, remain diligent in doing the
tasks and fulfilling the responsibilities He has given us, and then we trust
Him for the results.
In the sermon at our church on Sunday, the guest speaker,
Jason Ballard, asked the question why we don’t pray more for miracles. He
wondered if it was because people think it would make God look bad if nothing
happened. I like how he assured us that God doesn’t need help in the PR (Public
Relations) department. He can take care of Himself.
A Question for You
There are hundreds of people reading this blog, most we know
but many, many we do not. Within that number, there is bound to be a wide
variety of beliefs, worldviews, and ranges of faith – from having none to
little to enduring.
What type of blog reader are you? Maybe you started out
faithful and hopeful back in April before things got really bad. But the degree
of suffering and length of time has destroyed your faith. Now you’re just
reading out of a morbid curiosity, to see how things (what you think) will
inevitably end; just rubber-necking in the blogosphere.
Or perhaps you’re one of the many who wants to have stronger
faith but seems to just be beaten down by the harsh reality and suffering.
You’re struggling to truly believe God can do what He says He can do. Take
heart, there is an antidote to little faith. Persist in prayer. Read what God
has to say about Himself.
And we know there are many reading our blog who join with us
in tenacious faith, and continue to pray for Daniel to be fully healed and restored.
You have learned through your own life’s struggles how God is so faithful and
can do all and more than we ask or even imagine. We find it so incredibly encouraging
when people respond with such genuine, enduring faith that Daniel could and
even will be healed.
Final Thoughts
First, I want to thank you for making it this far. I knew
this post would turn into quite a long one, and I hope and pray it has been a
blessing to you. I have been prompted by the Holy Spirit to express my thoughts
on what He has been teaching me, and I hope that I have not gotten in the way
of what God may want to teach you. If there are things you would like to
dialogue further about, rather than leaving a comment and risk the online
tendency of being misunderstood, I invite you to contact me and let’s arrange
an afternoon where we can sit and chat over tea.
Second, we have been and continue to be so very blessed by
God’s people – even strangers – who have been faithful to the prompting of the
Holy Spirit in their lives to give of their time, talents, and treasures. Thank
you for continuing to support us both practically and in prayer as we wait
expectantly for God’s miracle. To Him be all the glory! His will be done.
[i] The
ending of the passage, “
But this kind does not go
out except by prayer and fasting,” is in italics because it’s not original
to Matthew, but comes from Mark, and the “fasting” part isn’t in the earliest
manuscripts, so it should read, “But this kind does not go out except by
prayer.”