What's Wrong With My Faith

I’d been sick for a long time.  Life not threatened, but not much of a life either.  My husband was everything during that time.  I do believe that I owe him my life.  And, having covenanted with him in 2002, he has had it all along.  He’s a keeper ;)  A vow “keeper” if you will.  He would have husbanded me as long as we both shall live, regardless of what the future promised, or failed to deliver.  But it got better.  After long suffering and endless prayer, I felt hope.  I could see a future.  We both could. 

Many of you know me, or followed my other blog when I fell ill again in 2010.  Lab test after lab test had come back negative, so my doctor gave up on the search.  Being told all hope was lost for me, I lost faith in a lot of things.  What kept me going was my faith in God.  When sick and unable to move, one of the few things I found I was still able to do – at any time – was talk with him.

Shaking and trembling every moment of the day with muscle spasms and deep muscle and nerve pain.  Loss of the ability to grasp things with my hands.  Vertigo, difficulty walking and difficulty with speech, muscle weakness. Spots on my body that felt like they were on fire.  Vision problems.  No, I couldn’t give up so easily.  I had a husband who loved me.  I had three beautiful kids who needed me – one only five months old and still living inside me.  

When my doctor gave up I made the decision to call the specialist who had helped me earlier during a time when my family doctor had run out of answers.  This doctor, a specialist in Environmental Medicine, looked at my health from a unique perspective.  

Dear Aristotle, I believe my doctor can trace the roots of this perspective and its development back to you and your work, and so I am indebted to you as well as to him for much of what follows.  You see, my doctor believed that every effect has a cause, so he was determined to search until he found the cause.  Albert Einstein, you have contributed to my health, too.  You convinced him that the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."  
Thanks guys.  Really.

His approach called for great wisdom, putting in a lot of effort searching medical literature, and being willing to look at health problems from multiple perspectives.  He also had great respect for the design of the human body and the environment we were created to thrive in.  So, my God, over and above all else, I am indebted to you.

After having an intimate encounter with the dark side of the medical system a few years earlier (and my faith in it essentially lost) I found my faith and hope being restored as this doctor’s integrity spoke for itself.  In the past, when lab results didn’t provide answers, my doctors had looked at me like there was something wrong with me (like it was my fault or something).  But this one didn’t.  He really listened to my symptoms.  He trusted that I knew what I was experiencing.  He was even willing to acknowledge when there was a gap in his knowledge (he chose to keep learning).  He admitted when he was wrong about something, and was willing to change his views as he learned more.  

For the first time a doctor was able to look on my health with understanding.  The treatment would take a huge life change, tremendous self-discipline, and a VERY long time.  

I was committed.  Even though it would be a long and difficult road to recovery, each week brought new and noticeable improvements to my health.  I felt like I was healed a little, again, and again, and again – like my prayers were being answered over and over and over.  The way I saw it, this doctor had the gift of healing.  Maybe in a different way than most understand that gift, but it’s how I felt.  I saw an image of the Great Physician.

 

He didn’t see himself as having the ability to heal people.  In fact, he would say just the opposite.  He talked about how the body has a powerful and “instinctive inclination to heal and protect itself.”  He described how after surgery, they place the skin back together and it heals all on its own.  “I don’t heal anyone” he would say.  He understood that there was a greater power at work than himself.  Still, from my perspective, understanding God’s design for the body to heal, and also how God works both through his natural laws and through miracles of healing outside of those natural laws, I believe this doctor has the gift of healing that employs wisdom and intelligence of a special kind, and an intimate knowledge of God’s design for God’s world and for the bodies of his most treasured created beings.  Powerful!

I felt like God had answered my prayer at the beginning of this journey toward health, and I just had to keep walking in faith as I went along.  It would be realized progressively over time. 

I wasn’t the only one praying.  I was absolutely overwhelmed by the number of people praying for me and rooting for my full recovery.  It was amazing.  I felt so cared for.  Whatever hope it offered me, though, it didn’t seem to offer others hope.  

I felt guilty.  Each week these wonderful people who were pouring their hearts out to God in prayer for ME fully believed that God would heal me completely.  They loved me.  They had faith in God’s power.  Each week they would come to me and ask, “Are you better?”  “Have you been healed?”  I tried to explain that God WAS healing me, and that it was the type of healing that would come over time.  But week after week they looked disappointed.  

They seemed to feel like God had not answered their prayers.  I felt guilty for not getting better faster.  I felt like I was letting them down.  I started to wonder if I had been wrong about accepting this as God’s answer to healing in my life.  Did it show some sort of lack of faith on my part that I wasn’t holding out for a sudden miraculous recovery?  Did they feel like this reflected some deficit in their own faith?

What was I to do with passages like Matthew 21:22-25?

“Truly I say to you, if you have faith, and do not doubt…even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ it shall happen.  And all things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.”

So many questions.  If I have faith?  Faith in what?  That my prayers will be favorably answered?  Faith in God?  Faith in God’s power?  And do not doubt what?  Can I really ask for anything I want, and receive it if I believe?  Have strong enough faith?  If I don’t doubt?  Are there any limits on this?  From simply reading the passage it seemed clear, just like it seems clear in Matthew 7:7-11. 

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks the door will be opened.”

The passage goes on to say that God knows how to give good gifts to his children – he’s even better at it than we are.  He wants to bless us with good things!  Can it really be that simple?  Is there more to it?

