Peacefully Troubled

Monday I ended the day with a sense of troubled peace. Maybe a better way of putting it is peace in the midst of a troubled heart and mind. A conversation at work did NOT go the way I expected it to at all. It started with me telling a coworker about the events that transpired at church on Sunday morning and in the evening, and ended with me being shocked, hurt in a way, and reeling from the severity of the response.

Sunday was a CRAZY day for me. God gave me a word for a guy during church, which was both awkward and awesome!! After I gave the word, I felt such freedom in the worship. It was crazy! I really felt that for one of the few times in my life I was able to open up fully in the midst of corporate worship and praise the Lord…well, freely. A lady on the worship team spotted me in the back, and felt like she was suppose to come back and pray with me. So she did! (Kinda obvious I guess, or I wouldn’t be writing about it. HA!) The crazy thing about that, was that I was as far back in the building as I could physically be, and the lady, being in the band, was at the very opposite end, yet she still saw me. Blows my mind a bit. Definitely a God thing.

Later that evening, I attended the gather where a guy from (Scotland/Ireland…not sure) spoke about prophecy, what the Bible says about it, how it should be done, the checks and balances, etc. The Lord gave some words of knowledge during the service, namely about sickness and pains people were experiencing. Then we gathered around those people, and prayed for healing. The guy I (and another man) prayed for had some shoulder pain, and he said it was healed! YAY!

I was telling my coworker about all this Monday at work. Having had conversations about God, and knowing a bit of where he stands in his beliefs, I expected some skepticism from him. To have a pat on the back of sorts and a “If you believe that, that’s nice.” But he ended up getting about as worked up and I would say almost angry over it as I’ve ever seen him. Definitely NOT the response I was expecting. To paraphrase his response, “It’s just a magic show. I can’t believe you’d ever buy into that. They just want you to get tied into to what they are doing. They’ll be wanting your money soon. If they have such great healing power, why don’t they heal everyone’s cancer, or heal starving people? I can’t believe that a loving God would heal a shoulder, but not cancer. God doesn’t do that.”

Needless to say, I sat dumbfounded, in shock, and not really sure what to say, what to think, or anything!! I definitely hit a nerve. And where theres a nerve, theres almost always experiences that formed that nerve over time. He told me some things I won’t share here that put perhaps a bit of the puzzle together for me. But that still didn’t lessen the blow. What hurt the most was his perception of the events and of me. He had the idea that I suppose most people, including myself up until recently, have about ‘healing’. They picture a gathering where everyone is whipped into a frenzy by a celebrity preacher personality. The celebrity is walking around slapping people on the forehead, yelling ‘be healed’! And the majority of such “ministries” are VERY shady in my opinion. I felt like he was lumping me, my faith, my experiences, the gathering I went to at Antioch, the speaker, and the church of Antioch itself in the bowl with those questionable people. That HURT!! Such things are NOT me, NOT my faith, and NOT my church.

I’m still a bit bewildered sitting here even now. I tried to explain to him that it wasn’t like that AT ALL! The speaker wasn’t claiming to be a healer, no one was in an emotional frenzy, there was NO forehead slapping, no yelling. And none of the flags I look for in shady ministries were raised. Those being that the ‘ministry’ is focused on one person, that the power of healing is from one person, or that such things are only found in that place, with that church. He can disagree with me on the belief of God healing, I’m totally ok with that. But don’t group me in with those questionable ‘ministries’ and individuals, cause again, that’s not me, that’s not my faith, and that’s not my church.

Its sad to think about how such things have been used to prey upon people in the past. Things that God desires to be for good have been taken out of biblical context, belittled and perverted to a point, that when the genuine real deal happens, it’s hard for any of us, including me, to accept or believe without serious reservations. I’ll be the first to admit…even typing this makes it feel a bit crazy and the cautious skeptic within me stops and says “wait a minute”. Could the guy that I prayed over been lying when he said his shoulder felt better? Sure! It definitely crossed my mind. I’ll never know for sure whether it really was or wasn’t. But what I DO know without a doubt in my mind, is that God CAN heal and DOES heal!! And that many times He desires to honor us by working through us. So if the guy said he was healed, who am I to say he absolutely wasn’t? If God can save me from my sin, and redeem me from that thing over which I have no power on my own, how much more able is He to physically heal?

How did it end? I later apologized for hitting a nerve, and tried to assure him again that the happenings of the gathering were not like his ideas of the situation. Did it do any good? I don’t know. I won’t apologize for my beliefs and the exercise of them, but I think that sensitivity in this area is definitely needed in the future. I feel that he lost some respect for my faith and beliefs. I pray not, but only time will tell how big of an issue this really is to him. I do feel God’s peace about this situation, I feel I need to hold my friend in prayer. God knows whats going on. Ultimately, I know all I need to worry about is being faithful to go where the Father leads, not how people respond. Lord give me strength.