A letter to a friend who was dying

Dear One,

I knew already that something was going wrong in your body. I have seen it the last few times I have been with you.

I am praying and will continue to do so in a more concerted way. It is very difficult to have such a blessed Spirit life while the body is slowly heading towards the grave. But dying daily does make us more aware of the very precious promise that we are looking for a city whose builder and maker is God.

Your healing is complete.

I don't say that as a "faith" teacher...... though I am definitely a faith teacher. I mean that Jesus did it all on the cross. Your healing is sure as the sun that came up this morning. I am asking God to manifest it here but whether we live or die we are the Lord's. And that means that one day this mortal (dying is the definition of mortal) body that we both bear (St. Francis called it brother donkey) will finally release its grip on us and the new one prepared for us will never again hold us back from all that God has for us. Imagine that you will never again take a pill...... never again have pain...... never again worry about what the next stage of illness will bring. No sickness, no sorrow, no sighing......

But now we dwell in these bodies of death. Regardless of what people say about them they are destined for the grave and they are the last remnant we bear of the Adamic line. Yet even here we have great hope for the Lord says to us that the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead will quicken (literally make alive) our mortal (dying) bodies. Your healing is sure and when you wake up resurrection morning it will be fully seen. For now though it is totally appropriate that we ask that the Lord manifest Himself in your mortal body for His glory and your good.

I have heard the person I saw more actual miracles done through, Kathryn Kulman, say, "I don't know why all are not healed."

That is a mystery that some would like to reduce to a lack of personal faith. I don't believe it. Faith is certainly required to receive God's provision but it is not faith in God's ability it is faith in God Himself. And faith in God Himself is the faith to be healed presently but also to trust Him in the continuing journey towards that final complete healing.

I went to Oral Roberts with a case that I felt he might respond to. It was a young man (21) who had recently been engaged to my girlfriend's friend. He was then diagnosed with a very fast growing stomach and bowel cancer. His whole belly was taken over by the cancer and it had spread to the whole region. When the family asked me to come and pray for him he had not been able to pass anything through his bowels for about a week. He was in terrible pain and even the high doses of morphine he was on could not mask it.

Before I went to pray I went to Oral and asked him if he would go with me. He said that it would not be necessary for him to go because God would work through me as well as him. Then he prayed that God would place upon me the same healing gift that he had recieved. He prayed that as I laid hands on people that the healing power that he had known would flow. That prayer was a powerful turning point in my life. As I look back I see that God has answered it many times over. But I had something to learn in those early moments of my infancy in the gift of healing.

I went to the hospital the next day full of faith. Those were the heady days of Kenneth Hagin and Kenneth Copeland in Tulsa. I knew the concepts of being there by "faith" well. I understood perfectly that healing was in the atonement and that it was ours by birthright. I understood that the only thing that stood between us and perfect health was our lack of faith. My life had been soaked with the teachings of "believe to receive", "positive confession" and "prospering and being in health."

I knew without a doubt that the young man would be healed. But I also knew that he was not yet saved. I laid hands on him that day and a miracle of major proportions happened. He immediately lost all sense of pain. He had a bowel movement within ten minutes which was unheard of. The tumors began immediately to shrink and almost disappeared in 24 hours. He was healed!

Over the next few visits I was able to lead him to a saving knowledge of Jesus.

I was convinced beyond anything I knew that the things I believed were true. Here was the proof.

Then to my amazement six weeks later the young man died of something else than the cancer. He had not had a minute of pain. He was removed from all medications for it. The tumors were continuing to shrink on a daily basis. He was eating normally and passing it perfectly. He died of a lung problem which no doubt had its origins in the cancer but was not cancer itself.

I was devastated.

Where was God in this?

I knew it was not my lack of faith since I had complete confidence and had seen the miracle. So had everyone else. The family had proclaimed it as a wonderful miracle. Even the doctors agreed that something very remarkable had happened. Now, they were totally stunned and angry with God and me.

