Faith and Prayer

Typically each night after we sit down to eat and say a prayer of thanks, Alisha and I will read a passage from the bible. It's usually a single "story" or thought, so it's often between a few verses and half of a chapter. We talk about it for a little bit to try and put ourselves into the story, or to understand the principle that's being taught. It's just our little habit of reading together.

Last night our reading was Luke 8:40-55, which was spoke rather directly to the current situation we face. In the passage, there are two stories of healing. The first was the daughter of a Jewish official (Jairus) who was raised from the dead. The second was a woman whose bleeding problem had not been successfully treated in over a decade. Jesus healed both of these people and when he did, he pointed out what had been essential in their healing. To the woman he said "your faith has made you well" and to the Jewish official he said "Do not be afraid any longer, only believe".

Faith was essential to their healing. In fact, a crowd of people was touching Jesus when the woman touched him, but she alone was healed because of her faith in his power to heal her. Alisha and I are praying for more faith. We are praying for the faith that would cause God to come and fully heal Roscoe. Our prayer sounds like a boy's father who wanted his son to be healed in Mark 9:24 when he said "I do believe; help my unbelief".

The problem that comes up in our minds is that we know people who have had faith, but were not healed. In the bible examples of this are Paul (2 Corinthians 12:7) and Jesus himself (Luke 22:42). Our only explanation for this is that despite a person's faithful prayers for healing, maybe God had a different plan for them. We can pray all we want, but if we are asking something outside the scope of God's will, then it will not be done. 1 John 5:14-15 speaks to this when it says "... if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us".

This leaves Alisha and I relying on faith and prayer. We absolutely believe that God can heal Roscoe and rescue him from his current condition, but we are clueless as to whether it is God's will for Roscoe to be healed. We are reassured by looking at the past healing that God has provided Roscoe, and we think there would be no reason for God to heal him then only to leave him stranded now. Then again, we don't know everything.

The way I see it (opinion), there are 3 categories of things that will happen:

1. Things that God will do
2. Things that God will not do
3. Things that God is flexible about

God's word has revealed many things that fit into the first two categories (like being baptized into Christ, living righteously, avoiding sin), but that last flexible category is where prayers come into effect. It's almost as if God makes the decision of what will happen, but he is open to change if we make a faithful request. The difficult thing is that when we make a request, we don't know which category the thing we're requesting fits into.

We are trying to make our prayers like those of Hezekiah (2 Kings 20:1-7) and Moses (Exodus 32:7-14 and Numbers 14:11-21) where they prayed and God changed his mind. As James 5:16 says, "the effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much". We are calling on all of the righteous to pray with us as well for Roscoe to be fully healed.

We especially ask that you pray on Wednesday, as that's when all of the testing will be done to determine the hospital's plan for what's next. God is more powerful than a hospital and the hospital doesn't see as he sees, but we ask that they will see and follow a path of healing that's provided by God.