The Gift of Light Afflictions.

Recently one of us at the Tribe asked a question of “What do I do if I pray for healing and it doesn’t come?”

As a pastor I have been fully confronted by the weight of human suffering. I have seen healings several times when we prayed and there are times it didn’t happen. Does it mean that one person has more faith than the other? If the faith for salvation is supplied why is the faith for healing now a person’s preference? The answers aren’t just that simple.

From our Lagos branch to Abuja is a wide spectrum of people spread from recovering fundamentalists to new age Christian thinkers and we are all deeply loved by The Father, but it doesn’t make for easy answers. We are not as homogeneous as most churches, but herein lies our gift and beauty. This is a perfect crucible for growth. The journey to union is a beautiful one of learning and unlearning, aligning our way of being with our truth of being.

Some days you are going from comforting a family at the funeral to visiting a couple at the hospital watching their child battle for life. The paradox of human existence is quite puzzling. The answer is not always a one size fit all. To one you say bear a little while let him do the work in you, to another you say you have borne this long enough stand up and walk.

Why insist on healing? The Bible says healing is the children’s bread and by His stripes we are healed. (Matt 15:26, Isaiah 53:5, 1. Peter 2:24) So why has healing happened for one and not the other? We don’t know. We just continue to hope even against hope.

How do we insist on hoping for healing and calling those things that be not as though they are (Rom 4:17) without coming across as a people in denial?

We teach that prayers of thanksgiving and feelings of joy is the key to healing. To manifest healing you have to encourage people to confess and affirm the realities of scripture and letting their consciousness rise above the present moment of pain in order to lend their divinity into creating and feeling their way into the healing experience without coming across as insensitive to the realities of the present pain?

On the other hand, how do we tell people that sometimes suffering is not a cause to be rejected, or punishment from which you seek repentance, but a gift in disguised to embrace without leading people to a point of resigned fate?

How do we tell people that because you are going through stuff doesn’t mean your village people finally caught up with you or that the devil has captured you because of something you did or failed to do, without people calling you brainwashed westernized minds who have lost grip on the African reality?

As a pastor my reference is really the Bible and not just the human experience. We dive and dial in for answers. We lean into the spirit for guidance. The theme of human suffering is complex.

It was a long night and a painful one. Jesus cried “God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” is not an unfamiliar cry to many of us, but it is this very cry, a cry that comes from that deep place within us, that leads to the One who is within us. We break open to what is true.

A couple of Wednesdays ago we spoke about how Jesus took a torture device and redefined it into a symbol of redemption and now people go about wearing crosses. Out of his deep suffering came our redemption.

Did God give Jesus the cross? The people did. Life gives crosses, sometimes we manifest crosses. But regardless of how it comes, they are for us in union and non-duality a gift in disguise.

The cross that life gives is helpful to remind ourselves that God does not cause our suffering but rather walks with us and weeps with us and reveals Himself in us and to us, and us to us at those moments. God will use our suffering to transform us into God’s Self.

Quite frankly, the Christian position is one of tension, seeing your pain but seeing more than anything the redemptive beauty that unfolds. It hasn’t called us to romanticize our pain or resign ourselves to it or become bonded with our grief. We see them for what they are: the gift of discovery, growth and awakening. We embrace the lessons and opportunities to expand our beingness.

Strange as it may seem, we are suffering well when we stand on the truth of the gospel and embrace the claims of Christ even in spite of our pain and suffering. We must always contemplate the mystery of our suffering with hope of redemption and healing.

Deeper than our pain is the divinity we carry to breathe life upon circumstances, to call things that be not as though they are even when we are confronted with the realities of those things. We anchor our consciousness on the realization that we are not alone and on the supply of strength that is perfected in our weakness. We recognize strength as the gift of the suffering. We use this strength to rise even when the circumstances persist. We are never without help.

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal (2 Corinthians 4:16–18).

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