These questions have been raised anew.  For those of us reading through the Word together this year a number of us have come across these passages and wondered:  Why weren’t my prayers answered?  Why does healing come sometimes and not others?  Why not me?  Why not my child?  

And what does this say about my faith?  What does this say about my God?  And these questions will keep plaguing us because we have another run-through of gospels to come across them in!  And because we will keep praying.  And because we still don’t understand the choices of an all-powerful, all-knowing God.  We are overwhelmed again by the problem of evil.  We don’t understand what changes when we come to faith in God, and what role the fallen world still plays in our life. 

So, I turned to these passages again because I hope to understand them better.  As I began the search I really didn’t know what I would find.  I know what I believed before, but to really open myself up to what the Bible says I’ve set those beliefs aside for the moment.  I pray that my presuppositions wont cloud my reading of the text, and that God will speak clearly through his Word to me.  That my ears may hear. 

Though I’ve been reading and studying it for a while now my search is still in its infancy.  There will always be another book to read, another article, each new discovery will raise more questions, but there comes a time after holding things apart, and holding my perceptions loosely, that the pieces slide beautifully back together, the picture bigger, brighter, more complete, resolution higher.

Today, I am reminded of the faith of Abraham in Genesis 22.  This story captivated me as a child as it threw my mind in perpetual circles.  How could God ask him to do such a thing?  Why on earth?  He would never!  God is supposed to LOVE the little children!  How could THIS be God’s will?  But, then again, he IS God, and God can do anything, WILL anything…his ways are higher.  Wait, does this mean that God could legitimately command someone to do this?  But what about how God hates child sacrifice?  And around my mind would whirl another time…  I’m glad I learned this story as a child because it challenged my faith.  It drew me to search deeply.  It plunged me into prayer – I asked him question after question.  It brought me wonder. 

 As I approached adulthood this story began to raise new questions for me.  What was Abraham’s responsibility in this situation?  Was it to his son or to God?  What did it mean for him to be a parent? 

He had waited so long for God to give him a son.  The boy, Isaac, meant everything to him.  Looking at his boy surely reminded him of God’s faithfulness – promises fulfilled in God’s time, and of the future promises yet to be fulfilled.   But God’s command couldn’t have been clearer:  “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you (Genesis 22:2).”  And now, walking up the hill I imagine he pulled out all those videotapes of Isaac’s life and replayed them – relived them like it was just yesterday.  He recalled his birth – awaited 15 years!  What joy!  I imagine that he remembered the laughter at the idea of this impossible child, and how over and over again Isaac had brought them and others such laughter.  

Did Abraham wonder at God’s request?  Did he pray for God to change his expectation?  Did he imagine his role as a father to bring Isaac the maximum amount of happiness possible in life?  To protect him from pain at all costs?  Or was it something else entirely?   Did he understand his role as father to guide his child into becoming the person God imaged him to be? To walk the path of faithfulness in God’s will, whatever that was?  What did it mean to him to be Isaac’s father?  

There was no sign that God would change his mind or provide another way out.  No sign at all.  And yet, he was able to say simply to his servants “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”  WE will come back to you.  What kind of faith did he have?  How did he walk that path, placing the wood for the burnt offering on his son, carrying the fire and the knife himself.  The two of them going on together.  What happened in the heart of this father when he heard his son ask “Father…where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”  From where did he find the strength to say, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.”  Did he know his God so well to have confidence that he wouldn’t go through with this?  Because of the promises made before he was born:   ^“My covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you by this time next year?”  

Or was Isaac the lamb he was talking about?  He knew what God had said.  He was to sacrifice his only son – Isaac – as a burnt offering.  What kind of faith kept his feet walking the path to the place God had told him about, where he built an altar, arranged the wood on it, bound his son and laid him on the altar on top of the wood.  With what strength did he reach out his hand and take the knife to slay his son? 

It was an act of grace when the Angel of the Lord called out to him, and told him not to harm the boy.  It was an act of grace when he provided that ram in the thicket.  God’s response tells us that this test of faith proved that Abraham feared God – it was because he did not withhold his son.  Indeed, he would not have.

This story resonates more powerfully with me today because it was eight years ago today that we met our first son.  We named him Isaac as we marvelled at the faith of Abraham.  His name is a reminder to me that he is not my possession.  No.  He is entrusted to me – by God – to raise him to fulfill his God-given purpose, whatever that may be.  And, God might ask him to glorify God with his life.  If that time comes, will I still be able to hold onto him with an open hand?  Will I lead him down the right path?  Or will I clench my fingers down around him and refuse to let him go?  Will I remember whose child he is?

In future blog posts I will to explore the place of suffering and death in the fallen, pre-Christ world.  Then I want to take a closer look at these passages about faith and prayer in Matthew (and their parallels), and begin to unravel them a little.  As I do this I worry that it might bring you pain.  I can’t promise the answers will be what you or I want or expect.  I can’t say if they will be satisfying.  They will likely open old wounds again.  I find the journey toward God and his truth can be a painful one.  It often takes time as we wade through difficult material.  Tough questions.  And answers that might be anything but easy.  But it doesn’t end there.  Often a wound that reopens does so because it hasn’t healed.  Not really.  Not properly.  Not fully.  Sometimes a wound needs to be reopened so it can be cleaned, covered, and close.  Overtime its mark will fade, but it will always be there to remind us of the past.  To remind us of the journey.  The love.  The loss.  The healing.

Meet you there.