the agony of defeat AND the thrill of victory

One thing about praying for the sick, is that we don’t always get the results we are intending.  There is a mystery here and more often than not (actually almost all the time) we don’t know WHY something doesn’t happen.  Irresponsible theologians and pastors will often give their “opinions” (I.e “It wasn’t God’s will”, “there was sin or unbelief”, etc. etc.), but the fact is, they do not know and simply cannot know unless God reveals it.

I had a situation the other day where I prayed for both a muslim man and a Christian woman and neither of them were healed.  I had prayed for people in their shop before and I was asked to pray by both of them based on healings that had happened before.  I was actually really encouraged that the power of former testimonies was fueling the requests for further prayer.  I hadn’t seen them in a year.  Anyway, after multiple attempts (I prayed 4 or 5 times for the muslim and and close to that many times for the Christian) nothing happened.  Even worse, the following day when I inquired the woman said her pain was actually worse.  To be honest, this blog would not be a balanced one if I didn’t share things such as this.  And also the discouragement I felt after these reports.  These injuries were things we have seen healed multiple times and so it was quite disheartening.  Do I know why?  I have no idea and even when I inquired of the Lord, I didn’t feel like He said anything to the to answer the question, “Why”?  I have often said that there are lots of promises in the Bible, but one that doesn’t exist is, “I the Lord will answer all thy questions”.  Will we know “why” or “why not” in eternity?  Maybe, but then again we probably won’t care at that point.  So the last couple of days were for me “the agony of defeat”, that was until yesterday.  What do we do when we don’t see people healed?  We keep praying until we do.  

So the man I am staying with while on this trip had a migraine headache.  He had tried to sleep it off but with no effect.  When he came out, and I asked if I could pray.  After a couple of times of prayer, the “worst headache in 20 years” (his description) was gone and he was encouraged.  So was I after the defeats of the previous days.  And to add to that, the Lord spoke powerfully and accurately when we were praying for a young woman to be set free from demonic oppression that night.  God revealed things prophetically that were things only He could have know.  She even testified that about one of the details He revealed, “I’d never shared that with anybody”.  So after a couple of days of discouragement, the Lord turned things around and we experienced “the thrill of victory”.

As Randy Clark so accurately described the healing ministry, it truly is “the thrill of victory AND the agony of defeat”. (or in my case this week, the opposite!)