I’M LOOKING FOR A MIRACLE!
I have always enjoyed good gospel music. Some of my favorite gospel artists are Fred Hammond, Wes Morgan, CeCe Winans, The Anointed Pace Sisters, and The Clark Sisters. After I ended a call with my rheumatologist this morning, I was inspired to sing a song “I’m looking for a Miracle,” by the infamous Clark Sisters. The song starts:
I’m looking for a miracle
I expect the impossible
I feel the intangible
I see the invisible
The Sky is the limit to what I can have
Even before I was diagnosed with Lupus and Ulcerative Colitis in 2005 and 2006, I believed in miracles and looked for them, big and small. When I got my first real job after leaving college, I was overeager to say the least. I remember the interviewer asking me, “Where do you see yourself in the next five years?” I just as clearly remember my answer because I’m sure it shocked yet entertained the well-dressed man sitting before me. “I see myself with your job!” I replied enthusiastically.
Luckily, he found my comment amusing enough to laugh it off. He eventually offered me the job. Less than five years later, I found myself sitting in that very same conference room, interviewing a good friend because, as God would have it, I was now “the boss”.
When my oldest daughter was young, she was plagued by constant ear infections. “She’s going to need surgery before she sustains hearing loss,” the doctor told my husband and me. We agreed to the operation, but the day of the surgery, my husband said, “No! Let’s pray!” The song further says:
Just believe and receive it
God will perform it today
We trusted and believed God for total healing of our daughter, and He did it. With no surgery! She has experienced no hearing loss.
Even before that, when I was pregnant with the same daughter, I was told by doctors that she would be “retarded” (their word not mine) and that all of her limbs would not grow out normally. After about a week or so of watching heart-breaking videos on how to take care of a “challenged” child, my husband and I couldn’t do it anymore. We prayed and asked God to heal our baby girl. We never went back to watch those videos. Our daughter was born perfectly healthy, has maintained a nearly solid straight-A grade point average, and is three weeks from attending college (with the assistance of scholarship monies that she was told by a prophetess years ago God had waiting for her if she would just “stay focused”).
Well, as God would have it, because I know that all thing work together for the good of us that love God, those of us who He has called for a purpose greater than we know, I was stricken in my prime with not one, but two chronic diseases. Chronic diseases are long-lasting conditions that can be controlled but not cured.
I truly believe that my diagnoses were a gift. An opportunity to be used of God to help build or rebuild the faith of others. To say that there is no cure is to say that there is no God and God is surely able to show Himself strong to those who are fully committed to Him. Thankfully, God is real and He is not like man. He doesn’t easily tire of our constant cries for help. As a matter of fact, He welcomes them. Matthew 7:7 says to keep asking, and it will be given to you. Keep searching, and you will find. Keep knocking, and the door will be opened for you.
It has been seven years since I first cried out to God to heal me. “I will, but not right now,” I heard my Savior say. Years later in the midst of painful flares, I cried again, miserably. “Lord, You said You would heal me. I wanna be healed!” I clearly heard Him reply, “You are healed. You just have to walk in it.
I was stunned. How do you walk in healing? I wondered. “How do you walk in sickness?” I heard the Lord reply again. And again, I was stunned. A lot ran through my mind that day.
How did I walk in sickness?
- I ate things that were not good for my body – the temple of the Living God.
- I did things that were not good for my body. Like didn’t exercise or get enough rest. Even ran myself ragged.
- I talked about and researched sickness more than health and healing.
- I made doctor’s appointments more than I made it to Sunday service or Bible Study.
So I asked myself the question again. How do you walk in sickness? Yes, how did I walk in sickness when God’s Word says that I am already healed? I may not have felt healed back then, but so what! I was. I didn’t feel sick until the doctor told me five years prior that I was. I wasn’t…until I started walking in it. The doctor said, “You have to feel exhausted. You have to feel bad with results like these.” “No. I don’t,” I said. About a week later, I started feeling bad, walking in the doctors words instead of God’s. I began walking in His declaration of sickness, instead of my proclamation of healing in the name and by the Blood of Jesus!
I get it! Now I walk in healing, and as the song concludes:
I expect a miracle everyday
God will make a way out of no way
The doctor phoned me this morning to tell me that the tests predominantly used for the investigation and diagnosis of inflammatory connective tissue diseases (CTD) such as SLE, Sjogren’s Syndrome, systemic sclerosis, mixed connective tissue disease, polymyositis and dermatomyositis were negative, however she would not say that I don’t have lupus because my initial screening test was positive. She explained that it was not possible for someone who has ever tested positive for lupus to “not have lupus anymore.” I told her that with God ALL things are possible.
She giggled and said, “God, huh? I believe in God. I know what you want to believe. I understand. But I have studied lupus. There’s just no way.”
I went on to share with her my experience a few weeks ago during a follow-up visit with my GI Specialist in which he gave me proof in black and white and told me that my biopsy showed “no trace” of Ulcerative Colitis and he was releasing me from his care. I further explained that I was expecting another report, in hand, that I was also healed of lupus.
The rheumatologist said, “Well, if you want a second opinion, feel free to get it. There is no medical reason for me to reorder your tests. Consider yourself in remission, but I can’t release you. You can never say the lupus won’t come back.”
Well, guess what, Doctor? You were my second opinion. The first – the one I should have listened to – was from God in Isaiah 53:5:
“But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed.”
If you’ve read thus far, I say to you, God is able. Expect a miracle everyday. God wants to make you whole.
Until you read again…Hold Your Hope!
