Silas
Beloved of All
Your urgent and heartfelt cry about the skin issues affecting your face, around your eyes and ears, and over your body has been heard, and I understand how distressing and consuming this feels when you long for it to be gone completely and never return.
I want you to know that I do believe in healing, very strongly. The Lord heals in many ways. Sometimes His healing is a sudden, miraculous touch that you can actually feel in the moment. Sometimes it is a gradual process that unfolds over time through the natural healing processes that God Himself established within our bodies. That gradual work is no less divine, because God is the creator of nature and of its processes. And sometimes His healing reaches deeply into the mind and emotions, bringing peace and restoration to wounds and scars that have built up through long suffering. All of that is the work of God, and all of it is reason to give Him praise.
Scripture shows us that Jesus went about teaching and preaching and healing every kind of sickness and disease among the people, and that this ministry of healing continued in the early church as people were brought to the apostles for prayer and many miracles were wrought as the elders prayed for the sick in obedience to the instruction in James. It is right and good to ask the elders to pray for you and to keep bringing this need before the Lord.
At the same time, the Bible is honest that healing does not always come instantly or in the exact way we ask. The prophet Isaiah spoke of the Messiah bearing our infirmities and sicknesses, and Matthew applies that to the physical healings Jesus did, so we know physical healing is part of what Christ has provided. Yet even the apostle Paul prayed three times for his thorn in the flesh to depart, and the Lord did not remove it as Paul had asked. To assume that God must will immediate and total healing in every case is not what Scripture teaches. I have seen miraculous healings, I have seen gradual healings, and I have also seen those whom the Lord did not heal in this life. God remains good and sovereign in each case.
Affliction is difficult, and those who have spoken for the Lord have often known much of it. Scripture counts those who endure as blessed, not because suffering itself is good, but because endurance teaches us to wait upon God and to trust Him more deeply. Before we are afflicted we often go astray in our own way, but affliction can bring us back to His Word. His Word then becomes our comfort in affliction, giving us life and hope when we feel mocked or misunderstood. I want to be clear that God does not punish His children. He corrects us as a loving Father, and He uses trials to teach us and to draw us closer, never to condemn us. The enemy may try to use a long affliction to make you feel forsaken or that God is angry with you, but that is not His heart toward you.
One passage that has helped many is that our light affliction, which feels so heavy and so long while we are in it, is but for a moment when compared to the eternal weight of glory that God is working within us. That does not minimize the pain you feel right now, but it lifts our eyes from what is seen and temporary to what is unseen and eternal. We are being conformed to the image of Christ, and that eternal purpose gives meaning to our present struggle.
So I am praying for you in the name of Jesus, asking the Lord to touch your skin and bring complete healing according to His wisdom and mercy, whether that be through a sudden work or through the gradual healing processes He has placed in your body, and asking Him also to heal any weariness, anxiety, or discouragement this has caused and to fill you with the joy of the Holy Spirit even in the midst of affliction. I encourage you to continue to seek prayer from godly elders, to stay in the Word which gives life, to offer thanksgiving for His goodness even as you wait, and to make use of wise medical help, recognizing that God often heals through those means as well.
May the Lord show you His goodness, give you peace as you trust Him day by day, and be glorified in your life and body.
I want you to know that I do believe in healing, very strongly. The Lord heals in many ways. Sometimes His healing is a sudden, miraculous touch that you can actually feel in the moment. Sometimes it is a gradual process that unfolds over time through the natural healing processes that God Himself established within our bodies. That gradual work is no less divine, because God is the creator of nature and of its processes. And sometimes His healing reaches deeply into the mind and emotions, bringing peace and restoration to wounds and scars that have built up through long suffering. All of that is the work of God, and all of it is reason to give Him praise.
Scripture shows us that Jesus went about teaching and preaching and healing every kind of sickness and disease among the people, and that this ministry of healing continued in the early church as people were brought to the apostles for prayer and many miracles were wrought as the elders prayed for the sick in obedience to the instruction in James. It is right and good to ask the elders to pray for you and to keep bringing this need before the Lord.
At the same time, the Bible is honest that healing does not always come instantly or in the exact way we ask. The prophet Isaiah spoke of the Messiah bearing our infirmities and sicknesses, and Matthew applies that to the physical healings Jesus did, so we know physical healing is part of what Christ has provided. Yet even the apostle Paul prayed three times for his thorn in the flesh to depart, and the Lord did not remove it as Paul had asked. To assume that God must will immediate and total healing in every case is not what Scripture teaches. I have seen miraculous healings, I have seen gradual healings, and I have also seen those whom the Lord did not heal in this life. God remains good and sovereign in each case.
Affliction is difficult, and those who have spoken for the Lord have often known much of it. Scripture counts those who endure as blessed, not because suffering itself is good, but because endurance teaches us to wait upon God and to trust Him more deeply. Before we are afflicted we often go astray in our own way, but affliction can bring us back to His Word. His Word then becomes our comfort in affliction, giving us life and hope when we feel mocked or misunderstood. I want to be clear that God does not punish His children. He corrects us as a loving Father, and He uses trials to teach us and to draw us closer, never to condemn us. The enemy may try to use a long affliction to make you feel forsaken or that God is angry with you, but that is not His heart toward you.
One passage that has helped many is that our light affliction, which feels so heavy and so long while we are in it, is but for a moment when compared to the eternal weight of glory that God is working within us. That does not minimize the pain you feel right now, but it lifts our eyes from what is seen and temporary to what is unseen and eternal. We are being conformed to the image of Christ, and that eternal purpose gives meaning to our present struggle.
So I am praying for you in the name of Jesus, asking the Lord to touch your skin and bring complete healing according to His wisdom and mercy, whether that be through a sudden work or through the gradual healing processes He has placed in your body, and asking Him also to heal any weariness, anxiety, or discouragement this has caused and to fill you with the joy of the Holy Spirit even in the midst of affliction. I encourage you to continue to seek prayer from godly elders, to stay in the Word which gives life, to offer thanksgiving for His goodness even as you wait, and to make use of wise medical help, recognizing that God often heals through those means as well.
May the Lord show you His goodness, give you peace as you trust Him day by day, and be glorified in your life and body.
