Faith Not to be Healed

The past few days I have been really sick.  I've had a hard time laying in bed waiting to get better and often times I end up not taking care of myself the way I need to in order to heal.

Being sick has forced me to slow down, rest, and ponder.  Physically I have been sick and unable to do a lot of the things I normally do and at times I have felt emotionally sick.  Frustrated that the effects of childhood sexual abuse continues to impact my life I feel disabled and emotionally ill. 

Christ has the power to heal the brokenhearted, the sick, and afflicted.  

Elder Bednar recently gave a CES Fireside and told a story of a young couple recently married when the husband was diagnosed with leukemia.  Prior to Elder Bednar giving this young man a blessing he felt prompted to ask him certain questions.  

“[John,] do you have the faith not to be healed? If it is the will of our Heavenly Father that you are transferred by death in your youth to the spirit world to continue your ministry, do you have the faith to submit to His will and not be healed?”

Frequently in the scriptures, the Savior or His servants exercised the spiritual gift of healing and perceived that an individual had the faith to be healed.  But as John and Heather and I counseled together and wrestled with these questions, we increasingly understood that if God’s will were for this good young man to be healed, then that blessing could only be received if this valiant couple first had the faith not to be healed.   

In other words, John and Heather needed to overcome, through the Atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ, the “natural man” (Mosiah 3:19) tendency in all of us to demand impatiently and insist incessantly on the blessings we want and believe we deserve.

 

We recognized a principle that applies to every devoted disciple: strong faith in the Savior is submissively accepting of His will and timing in our lives—even if the outcome is not what we hoped for or wanted. Certainly, John and Heather would desire, yearn, and plead for healing with all of their might, mind, and strength. But more importantly, they would be “willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon [them], even as a child doth submit to his father”. Indeed, they would be willing to “offer [their] whole souls as an offering unto him” and humbly pray, “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done."

As I listened to this talk and continue to reflect upon it I feel like I need to ask myself the same thing.  It is not that I don’t have hope that I will not or cannot be healed from the pain and horror that I have gone through, although sometimes that hope dwindles, but rather it brings a new light, where is my faith?  He also mentioned how there are those who are sick that are not healed.  We often talk about those who had faith enough to be healed but we lack speaking of those who had faith enough not to be healed but rather to accept the Lords will and move forward with the Lords timing and plan. 

It is in the process of “being sick” that we must learn, live, and become as our Father in Heaven would have us become.  Now, where does all of this put me and the process I’m in?  I don’t  know but what I do know is that I have a lot I can and need to do that will cause healing and once I’ve done those things then I can figure out the next step.

I do not believe our Father in Heaven wants us to be continually tormented by the pains and struggles we have faced and not heal but instead we must learn...to accept the will of the Lord, whatever that may be for us.  It is important to remember that “willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon [them]" does not mean that the Lord inflicted the abuse upon us.  Studying this topic all day...sick in bed...I came across this great clip.  It's worth 7 minutes of your time. 

The man in this video was saved from death but he was not healed.  He remains disabled and unable to perform daily tasks many of us take for granted.  Emotionally I have felt just as you see this man however I was touched by the section, "Things He Enjoys."  Even though he is limited on what he is able to do and I feel limited at times myself, he is still able to enjoy life "in his own way".  Just because all of us have our struggles, deep sorrows and pains does not mean that we can not enjoy life "in our own way." Yes, what we've experienced is horrible and we will probably not be healed right away but Christ is the Great Physician, He has a plan and we will be blessed as we partake of it. 

“No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God … and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire” 

(Elder Orson F. Whitney, quoted in Spencer W. Kimball, Faith Precedes the Miracle [1972], 98).