Enduring Pain

October 28th, 2008

Our friend of very many years, Katey Morris, died last week aged 53.  Her funeral was in Chichester yesterday. Her husband Mike Morris has been a speaker at Spring Harvest and a senior executive of the Evangelical Alliance.  The children they longed for never arrived, and then Katey succumbed to MS in her 30s.  They co-wrote a classic book ‘Praying Together – How to Pray as Husband and Wife’.

Over the years, Katey has received so much prayer from many eminent people and care and attention from the medical profession, but never actually received the healing she sought.  We watched her suffer so gallantly, and sympathised so much for Mike.   

We live with the age-old questions: why are some people healed and others not? Why is it that when people are prayed for in places like Africa and India, there seems to be more healing? 

In Mark 6:5 it is recorded that Jesus could not do any miracles in his home town except lay hands on a few sick people and heal them, because of the lack of faith among the relatives in his own house. It was the same in the previous chapter, when he asked all the mourners to leave before he prayed for Jairus’ daughter to make sure that he was operating in an atmosphere of faith. So a culture of corporate faith is so important. 

But then there was Paul, who tells us of his ‘thorn in the flesh’. He pleaded three times with the Lord to take it from him, but the response was ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness’.

I am so thankful for the attention I personally have recently received from the NHS, but I am as convinced as ever that God wants us to pray for healing, and I will continue to do so. He is looking for our faith and trust.  Man treats, God heals. My cry is continually ‘Lord, I do believe, please help me overcome my unbelief’. 

But there is still mystery, and I don’t want anyone who is prayed for and remains unhealed to feel condemned and rejected. Non-healing is not necessarily the result of personal sin or unbelief, but it is an opportunity to display the power of God’s grace and goodness, as Katey did.  

David Thatcher
 

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