The Healing Saga, continues...

   So I'm standing in a Wal-Mart optical center... And I am trying on glasses frames.  I am particularly looking for the cheap ones, as we are really strapped for cash.  I pick up a frame off the rack and I hear a voice say, "You don't need these."  Not huge or insistent, just a thought more than anything, but definitely a thought not my own.  I try on the unflattering frames and quickly return them.  Hunting for a second pair, I find another and pull it off the rack and again I hear a voice saying, "You don't need to wear these!"  Now more insistently, a little miffed I didn't listen the first time.    

   Please understand I have worn glasses as long as I can remember.  I believe I got my first pair when I was in grade school.  I am not near sighted or far sighted, I have  astigmatism, so everything is just plain blurry, permanently out of focus.  When I take off my glasses I can't see anything very well, it's all fuzzy. 

   With this in mind I doggedly press on in my pursuit of the perfect pair of cheap frames.  Every time I pull glasses off the wall I hear the voice of God saying... "You don't need to wear these!" I mean every single frame, the same thing happens.  After about six or seven attempts at getting glasses, I am starting to feel embarrassment.  Maybe not the emotion you would have thought one should feel when hearing the voice of God, but embarrassed is what I feel.  I mean who has a huge God moment in Wal-Mart Optical?! 

   It was only a few weeks before that I had experienced my first healing over my migraines, so I am completely aware that God can and does heal at this point, and every time I picked up a frame I knew for a certainty that God was extending his healing to me over my eyes.  And frankly I am just embarrassed!  If God wanted to heal my eyesight AWESUME, could we do it like at a prayer meeting, or while someone is praying over me, how bout while I'm reading my bible!?

   Being unnerved by the insistent voice of God, I get Beth from the woman's frames section and under the pretences of not finding anything I like, I ask her to leave with me.  So we go walking around Wal-Mart. 
   Have you ever tried on someone else's glasses?  It's an interesting experience to see life through someone else's eyes.  You will notice that nothing looks right, and if you look around for a period of time you will start to get sick, like carsick, because the world is coming at you all wrong. 

   Beth and I are heading Benji over to the toy section, and I am stumbling through trying to tell her what happened to me in the optical center.  Again, just embarrassed about the whole thing and of course, I'm still wearing my glasses so not only am I embarrassed about what God had been telling me, but embarrassed because I was still wearing the things!  And as we are walking I am getting sick... the world is coming at me all wrong... like I am wearing someone else's glasses.

   We get to the toy department, to my sons delight, and I can't stand it anymore.  I go to take the glasses off my face.  Again a huge well of shame and embarrassment flood me as I take them off.  Thoughts of, "You fool, you're not healed."  and "Everyone is looking at you take off your glasses."  go burning through my mind, but I take them off and put them in my pocket.  And I can see.  I mean I CAN SEE!  I am seeing everything clearly.  I'm pulling boxes off the shelves and reading all the text.  I am looking far, and near and its all perfectly clear! 

   Now I am full of joy, leaping down the aisles and singing praise songs!  No not really... now I am really embarrassed, and I am completely conscious of the fact that everyone in the store is looking at the guy who, "I swear was wearing glasses when he came in here."  I am so embarrassed because I had kept wearing my glasses after we left the optical center, I am embarrassed that I am embarrassed, and I am embarrassed because... well man this is just weird!  I still think it is weird!  I struggle even now with the fact that God healed my eyes.  Why did He heal my eyesight?  Why my eyes when people all over are praying for healing from cancer and disease and for their sick children!? I would gladly lose my eyesight completely to save a child with cancer, so why did God heal my eyes? 

   A few days ago I was retelling this story to a couple of people, and my wife pointed out that I sound embarrassed when I tell how God healed me... and it's true.  I seem to tell my healing stories with shame, and I don't exactly know why.  Maybe it's because I am afraid of what people will think, or maybe because it wasn't some amazing mountain top experience that lead to scales coming off my eyes or something like that. I mean it was just God telling me to take off my glasses, nothing special about that. (Man how horrible that I think that way!)  But I think honestly the biggest reason I am embarrassed is because I don't understand it.  I don't understand what this is all about, why God has been healing me.  I know that He has healed me because He loves me.  And I know He is displaying His power in all of this, so to God be the glory!  But frankly I just don't understand it, I don't really understand God so It's no surprise that I don't understand the healing.

