Journal Entry ~ 08/17/18

And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. - James 5:15

Our God is a God of miracles.  He is also a God of promises, and He promises that prayers offered up in faith will be heard. We are also told countless times that whatever we ask in His name will be given to us. God can heal any sickness, physical or spiritual - He does it all the time.

I think the key phrase in this verse is the word faith. The prayers we offered up to God have to be full of the faith that He will answer. We are instructed to ask, believing that he will hear us and give us what we desire. We learn in James 1 that the man who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the waves. The man who doubts will not receive anything from the Lord because he is double minded - he has one mind on the Lord, and one mind on himself. This man is unstable in all his ways. If you do not want to be thrown about on the waves of life, all of your trust must be placed in the Lord, and you must pray with complete confidence that He will answer your prayers. 

I could share stories of miraculous healing from my life - like many other believers, I have witnessed God’s supernatural healing. He has restored both the physical and mental health of people in my life in ways that are challenging to explain any other way. I don’t find it hard to comprehend that our God is the God of miracles, I think it’s more challenging to understand why He chooses to not heal at times. 

God does not always respond to our fervent prayers as we ask, and sometimes He allows the very thing we prayed against. If He is the God of healing, and we believed He would heal, why are we facing the struggle in front of us?  God is sovereign over all. This must be the primary truth sealed to our hearts. He is also good - this must be the second. God promises good for those who love Him - and our God cannot break promises. It’s not in His nature. When we are faced with a struggle that we specifically prayed for Him to remove, and we are caught up in the questions of why, it is only with the assumption that we know what’s best. We cannot see all that God can see, we cannot know all that God knows. If He allows something difficult into our lives, we must trust that ultimately it is for our good and for the good of all. 

In these difficult times - when God doesn’t appear to be healing when prayers were offered up in faith - we must cling to the sufficiency of God’s grace. The God of our mountaintops must be the God of our valleys. He is working to show us He loves us in both places - when He heals and when He does not. Trust that even when it doesn’t make sense, He is still the God who loves you and pursued you, and shows you abundant grace and mercy. 


Press on ~ you are loved 💗

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