How great you are, O Sovereign Lord! There is no one like you. We have never even heard of another God like you! (2 Samuel 7:22 NLT)
My 81-year-old father has a diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease, and two weeks ago I took him to a group of prayer warriors to pray over him. One of the women in the group has five children, but her firstborn was a “vegetable” for her entire twenty years of life. This mama’s life has been spent caring for that severely disabled child, her subsequent four other children, and her mentally ill husband. As she was praying over my dad I was astounded at the breadth and depth of scriptures that came out of her mouth. It was like she knew exactly what to pray.
She did know.
She had prayed for her daughter for twenty years. She’d prayed all those scriptures interceding with the Father for healing and restoration for her daughter’s precious life. In the end her daughter was released into the next life.
Did the scriptures not “work” to provide healing for the daughter?
Was the healing she received the reality of twenty years of “a beautiful life?”
Or was it when she was released into the arms of Jesus?
I don’t know.
Was the mother’s commitment to prayer and speaking LIFE into her daughter more for her own faith than that of the daughter?
I don’t know.
But that mama knew and knows how to stand on God’s Word. She knew how to fight using the Sword of the Spirit – the Word of God. She knew how to trust God through terribly difficult circumstances. And she poured out the depth of her trust, her faith, and the Word on my dad that night as we prayed for him.
I do not know whether my dad will be physically healed in this life, but I am fighting in the Spirit for that outcome. In the Bible we read of so many people that Jesus healed, and I believe he still heals today. I realize that, in the natural, this is highly unlikely. But I know a God who has done and continues to do many “highly unlikely” things, so I am asking, seeking, knocking and persistently praying for his healing. The faith of that mama encourages me to keep trusting God and keep seeking the Lord for my dad.
She loved her daughter well, even talking of the beauty of the girl’s life. Finally, she said one of the most beautiful and profound things I’ve ever heard:
Stand on hope.
Say goodbye with hope.
Grieve with hope.
Father,
Thank you for the hope you give us through Jesus Christ. We thank you for the healing you do, and we pray you would give us faith to trust you as we pray for the healing of ourselves and others. Help us to persevere – to ask, seek, and knock – and to continue in faith as we await the manifestation of that healing. Holy Spirit, move within us so we never give up praying, no matter the circumstances. May your will be done and your Kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven. We pray in Jesus’s name, AMEN.
Now we do not want you to be uninformed, believers, about those who are asleep [in death], so that you will not grieve [for them] as the others do who have no hope [beyond this present life]. (1 Thessalonians 4:13 AMP)
The tongue can bring death or life; those who love to talk will reap the consequences. (Proverbs 18:21 NLT)
Ask and keep on asking and it will be given to you; seek and keep on seeking and you will find; knock and keep on knocking and the door will be opened to you. (Matthew 7:7 AMP)
One day Jesus told his disciples a story to show that they should always pray and never give up. “There was a judge in a certain city,” he said, “who neither feared God nor cared about people. A widow of that city came to him repeatedly, saying, ‘Give me justice in this dispute with my enemy.’ The judge ignored her for a while, but finally he said to himself, ‘I don’t fear God or care about people, but this woman is driving me crazy. I’m going to see that she gets justice, because she is wearing me out with her constant requests!’”
Then the Lord said, “Learn a lesson from this unjust judge. Even he rendered a just decision in the end. So don’t you think God will surely give justice to his chosen people who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will grant justice to them quickly! But when the Son of Man returns, how many will he find on the earth who have faith?” (Luke 18:1-8 NLT)