Healing

The other day, Jordan was with me in the car and I happened to be in a nostalgic mood and was playing Keith Green. I brought his attention to a song called "Walk and Talk" and told him the song was based on the story in the book of Acts about Peter healing the lame man who was begging for gold. Jordan was astounded. He said, "Peter healed someone?! I thought it was only Jesus that healed people." I was then astonished at this gap in his spiritual education, just as much my fault as his Sunday School teachers I suppose (I didn't suppose it was the fault of him not listening. Though he has a problem tuning into instructions and things, he's amazingly attentive to every story ever told to him and recalls the stories in amazing detail.).

I went on to explain to him that, yes, not only did Peter heal many, but Paul and many other believers in the New Testament. In fact, the Spirit of Jesus lives in us when we become a christian and ask him in and that the same power that raised Christ from the dead is alive in us and working in us and there fore the asking. But I then had to explain that, though such miracles of healing were not unheard of around the world (I have read detailed accounts from believers in China, for instance, as well as South America.) but that they were far and few between in America and the rest of the Western world that same as they were for Jesus' home town. When Jesus visited his home town, he could perform few miracles because of their lack of faith. I explained that we have much faith in many other things, such as modern medicine, money, modern technology and that we don't feel the need for God in this area in such a way as to cry out to him as our only hope. Just as necessity is the mother of invention, lack of options leads us to lean finally on God.

I finally wanted to leave a note of hope that according to Philippians 4:13 that we can retain the hope of being able to do all things through him who strengthens us. We are never without hope because we serve the God of all hope.

Last night, Jordan had 102.8. I think he'd been sick for a couple of days, but as noted in the former post, he can be a bit of a hypochondriac and the boy who cried wolf did not get my attention until he laid in bed for 2 hours without anything to do and didn't feel compelled to get up and complain about being bored. So I took his temperature and it was a little over 100 and later snuck up to 102.8.

Needless to say (for those who know what today's schedule was to be... we had prepared for weeks for the "Sunday Night Sing" in Old Settler's Park for which I was part of two different ensembles for a total of four songs) we were in a bit of a panic. But then I remembered that panic shows lack of faith in Him who has control and was not surprised by all this and started to pray. I then decided it would be disobedience to fail to pray for my son and I got out some olive oil, but a little on my hands and went to pray over him. It encouraged me that he suddenly looked comfortable in his bed for the first time all evening (he had been dozing fitfully all evening and it was now about 11:00 p.m.).

The next morning, while praying, I found myself distracted by trying to plan in my head what to do if Jordan was still sick. So to try to focus, I pulled out "Power of a Praying Parent" and turned to Chapter 13, because it was the 13th of the month, and the chapter was the one where I was supposed to pray for health and healing for my children. Hmmmm.... . Then I opened my bible and randomly chose to read the end of Ephesians and my eyes fell on the passage where part of the will of God is described as being to speak to one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Then, using these two things, God spoke to my heart that I needed to know that it was his will for me to sing tonight and that he also wanted to teach Jordan about the faith that I had felt was so lacking in America... the faith to believe God for the healing of our bodies.

I went to him when it was time to get up, and he was sleepy, to say the least. I told him to get out of bed and that God had healed him (he didn't have a fever) and gave him some Chamomile tea and he actually ate breakfast too. He has been fine since! He took a nap this afternoon, but not only has the fever not returned, he hasn't been coughing like he was all day yesterday.

I went in to tell the girls to get ready for church because God had healed Jordan. They exclaimed "Thank you God for healing Jordan". And Brynn, who had been wearing a crown of flowers on her head that I had made for her from some plastic flowers from Michael's, said "I want to give my crown to God, can I give it to him to say thank you?" And then, I guess inspired by the story about us laying our crowns before him in heaven, took that wreath of flowers and bowed down to the floor and laid the flowery crown in front of her. She really loves doing things like that and I've been thinking she would be great at interpretive dance and that may be the way she most loves to worship.

Anyway, I just wanted to share our little miracle and give God the glory. And Mom and Dad, the message you forwarded about prayer and the child's straightforward belief that, of course, God would answer inspired me to pray in this matter as my children would expect me to and to expect the same response from God that my children would expect. So thank you. :)