Is healing for me? Can I really be set free from my addictions and my bad habits for good and not just "for the most part"? Every single one of them?
Does God want to heal me? Can I be healed today if I just believed in faith that God wanted to heal me? I think so. Do I believe He wants to heal me? I mean, why wouldn't He? Am I not good enough? I'm not, but then again I never will be. So then, will God heal a sick sad sinner? I suppose that might mean it was a gift if He did. A gift just given and not earned. Is all healing a gift? And if so, doesn't that mean we cannot expect it but just be thankful if and when it happens!..unless we expect gifts from God as our Father as we do our loving parents? I certainly do! Whenever my parents go on trips, I always expect that they will bring me back something, some gift, and they almost always do. So then do I expect God to give me gifts? Or more specifically, can i expect that God wants to heal me as His gift (among many other different gifts)? Can we ask for gifts?
"And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.
If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
(Luke 11:9, 10, 13 ESV)
So I'm going to ask God right now if I can have the Holy Spirit, just in case I don't have Him already. Because I want to be sure, and (because I'm not entirely sure, to be honest--sometimes I am and other times I wonder or question it) I want to know that I did everything I could, biblically, to receive Him, so that I can't say that I never even tried, or that I never sincerely asked. Now, right now, I am so sure that I want the Holy Spirit, and I have a bit of faith that His Word in Luke 11 is truth. If I ask then my Father will give me The Holy Spirit. And by His Spirit I can be transformed, I can experience healing and utter transformation of my bad habits and selfish thinking. By the Holy Spirit I can be compassionate and understand more vividly how God feels about those who need healing. If I have compassion and a link to His heart then I pray more, and if I pray fervently then I come into communion with a God which leads me more into His presence, His power, His love, and the hope of glory in eternity with Him. When I set my eyes on things that cannot ever die, then I'm no longer looking at the things that do. And in the shift my faith grows, the faith that brings healing.
"And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
-Mark 5:34
A faith that comes from believing in God. Belief, which for me, is helped by knowing just who God is, exactly. I ask questions such as: does God want to heal me, and why/how? I don't want to ever just assume, because that's like building a house of sand, there's no firm understanding to withstand when the storms of confusion come. But the more that I know that I know that I know then the more solid my foundation becomes, and the less confused I get. The more steadfast my foundation is the more I can be confident that I won't fall apart like so many times before. I need a firm foundation. So I keep asking questions. The more I know God, the more my faith solidifies. I want faith to be healed, then to move mountains! I want that so badly for obvious reasons.
I used to question if I even wanted that, to want actual healing, and to want to know God. I didn't always want it, til after I experienced the cold dark place behind my sandy walls. It was living with a looming fear of preeminent winds of destruction. Things that brought me a momentary blip of ecstasy or euphoria seemed to always end in bitter mortality. I could never hold on to those feelings. They'd be gone and that was it. Yet I kept rebuilding with those sandy things, they'd disintegrate, and out of laziness or the comfort of familiarity, I would find more sand to replace what had crumbled. Things like relationships, recognition, good food, lots of money, trips abroad, stuff, and more stuff. That's when I knew I needed a new house. A house built on the Rock.
"He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he."
(Deuteronomy 32:4 NIV)
In faith and desperation,
-J
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