   Well I spend three days marveling at the fact that I can see.  And I spend three days trying to understand why, how and what.  I thought all kinds of things like... "maybe you never really needed the glasses and God just pointed it out." or "could I be 'willing' myself to see clearly, kind of like a reverse hypochondriac?"  And I am testing my vision out constantly, I mean every second I am looking at road signs and focusing on anything I can to see if my vision is really clear.  Well on day four, I lost my sight.

   I woke up in the morning, and all was blurry.  I thought it was just "morning eye" so I rubbed a lot and kept waiting to see again, but it never popped back in.  Just fuzzy all day!  It was the most heart breaking, and embarrassing day I have had in this whole journey.  I am muddling through the day, wondering what happened... and I KNEW what happened, but I didn't want to confess it, I don't want to admit it even now.  Later that evening I actually went into my bedroom, took my glasses off the shelf and was about to put them back on.  I was getting so frustrated that I couldn't see.  I was standing there, glasses in my hand, ready to throw in the towel on the whole "healing" thing.  And I realized standing there that if I put those glasses back on my face, I would forever be denying that God could heal my eyes.  So I put the glasses back on the shelf and I went and found Beth and confessed to her that I hadn't been able to see a thing that whole day. 

   My wife is a kind and wonderful woman with a gift for being a truth speaker.  After I told her what had happened to me through the day, she gently and lovingly pointed out that I had no faith.  It was true!  After three days of doubting, denying and trying to analyze the fact that I could see, I finally just didn't believe it anymore!  And I lost it.  I had lost my eyesight!

   Can you imagine the scene.  Jesus is walking round the sea of Galilee preaching, teaching and healing, and a leper comes out of the crowd.  Jesus touches him, the spots disappear, and Jesus tells him, "your faith has made you whole."  And then three days later the leper shows up at another gathering with Jesus, shouting, "Hey!  It came back!  What kind of trash healing are you passing out bud!"

   What was the one thing that Jesus said every time he healed someone?  "your faith has healed you."  I think there are like two or three exceptions to this rule in the bible.  Every time it's the same, "Your faith has made you whole, now go and sin no more."  I always figured that the faith part was more in line with, "belief brought you to the healing."  What I mean by that is, if I were a leper, and I sought out Jesus for a healing, then my "faith" that he can heal would have motivated me to find him and receive the healing.  But I realized that the healing is in direct relationship to the faith.  If I don't believe he can heal me, then would I accept the healing?  It's like a friend trying to lend me money.  If I don't believe he can afford to loan me a few bucks, then I flat out won't accept his cash.  But if I know he can... well then my bills are getting paid!

   The fact of day four, when I lost my sight, is that my faith is small.  God healed me, but my faith was weak.  I really didn't believe that He had healed me, so I returned the gift.  With Beth by my side I prayed and confessed to God that I didn't believe.  I asked His forgiveness and was resigned to whatever came of my failed faith.  When I opened my eyes from prayer, my sight was back, clear as a bell.  And it pretty much has been back ever since.

   That healing was over two months ago, and still to this day my sight will pop out occasionally.  I would say conservatively that I can see perfectly eighty five percent of the time.  The interesting wrinkle to my sight going when it does (and I am still processing this, so this is not a fully certain statement) is that I have noticed that when I am doing something outside of God's will, when I am trying to make something happen, or pushing too hard to force my agenda in something, my sight pops out.  For example, I have written this story about five times now.  Each time I attempted to write it, I couldn't see a word I was typing, my vision was a mess.  Tonight my vision has been clear as a bell throughout the whole thing, confirming in my heart that this is the post I should publish.  I don't know one hundred percent that this is the cause of my occasional vision losses, but I have a suspicion that it is.  I will keep you posted on that one later I hope.

   So here I am, vision healed, at Wal-Mart.  I have been healed, of migraines, my vision, and my asthma, which I hope to share as well.  Though like all my healing experiences, the healing of my asthma was also kind of a non event, so it will be a shorter post I am sure!  I testify to the healing power of God!  I testify to the awesome God who is so huge as to breath this universe into being, and so small as to care about some guys astigmatism.

My name is Jake Beveridge, and I am LOVING being a "Weird Christian"

I Have been Healed!

