| JOY Blog |
Why was I born with a heart defect? As a child, I asked this question many times. Throughout my childhood and young adult life, I endured four open heart surgeries, congestive heart failure and a pacemaker implantation.
After eight years of not serving the Lord, I rededicated my life to Him when I was 25. The questions then started all over again.
“Why Lord?” I would ask during my prayer time, “Why was I born this way?”
I resigned myself to the idea He made me this way for a reason. He gave me this heart defect and I just had to learn to accept it.
My cross to carry.
My lot in life.
Then one day while reading my Bible I came across this verse: "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you." (Ezekiel 36:26a)
While I understood this was not a verse about healing, it still spoke to me. God wanted me to have a new heart – a healed one. Not just spiritually, but physically too.
I began to believe my heart was healed. I acted out my faith by doing crazy things, like running around the church doing victory laps. After getting married, I took the ultimate leap of faith and got pregnant, something doctors told me my heart would never tolerate.
More Why Questions
My daughter was born early and sustained damage to her brain. At six months old, she was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. My husband and I were told she could be in a wheelchair the rest of her life.
There was just one problem. While I wasn’t positive God would heal her, I couldn’t settle for things as they were either. To make matters more interesting, God kept putting people in our path that told us to pray and stand firm for our daughter’s healing.
I began to understand that my defective heart and her damaged brain did not come from God. Instead, it was the enemy’s way of trying to “kill, steal and destroy.” (John 10:10). As such, I dared to hope that the second half of that verse would come to be: “He came that we would have life and have it more abundantly.”
Faith for Healing
These past ten years during my “school of healing” I have gone back to the same scriptures over and over again. You know, all the ones promising healing. I read about all of the miracles Jesus performed and how healing was two thirds of His ministry. I find it interesting that Jesus NEVER turned anyone away or refused to heal them.
Why would it be any different today, I ask. For that reason and many others, I choose to believe it is God’s will to heal. If I don’t believe that, all the wounds Jesus endured on the cross were for naught. “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5)
Are you struggling with sickness? What do you believe the Bible says about healing? What do you think gets in the way of believing God can heal you?
Cari Bousfield is a freelance writer and blogger. Besides blogging for JOY, Cari blogs at Faith's Mom's Blog and writes on a variety of articles at HubPages. She is also the author of Having Faith. Cari has a strong desire to help people connect with one another and to God. She prays that through her writing, she can reach the hearts of others and help to bring hope, inspiration and courage to "walk by faith not by sight". See all JOY Blog posts by Cari.
Visitor Comments (2)