And I was in a wilderness.

I spent hours seeking God as to what I had done wrong. The heavens became brass as guilt began to plague me. It must have been my lack of faith..... or prayer..... or some sin.......

Yet I could not understand how it was that I could have been the vessel of healing in such a miraculous way. No one denied that a real healing had occurred. It just seemed like such a defeat and made no sense to me at all.

Several weeks went by in which I felt the condemnation of hell itself for failing. I began to take full responsibility for his death..... If only I had enough faith it would not have happened. I should have not been so confident and continued to pray more and more....... In fact I did continue to pray but with such joy that it was only a "finish what you have already begun Lord" kind of prayer. I seemed to see every failing in my life all speaking condemnation at once.

I learned an important lesson in those weeks. One that I pray I will never forget. The encouragement of faith is so important. And it, as well, is a part of the healing process. But in spite of what others may say God is bigger than our faith and He does not let us drown when we get out of the boat and lose it part way to Him.

In the depth of prayer one night I was weeping before the Lord and again asking Him, "Why was he not healed?" "What did I do wrong?"

The Lord gently whispered into my heart, "I did what you asked"

"What do you mean Lord?"

"He is healed"

Suddenly I understood. He was given healing to a degree here and now. And that is true for all of us. We all live somewhere in between health and sickness. The aging process itself is simply the prolongated illness that ends in death for all of us. That God gives special grace to some that they might finish a course that is longer than others does not negate the fact that we all die as a result of some form of disease or failure in the body to sustain its life force (accidents). None of us ever escape the bonds of death even though Jesus paid for their total defeat........

As much as healing is in the atonement so is the end of death. But the problem is our view of life.

I thought of this young man's death as a defeat. You would have had a hard time convincing him of that ten minutes after he went through that final passage. A defeat? God sent His only begotten son in the world to give him the very victory he now enjoys forever. Was it by His stripes he was healed? Absolutely! Was it by faith that the healing was effected? Certainly. Is it total without symptoms? Fully healed forever. Yet he had to die first to receive it all.

The greatest healing we will ever know is the resurrection. In fact it is the full inheritance of that which we are only partially given today. Does the lack of getting better right now take away from what God is doing? Never.

I believe before the resurrection that we should always seek health for ourselves and each other except in two cases...... the first is that God himself tells us no longer to pray and second that the person we are asking for dies.

I have had only one time that God told me not to pray for healing for someone. That was my grandfather.

It was 1973 and I was going to go to Israel for the summer. I had come to Tulsa to care for him as he was in a nursing home. Out of that call of love grew my education I finished high school there at 21 and was given a scholarship to Oral Roberts University. I also had a ministry with the other residents of the nursing home in which several came to Jesus and many felt his touch.

As I went for my last time to visit Grandpa before I went he ws in a particularly good mood. We were sharing about how wonderful it was that we had each other.

In my heart the Lord whispered, "Give him to me." I really did not want to hear it.

He then said, "I have given you these years with him and now he needs to come home."

I knew that God had done just that for He had healed him several times over the years at my request. I knew that those years had been a gift from God for both of us. Even now I weep in thinking about the preciousness of them. Yet in my heart I knew that God was asking the most difficult thing I could imagine....... to give my precious grandpa to Him?

I knew exactly what that meant. It meant that until I crossed that veil I would never see him again. I knew it was best for grandpa but I knew the cost for me.......

I cried as I prayed with him. Dear Jesus you know that I love grandpa. Giving him to you is probably the hardest thing I have ever done but he is yours. Please take him home to you in your own time.

I was so sure of what God was going to do that I called my father that week to say to him that he must come soon to see his father or he would be at his funeral.

As if God were saying to me how careful He was with my treasure, grandpa died the day I arrived in the Old City of Jerusalem.