   I am not kidding when I say this is attempt number six to write this.  It is so hard to write about how God has healed me.  Two reasons I think... First I am afraid.  To acknowledge that I have experienced divine healing is pretty weird, fringe Christianity,  and I have no idea how you will receive it.  Will you think I'm crazy?  Will you doubt it to be true?  Honestly I still doubt it to be true sometimes myself!  So why wouldn't you!  Secondly it just doesn't make sense.  I don't understand why I got healed (other than I have an awesome God who loves me!), why did God chose to heal me, and not others?  The circumstances and the way He healed me are, well there just not how I would have imagined receiving healing, so how could this be!  A few days ago a good friend of mine had said, "It's so hard to tell others about what God is doing, when we don't understand it ourselves."  If that isn't the crux of what I have been struggling with.  I don't fully understand this, and I am afraid of what you may think of all of this, but come Hell or high water, this is the post I will be publishing!
  
So...  Over the last month, God has healed me of...

·         Crippling Migraines,  I mean these things were so bad, last year I lost three months too what is known as a chaining migraine.  I have gone to the hospital twice, maybe three times with them.  COMPLEATLY HEALED!

·         A lifelong struggle with Asthma.  Again, not an occasional attack treated with over the counter drugs, I spent the majority of my middle school life in hospitals with severe asthma attacks, and five months in a hospital in Denver CO, to get it under control.  I have taken the strongest medications and still battled my whole life with them.  COMPLEATLY HEALED!

·         My eyesight.  Which still perplexes me because frankly I always looked good in glasses!  I have worn glasses since grade school.  Had a decent astigmatism, everything is just blurry without my glasses.  COMPLEATLY HEALED!

Each of these healings have their own story, so I suppose I should tell each one in a separate post so as not to weary the reader.

   "I have always been a sickly person."  That sentence is kind of what started it all for me.  It's a phrase I have said many times, a "truth" I have believed about myself for... well for all my life.  And how could I not have believed that!
   At age five I had my first major surgery, kidney stones.  Then asthma, infections, gallbladder surgery, collapsed lung, migraines, sleep apnea and let's not even mention cold and flu season!  I just remember my child hood as always being sick.  I have seen the inside of more hospitals then I ever care to recount!  And put more doctors children through college then I will ever know.  I am thirty four and I think my parents are still paying medical bills from my childhood.
   I was at our bible study back in August I believe, the topic was finished and everyone was chatting before we gathered up the kids to head home, and I just happen to utter my phrase, "I have always been a sickly person."  The host of our study group heard me say that, and from across the room full of people announces, "That is a lie!, I refuse to agree with that!" 
   We got into a discussion for a few hours that night about healing.  It was eye opening.  I have always believed in Gods power to heal, have even known people who claimed healing.  But another favorite phrase of mine has always been, "I believe God can heal, but I don't believe He will heal me."  That night I was very challenged about why I had made such a horrible "agreement."  And we went home that night heads swirling with speculation, and wonder.
   The next day, I woke up with one of my infamous migraines coming on.  I got out of bed and with half a heart I prayed.  For the first time in my life I believed God could heal me, and I asked for that healing.  The migraine went away.  That was it!  No angels appearing, no choir singing, not even an elevated heart rate!  I just felt better.  I was thrilled, a little disappointed in the lack of event, but thrilled!  It came on again about an hour later, so I prayed again.  Again it left.  I almost had a migraine eight times that day.  And each time I prayed it away.  That day was the day I was healed of migraines!  And that healing was what opened the door to the other healings in my life.  Because I knew that I had been healed, I also knew God could heal me completely of everything I have struggled with!
   Have you ever noticed that every time Jesus healed someone, He would always say, "your faith healed you." or some variation of that statement  I always thought that He was being somewhat facetious, or maybe just polite... like when someone says, "you're the man," and you respond with, "NO you're the man!" all the while knowing full well that if anyone is getting the, "you're the man," award, it's you at that moment. 
   I was challenged by the fact that Jesus really meant what He said... all the time.  And when He said, "your faith has healed you."  He really meant that because you believed in me and my power to heal, you have been healed!  It's how the apostles healed as well, people believed in the power of Jesus Christ, and they received the healing that the apostles offered. 
   I always imagined that if I were to experience "faith" healing, it would be at the hands of an overdressed, slightly balding, profusely sweating, tent revival preacher, who in the glory name of Jesus calls down righteous healing on my broken body!  But I have been rudely awoken to the fact that "faith" healing involves only one ingredient... FAITH!  For the first time in my life I believed that God was fully capable of healing, and it opened the door to a complete healing of my whole body!  And nowhere was there any saint of Christianity to be found.  It was just me and God, working out how big and awesome and capable He actually is!
   It seems very simple, believe, truly know in your hear that Jesus still heals, and you will be healed.  But it takes a colossal amount of work to get to a place where you actually believe.  And even then you have to battle with your unbelief, but that is a story for how God healed my eyesight!