Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well.

• 3 John 1:2

“Earthly matters are of a lower order than the spiritual, but they concern us greatly. They are the main source of our cares and worries. They have much to do with our religion. We have bodies with needs, pains, disabilities and limitations. That which concerns our bodies necessarily engages our minds. These are subjects of prayer.
“Earthly matters also greatly impact our health and happiness. They form our relations. If we do not pray about worldly matters we exclude God from a large area of our lives.”

• Kobus Sandenbergh, The Power of Prayer (compiled from the works of E. M. Bounds)

On prayer teams, there seems to be more prayer about earthly matters than spiritual matters.  Those that have diseases that need healing are a dominant block and the block that rarely changes is the one involving cancer and tumors.

When the prayer requests go out, people ask for complete healing.  This confuses me.  Why would you want anything else for someone you are praying for?

But then again, the only complete healing is that they pass away and find themselves in the presence of Jesus where there is no more crying or pain and Jesus wipes away any tears that may appear.  But what the person asking for prayers is saying, they want the person to be restored the good health here on earth.

And yet, when you have lost someone very dear to you, a parent or a spouse, at times during the grief process, you might think of how greedy that is.  What I mean is that I would love to have one more meaningful conversation with any of my grandparents.  I look back on how my mother reigned over the living room conversation and how my Dad, who probably had a lot to say, stayed in the bedroom, watching sports on television to escape the “family drama.”  I would love to hear what he had to say.  And I would love to have just one more moment with my wife.

But when I think of what they would miss in Heaven, I realize how greedy my desires are.  They are better off, and when God thinks that I have done enough here on earth, I will join them.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.