“The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him, and I am helped: therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with my song will I praise him.” Psalm 28:7
My Healing from Sexual Abuse
“Be healed in the name of Jesus!” I cried as I jabbed my little finger into my husband’s enormous chest years ago. “You just need to have enough faith and your lungs will be healed!” I pronounced over him, asserting every ounce of my arrogant, prideful, self-righteous, completely out of line false sense of dominance over him. It didn’t matter how many times in our short-lived marriage he told me how wrong I was with my understanding of this faith business and warned me about the deadly false teaching I had fallen under; I was certain all I had to do was wave my abracadabra magic wand of faith and make God do whatever I wanted. By the time years later I stood by his bedside as he lay in a medically induced coma near death from a combination of his chronic lung condition and a deadly addiction, I had found God’s Truth, repented, and thrown my magic wand right in the landfill.
God heals on this earth how He wants, when He wants, where He wants, why He wants, and for His glory. He wants the best for us, and faith is involved, but He has His reasons when we don’t get what we want. As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse that resulted in losing my memory of my childhood, a debilitating dose of post traumatic stress disorder, multiple addictions, wanting to kill myself for almost two decades, and abandonment by my family, and numerous other challenges, I could wonder and be bitter and angry at God for not giving me the instant, miraculous, total healing that many people throughout time have received concerning their own need for healing.
But instead I am thankful beyond measure for how God has chosen to heal me. Slowly, carefully, lovingly, day by day, hour by hour, breath by breath, over a span of years. I could be deeply upset I may need to face this issue for the rest of my life. But instead I am grateful. Because through my long, slow healing, the Lord has drawn me into the most phenomenal, deeply personal, incredibly intimate, amazingly fulfilling, everlasting relationship with Himself. If someone could wave a magic wand today at my chest and give me an instant healing, I would say no thank you. For I trust my Father to heal me as He desires, and want nothing more than to love and serve Him with all my heart as an expression of my thanksgiving that He is Lord and that I may enjoy His fellowship forever!
For committed believers in and followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, we can look forward to being perfectly healed and spending forevermore with the Lord – no matter the healing we may or may not receive on this earth.
“But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.” Philippians 3:20-21 ESV