No Doubting Thomas!

For over five decades, I’ve prayed religiously.

I’ve prayed for restoration of the atrophied muscles in my right leg, injured in a skill saw injury at the age of eighteen. The nerve was severed, and despite a surgical and rehabilitative process, I currently contend with the dismay of a foot-drop condition.

My preference for cowboy boots is rooted in their supportive role in minimizing the handicap by keeping the foot from dropping as it would in a typical shoe.

For all those decades, I have stumbled over “invisible” elements, resulting in minor physical injuries and significant psychological embarrassment.

As I approach my mid-seventies, other disorders and conditions have surfaced: Heart disease (resulting in a bypass operation), deafness, arthritis, and unrelenting sleep challenges.

I pray for all of these conditions. And I have experienced healing in some of. Yet, despite the seeming randomness of God’s answers, I remain unwavering in my belief that God heals. He heals in this life! Now! In the physical realm!

Healing is for here! Heaven is for wholeness!

Additionally, it is not failing faith that may result in our entering heaven having never embraced the promise of complete physical and emotional healing.

“All these people died still believing what God had promised them. They did not receive what was promised, but they saw it all from a distance and welcomed it. They agreed that they were foreigners and nomads here on earth.” Hebrews 11:13 (New Living Translation, NLT)

The paradox is that God seems more focused on revealing than healing!

It is amid the myriad malaise and messes of our lives that God reveals Himself. In seemingly random but righteous serendipities, He intervenes in the persistence of our particular pain with a poignant reminder of His presence, power, and peace. We are comforted for a season by knowing that we know the reality of the promises of His Word.

Thomas was more desirous than doubter!

But he replied, “I won’t believe it unless I see the nail wounds in his hands, put my fingers into them, and place my hand into the wound in his side.” John 20:25 (New Living Translation, NLT)

God desires that, despite our doubts, we thrust our hands upward toward heaven, where Jesus sits at God’s side. Therein lies the revealing of our ultimate healing—our hope on earth of our ultimate wholeness in heaven!

Originally posted July 2018