A family friend sent the following wonderful and true story to Mum this week documenting a powerful move of God in one of her friends:

“A member of our housegroup was diagnosed with cancer 2 1/2 years ago and given up to 3 months to survive. He, as a new Christian, accepted that prayer could change him if not his condition. At subsequent examinations the tumours -3 – were found to have shrunk and eventually disappeared. His consultant was sceptical and determined to find another answer, and called into the room a visiting professor from the USA.

The American said that from the x-rays he would have expected to see evidence that there had been tumours but since there was none, he could only take the word of his colleague that the first and second set of x-rays belonged to the same man. Both were intrigued but quite unbelieving. Last year my friend had his yearly check-up and a similar conversation took place, namely that both specialists were still on the trail of other answers. He testified in layman’s language to his trust in God.

He has just been on the ‘phone to me to say that at short notice he was called into hospital yesterday and thoroughly checked again. The American chap told him he has taken the notes with him around the world and spoken to a lot of consultants, including particularly a group in Liverpool, and has been told never to underestimate the power of prayer. The parting shot was ‘I am beginning to see things from your point of view’. My friend – a phlegmatic individual – reminded him that as he said goodbye last year, he had told him that he hoped one day he would understand.

Now the consultant is not, as far as we know, on his knees at this moment, repentant and asking for salvation, but my friend has felt all through this saga that his illness was for a purpose. He is a blunt and fearless fellow and has told of his faith in very basic terms many times. He is mocked and known as the ‘God botherer’ at the hospital, but he uses this condition to open conversations and just tell of his relationship with God through Jesus.”

I found these words deeply inspirational… not just because they are about God’s healing power at work, but because they show how His presence transforms lives that others have ‘written off.’

I believe with all my heart that God can heal. I heard from another close friend this week how God did some incredible healing work at her church last week, with many hundreds testifying to the miracle-working power they experienced. Interestingly though, the man delivering the preach and praying for others had to be helped onto the stage by two people as his knee is so weak he cannot move it well. As he prayed for others, he explained that he does not know why God uses him to pray for so much healing, when he himself is still afflicted.

At times it seems strange and illogical that God chooses not to heal those who call upon HIs name. We don’t understand why some people are healed in an instant and other beautifully Godly people suffer pain for years.

Being a Christian does not make us immune to life and all it throws at us. Some of my best friends have experienced divorce, adultery, abuse, addiction, bullying, terminal illness, crippling debt, loneliness and fear. God does not always seem to intervene in the ways we ask Him to. But my own belief is this: God may be silent, but He is never deaf.

He always hears prayers, even those He will not answer in the way we ask Him to. He always answers prayers, in His way and His time.

Yesterday I read a beautiful passage in Genesis 22:14 in the Message Version. It used the name of God – YIREH – which it described as meaning “God sees to it.”

Whenever we pray, God sees to it. He does not necessarily do it now, or do it our way, but He sees to it. Whenever we ask of Him, His response is ‘Leave it with me. I’ll see to it.” It is not our job to be prescriptive and declare HOW and WHEN we want things to be done. I will not be one of the people who ‘CAST OUT’ my Mum’s cancer and rebuke it, or shout at it.

Yes, I don’t like it being in her body, but I can see that it is so much more about God than about her. So I am not praying for healing in the same way. I am praying for glory.

So I asked God to bring HIs glory through all that happens with Mum tomorrow in the hospital.

And God replied,

‘I’ll see to it.”