I know that I was not to have prayed for his healing those last few weeks of his life. I know in fact that the sickness that did kill him was a result of sin in the human race and not God's design or will. Yet I know that in the reality of all He did for my grandpa that the last day of his life was ordained by God and his death was not a cosmic accident or the result of victory by satan, nor the result of my unbelief.

Some would say I was deceived. Some would say that it was my very act of thinking that I was giving him to God that I was really confessing doubt and thus satan had the right to take him.

Would I have kept him forever? Probably if it were my choice. But there is a will that is outside of ours in God. The prayer, if it be thy will is not appropriate when it is clearly against God's will for something to happen or not happen. I have not become one who believes that God delights in our sicknesses..... nor do I feel that in all sickness there is some lesson. I don't believe any particular sickness is the result of personal sin...... It can be STD's from promiscuity, liver disease from alcoholism, lung cancer from cigarettes........ etc. But the line of cancer spreading out from Sarnia (chemical valley) and spreading in a funnel shape to the southeast is not the result of greater sin in the people that live in that funnel. Still I am convinced it is the result of sin. The sin of people who for greed refuse to contain chemicals that cause cancer in a safe manner. The sin of those who knowingly dumped tons of deadly poison into the St. Clair river simply to save the money to dispose of it properly. The sin of those who under the veil of night release tons of pollutants into the air.

There really is innocent suffering.

And yet I am as convinced that God is bigger than all of this. Just like He took the most cruel act ever done in the universe - the killing of His own son - so too does he take every other thing that results from the sin of man and, for all, but especially to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose, redeems them so that their power can lead to a deeper relationship with Him. What can separate us from the love of God?

Do I pray against sickness in your body? Always.

Do I believe that God wants you sick? No. Why would you even go to the doctor?

Do I believe it takes faith to see the sickness go? Yes and I have it and so do you.

Do I believe that sin has brought your condition? Yes. The sin of Adam passed down through countless generations, your and my sin which identified us as sons of Adam but not neccessarily a particular sin you or I committed...... The sin of those who have sinned against you, the sin of everyone in your life...... We all add to the stripes that fell upon his back. And we all add to the suffering of all humanity.

Do I believe that you will be healed? Completely.

Do I pray that it will be manifested today? Of course!

Do I falter in faith if it does not happen in this life? No.

If it does not happen now need we blame you, me, someone else or even God for it? Absolutely not.

This is the problem with the teaching that says that anyone who is not healed today is not walking in faith. When you really believe it at the time you most need faith it is stolen away from you. Hope, which is seeking, longing and patiently waiting for something that has not yet occurred. It fails when we are condemned by our own hearts for not yet having what we hope for. Those weeks of condemnation in my life were only a result of my wrong thinking about healing.

God will use every circumstance of our life no matter what it is if we give it to Him. Including sickness. God has a plan for it and so does the devil. God wants us to press on in faith toward Him in spite of whatever may come against us. The devil wants us to believe that our sickness indicates that we or God have failed.

I know you have given this all to Him. I only write all this to encourage you in your battle. The end of all of this is your perfect healing. It will come in His time. The worsening of the illness is our call to pray for you. Not only to pray for your physical healing here and now but to pray continually that all the days the Lord has ordained for you will be fully lived. That not one of them will be missing. And even further that as you live in perhaps a greater reality than I do of the frailty of your mortal body that none the less you remember your final destiny.

Our death will come if Jesus does not come first. Let us together constantly affirm that our lives are not here anyway. I can almost feel the anticipation of heaven in preparing for our arrival. We can go to New York and no one may come out to greet us on the streets. But when we walk through the veil God Himself will stand to greet us! Our real destiny is far beyond this world that has been so twisted by sin. When our sights are there I believe we are walking in the greatest kind of faith.

The three Hebrew children said to Nebuchanezzar..... our God will deliver us but if not be it known unto you that we will not bow. Let us not bow to the fear of death, illness or any other thing. Let us remember that we have an inheritance laid up for us that no thief can steal.

In Jesus' Love,

Leonard