This is a blog entry I wrote from the middle of our second adoption process in 2012. Niki’s last post about the work of prayer reminded me of the prayer journey God has me on. I hope this encourages you.
My heart beats fast as think about what I am about to write. Last night, when I told my husband about what God was doing in my prayer life he said, “Why are you fist pumping like the short guy on the Amazing Race?” (…If you don’t know what he is talking about watch the premiere from this season, you’ll bust.) I am just THAT excited. Stay with me.
God is amazing and I feel inadequate but yet I also feel so fully equipped to do what He is asking me to do. I know God has called me to pray for our daughter’s complete healing, he has asked me to from the very beginning. The tension I ran into was trying to understand how I could release the outcome of her physical wellness to “God’s will” and still plead in anguish and fervency believing that prayer would move God’s heart and His hand in specific ways. I sometimes have had a hard time praying, “God, let Your will be done” and not letting my faith for healing lessen in the same breath. Is that a sign that I doubt His goodness? I want to pray specifically for her body to be healed…and yet, Your will be done, Lord.
Early this spring, God gave me a revelation concerning this. I pored over the scripture to find times when God healed and his instructions concerning healing. I wanted to know if it was God’s will for Peach to be healed.
During my prayer time He began to open my understanding of His Kingdom, the Kingdom He has told me to pray to come on earth as it is in heaven. In His Kingdom there is no brain damage. In His Kingdom there is no Cerebral Palsy. In His Kingdom there is no orphan. And with this small understanding I began to pray that His Kingdom would come into Peach’s life.
Well, yesterday (and thus the fist pump) I listened to a sermon about this exact part of scripture (If you have half an hour it would be worth your time) that blew my mind. The pastor pointed out through Scripture how Adam had given his authority of dominion over the earth to Satan in the garden and so Satan became the god of this age and of this world.
Satan has a distinct mission for our lives: to create spiritual blindness, bondage, and hopelessness through sickness, despair, and death–essentially life without God. That kingdom of darkness ruled over the world for centuries. However….
God also had a distinct mission when He became a man and dwelt among us. Jesus broke into His own creation to liberate His people and to establish His Kingdom– to overcome the enemy bringing peace between God and man and to set things right again.
Jesus went througout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed; and he healed them. Matthew 4:23-24
Jesus came and began a great reversal, restoring His people spiritually, emotionally, and physically. Jesus broke into the kingdom of darkness that was on the earth and began to establish His own.
But here’s the kicker: His Kingdom has come, but also, it is not yet fully here. It is pretty obvious that God’s Kingdom is not complete here on earth when you turn on the news or talk to your hurting neighbor and you just know, this is not how it is supposed to be. And so Jesus says to pray this: that His Kingdom would come and His will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Do I believe that heaven is breaking in? Would I dare to risk to pray that the Kingdom would come on earth as it is in heaven? Specifically in Peach’s life? I do and I am.
In James 5 it tells us that the prayer of faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. I clearly don’t understand all of God’s ways–healing doesn’t seem to always come here on earth. BUT I do know with complete certainty that when you bring your life before the living God, it will break down all kinds of barriers, bring you close to His presence, and the final victory is won.
