Long-term Pain

Long-term pain or disability...let's have a little chat about this. : )  You can avoid the subject if you pretty much only pay attention to yourself and your immediate family (as long as everyone's OK). I happen to have my eye on 450 people on a regular basis, and like it or not we have folks here with us...sitting next to YOU on Sunday morning...who's physical trouble won't go away.

This is an issue that will make applesauce out of your theology if you don't keep your distance from these people. You say if you pray long enough, if you have enough faith, if you confess every little sin lurking under every corner...but sometimes none of it works. 

Back during the onset of the Lakeland Revival, a group of us in leadership at PF made the trek down there to get a hold of what God was doing. On our way back, Rick and I had a heart-to-heart talk about what each of us thought. Here were my thoughts at the time:

 I watched people leave their wheelchairs and leg braces on the floor and walk up the stairs. I saw them run, dance, rejoice in the Lord. I also saw some people exit at the end of the night still in their wheelchairs, still needing their friends to help them leave in their leg braces. I see God heal people and I have an expectation that He will! But I know that not everyone is healed. I praise Jesus for the healings. But my heart is most strongly tied to the ones who are not healed yet. What I do best...the thing that it seems to me I was made for... is to walk with the ones who can't charge boldly across the field with a sword in their hand. My heart compels me to engage with them; to look them in the eye and ask for the long version of how they're doing; to show them the love of the Father the best way I know how. 

I learned some lessons about all of this three years ago. I developed terrible back pain that would not go away. It went on for 6 or 7 months. It got to the point where I would rather have died than go on living with the pain. During this time all the heavy hitters from PF came to pray for me (thank you my dear friends). I went up the food chain of medical experts, waiting in pain for weeks just for each next appointment. I was on pain killers and nerve blockers 'till I could no longer think straight. I avoided people (which is the worst thing of all) because I didn't want them to see the pain in my eyes. Charlotte rounded up a gang to move our bedroom downstairs because I could no longer climb stairs. I couldn't sit in a chair. I noticed something while all this was happening: Many people lost interest in my plight after a while. In the beginning there was lots of rallying, but as time went on and I didn't get better it became too hard for a lot of folks to deal with. I could see in their eyes that they were detaching from this because something should have changed by now. Surely God had heard all the "George Bailey prayers" going up on my behalf; why wasn't this thing fixed. When there are no apparent answers, a lot of people shrink away. It's just too hard to deal with for very long.

Well, in the end God brought the perfect Neurosurgeon who knew just what to tinker with in my spine. Pain gone. But a very important lesson remains imbedded in my DNA... God's lesson for me personally: to never shrink back; to always engage; to go the extra 100 miles with a struggling person if that's how far THEY must go; to cry with them; to go to THEIR house and just sit with them even if I don't have answers; to not be a jerk and make up answers just because I feel I should have answers.

In the course of my day today I spent time with some dear ones like this. They go to your church. They feel alone a lot of the time. They look for Jesus to show up in the middle of their day. Maybe if you knocked on their door, they would see Him standing there.

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