... strange miracles...

I've been wanting to write this post for a long time - somehow i feel like it deserves to be written in a certain way, but i know i will never find those words, so instead i have chosen to write it today, in my simple clumsy language.

I heard about three healings recently. All of which have stayed with me. Two of them were people who have been healed of epilepsy. The other was actually just fiction - i read it in a novel, but still novel's can have power to speak to you, i think. 

By chance i came across the testimony of a Christian on-line - he happens to go to the same church as some friends of mine and i ended up speaking to him on the phone for a long time. He grew up with epilepsy, which got quite severe, and meant his life and schooling were badly affected. One day he became a Christian and felt God tell him he would be healed. Two years later he had an operation to remove part of his brain, and although he had a few seizures after, he has now been off medication and seizure free for 15 years. You could say it was just because of the operation. Or you could say it was God's way of healing him, using the operation as the method. I say it was down to God. 

This guy also told me the testimony of another man he knew, who also had epilepsy and went to his church for a while. They prayed for his healing and he then got cancer as well. However, after the radiotherapy that he had for the cancer, his seizures stopped. There is no logical reason for that, but it's what happened... and since then he has been seizure free. Another miracle i would say.

The third instance was the one i read in a story. Just fiction. But, in light of the other two testimonies it stood out at me. It involved a boy who had severely weak lungs. His Father often prayed for him. However, after a bizarre series of events in which he was shot in the chest, he recovered with perfect lungs.... showing no sign of the shooting, or of his previous sickness. (ok, so it's fiction, i know..)

Anyway, what i observed in all three cases, is that the healing actually happened through another seemingly bad event. The first guy had to have part of his brain removed. The second guy had to have radiotherapy. The third guy was shot. I genuinely believe that all three cases are examples of God's healing power and mercy though. They are not just chance occurances. But i also noticed that the healing doesn't happen how you would naturally expect. For some unknown reason, God decided that the best way of healing these people was through another difficult event. It wasn't that they were instantly healed when prayed for. But they were healed, over time. I believe God can heal instantly, but also that He has His own ways that only He understands and so sometimes heals over a long period of time, or in a wierd way, or sometimes not until the moment someone meets Jesus....  but I trust He knows what's best and is faithful to His word.

I praise God for healing these guys with epilepsy..... i have only ever met/spoken to a very, very small number of people who have epilepsy... at least half of these cases are of people who are now healed. 

I was shot four times.

Last night i dreamt i was shot four times, but i didn't die. The first two bullets only hit my arms, but the next two bullets could have killed me, i'm sure. I woke up thinking about this, everything in the dream felt very real, very distinct. I guess it's not that strange that i didn't die though, what with it being a dream, but still it perplexed me. This morning i read the classic passage from 2 Corinthians 11 and was led to consider all that Paul endured:

"Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. 24 Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea;26 on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; 27 in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. 28 And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. 29 Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant?"

Seriously, how did he suffer all that without dying? There must be only one reason, simply that God sustained him and had a purpose in it. I don't think it would be possible to survive otherwise (unless you were an actor in a soap, but that's hardly realistic.) I don't really know what my point is in this post, except God is sovereign and lets people die when you think they shouldn't, and lets others live when everything says they should die. He alone knows why.

What is sustaining grace?

"Not grace to bar what is not bliss,

Nor flight from all distress, but this:

The grace that orders our trouble and pain,

And then, in the darkness, is there to sustain."

-John Piper-