EVERY TIME WE PRAY AS CHILDREN OF GOD SOMETHING HAPPENS – PART 2
Sakkie Parsons
Translated from Afrikaans:
“Elke keer as ons as kinders van God bid, gebeur daar iets – Deel 2”
In part one of this writing, I mentioned that because of a statement that someone made on TV, I decided to share with you some thoughts that came to my mind.
Today I want to specifically share with you one statement he made, and I quote:
"All the sick in the days of the Gospels were healed."
In my opinion, this is obviously not true.
I now want to make an attempt to explain to you with the guidance of the Holy Spirit to the best of my ability how I see these and other similar problems.
You may have been sick too and have been prayed for and you prayed for yourself, and the problem continued despite the prayers and maybe even got worse.
Also remember when I share with you what is in my heart –
I do not have all the answers. In fact, I have very few answers, but our Lord laid it on my heart to tell you that if you have read what I share with you, you will still have questions – but you will also have peace about many things.
Please allow me when I start with a passage from our Lord's Word, which I always use in my own life when I do not understand something and which I have used a lot in mail I have sent you.
1COR 13:9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
1COR 13:10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
Also:
1COR 13:12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
Please also remember, that my purpose with this writing to you is to help you and other people not to fall into a hopeless despair, as the person who told me:
"Oh, God is simply not interested in me, so nothing changes."
As I have already said, in my opinion it is not true that all people were healed in Jesus' day. In fact, not even all who were in His presence were healed according to the testimony at my disposal. Not physically and not mentally either. Spiritually here I am thinking especially of the Sadducees and Pharisees, as well as the rich young man.
About the bodily healing just the following example:
JOHN 5:2-9
2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades.
3 In these lay a multitude of invalids–blind, lame, and paralyzed.
4 For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had.(NKJV)
5 One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.
6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to be healed?"
7 The sick man answered him, "Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me."
8 Jesus said to him, "Get up, take up your bed, and walk."
9 And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. Now that day was the Sabbath.
If you read on now, you will be able to see clearly through everything that followed, that Jesus only healed one person, although there have been many other sick and disabled people.
JOH 5:3 In these lay a multitude of invalids–blind, lame, and paralyzed.
I do not know why Jesus healed only one person, but I know for sure that Jesus did not think of him more than the others, because only a while later He hang on a cross for that healed man and all the others who have been there and for you and me.
JOHN 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
MAT 18:11 For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost. (NKJV)
Even if you sit there with issues and things you do not understand and even if I sit here with my thorn in my flesh and things I do not understand.
Do you know how I look in my dim mirror at the mystery I see there and do not understand?
I look with excited anticipation at the incomprehensible image – and I look forward to the
day I will clap my hands in delight when I see why my life had to walk the path in which it walked in my life.
In the meantime, I live my life with in full glorious knowledge:
ROM 8:28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
I also know that every person who has accepted Jesus Christ as his/her LORD and Saviour can know for sure and apply to him or her what I am now going to say about myself:
Every time I went to my Lord with a problem, He listened and every time He heard me. I did not like the answer every time. I did not even hear or see the answer every time – but, as I told you on a previous occasion –
Every time we pray as children of God, something happens.
Even if, according to what we can see, nothing happens, we can surely know we are
listen to and there is an answer.
That is why I rejoice with the prophet:
HAB 3:17-19
17 Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls,
18 yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
19 GOD, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer's; he makes me tread on my high places.
Greetings,
Sakkie