That sounds arrogant because reformationists read their bibles too ~ along with Anglicans & some Catholics & we have all ended up in very different places. I was raised Anglican & for the life of me I have never understood why anyone stays in that church. It is neither unabashedly catholic nor unashamedly reformed, just this strange mongrel mix but the thing that sent me from the church was my bible.
Starting with Genesis all the way through to Revelation the God you read about in the bible acts with power & might & majesty ~ none of which filtered through to the congregation in a tangible way. Oh, lip service, sure ~ but actual power? Nope. Not a skerik. My bible told me that where God was there was power so either the bible was true [as it claimed to be] or the whole thing was a gigantic hoax, as I seriously suspected.
So being me, I asked. I was told all my life that prayer was talking to God so why couldn't He talk back? If He was real, as I was constantly told, then I could expect an answer. That was only reasonable. Probably no~one was more surprised than I was to get an answer.
The hows, the whys, the what happends are not the purpose of my meanderings here. In His own way & time God proved beyond reasonable doubt that His charismatic gifts are alive & well for the purpose of allowing His saints to serve a hurting world. So far, so good.
However changing denominations simply raises a new set of questions ~ for which, quite often, there seems to be no reasonable explanation & I really, really, really hate being told something inane like It's the will of God. I don't believe God is a sadist. I don't believe He tortures those who believe in Him with sickness, debility, depression etc but charismatics have their own set of foibilles & I had heard By His stripes you were healed until I wondered if these people even heard themselves? I had heard: Stand in faith until healing manifests...but hope deferred makes the heart sick... or as the message puts it Unrelenting disappointment leaves you heartsick, but a sudden good break can turn life around.
So what was I meant to think when I didn't see healing manifest? When I prayed & nothing happened? It bugged me, you know. I know what the word says. I believe the word is true. I also know we are in a spiritual war zone where most of the time we can't even see the enemy. And I know I often don't see the obvious, the stuff right under my very nose, the things I think I know inside out & upside down & back to front.
Sometimes all it takes is for someone to phrase something slightly differently & the lights, all the lights go on at once. I had that happen last week & it has so totally impacted my faith: what I think, how I think it & how strong I am about what I believe.
Rabqa & I are our bible study just at present. Our other lady is away & the MOTH generally listens rather than participates. We came away from our last prayer seminar with a number of things we planned on using for our study times. One of those was a set of Larry Hutton cds: I Believe: Why No Results? Yes indeed!
Bek & I have had this training & so we use things like this to build ourselves up & as a reminder to speak the word, believe the word, do the word. However Larry said one thing that impacted me enormously. He was speaking about healing & put it like this: My body hurts~ that's a fact. But a fact is not the Truth. The bible says Your word is Truth [john 17:17] & the word says By His stripes you were healed. Lightbulb moment!!!!
In all honestly the only thing that has changed is how I see what is happening around me. I pray & sometimes I see something immediately & sometimes I don't. That is a fact. The *Truth* is what the word says & the word says they are healed. Seeing fact V Truth has helped me enormously & really helped my faith. I stop looking for all the things I might be doing wrong. I don't doubt myself, our prayers, or think I've failed to connect with God or that God, for whatever reason, has chosen not to answer this particular prayer in the affirmative, because facts are not necessarily Truth! I have no trouble with a concept expressed in this particular way. In fact it has cleared up a lot of muck for me & made things very, very clear. There are facts & then there is the truth. They are not necessarily the same thing! Such freedom!
Don't you love how the Holy Spirit works to clear your thinking up so you think right? Yep, I sure do appreciate it!
Okay, then. We have to talk!!!!
ReplyDeleteI think my destination was the same but I was on a different track to getting there. You know me...perception is my thing. For instance, I perceive myself, even while looking in the mirror, as younger and still blonde (maybe with some white highlights), firmer skin with not many winkles and a smile of straight teeth. However, when I look at pictures myself I see an unhappy, harsh-looking, aging woman who looks like she comes from a hard life in the hills without orthodontics. My daughter often tells me that the kids at our church are afraid of me and think I look like a witch. This all reminds me of a movie called Shallow Hal.
For the last few months I have been considering if I am in denial of the facts before me and have created my own perception that no one else sees OR it is that my perception is the truer one. Are not our bodies renewed? So, is it that I should accept what they see, or appreciate what I see because one is of a fallen world and the other is what God intended, His Truth?
So, is healing is the same? If we see we are healed, then we are? I think Jesus was here to open our eyes to look beyond circumstances and see the Kingdom at hand, here with us. Hard to do but perhaps easier than we make it out to be.
I think once we grasp how it is intended to work it is easier than we think but until then we stumble around blinded bu our own eyes, convinced that the world we can actually see is all the reality there is.
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