Healed

                   This is a blog I got from my cousin Rhonda Schrock about an experience her dear dad had just not so long ago.  He had called and told me about it . It was such and encouragement to me. This happened to him about the same time I had experienced healing in my legs. It helped me to understand more clearly that if we ask God for something and we have completely aligned ourselves with His will He will answer our prayer.  We  must have faith, then we must be totally submissive to Him, and thank Him always. I believe the church at the beginning witnessed many miracles in healing and many other areas of life , and that we can still have that today. I must have faith because without it my beliefs are useless.  I want everyone to start praying for a revival to start across our christian communities. One where people will drop everything and ask God where He wants them and what His will is. Not like I have done, making up my mind and then trying to fit Gods will into it. I honestly believe if we don't all rethink our lives and learn to be truly crucified to Christ we will be like the lukewarm church in Revelations that God said he will spit them out. Is our short time here on earth worth more than eternity?  Just because we don't stop and a seek God's will and live a crucified life for Him? Eternity is a long time to think about how you might have done things differently, instead of enjoying the full rewards that come from God.  Sorry I got up on my little soap box again.  This is the blog from Rhonda.  Thanks for sharing it with us.


              

Faith and prayer lead to healing and Haiti
Note:  This column was published in the 03/28/11 edition of The Goshen News.  This writer is happy to share with you a glimpse of her parents - her father's adventurous spirit and her mother's behind-the-scenes supportive work.  Enjoy!

If my father would just settle down and give us all a boring, uneventful year, we’d appreciate it.  I’m serious.

If Action Jackson isn’t traipsing through the woods shooting bucks or hunting bears in Minnesota with his bow, he’s plotting a practical joke that will scare the bejeebers out of his victim.  That, or he’s having a heart attack or a five-vessel bypass or a train wreck (from which, thank God, he walked away) or kidney stones or prostate cancer.  Or diverticulitis.

It was back in February that he was hospitalized yet again with severe pain, nausea, vomiting, and fever.  For months, he’d been making plans to go to Haiti with their church group.  They’d gone down only last year, and Dad had left a piece of his heart with the Haitian people.  Now, a mere two weeks before they were to leave, a grim-faced doctor was delivering news that sent his spirits plummeting.

It was diverticulitis, he said, and some diverticula had ruptured.  They were looking at major surgery with the possibility of a colostomy.

“When the doctor was telling me what it was and how bad it was,” Dad said, “I asked him if he can fix it.  He shook his head and said, ‘I hope.’”

“’I hope!’” he told us later.  “Now if that don’t scare you back into last week.  I thought church was out.”

Lying there in the hospital bed, hooked up to IVs, the realization began to set in.  He would not be going to Haiti .

It was no surprise to us who know him that it was the Haitian children who stole Dad’s heart.  In his pictures from last year’s trip, their chocolate brown eyes shine in coffee-colored faces.  They’d loved the pale white foreigners who’d come bearing gifts, and they’d sprung from the woodwork at the slightest hint of activity in the compound.

In preparation for the team’s return, Dad had gotten copies of the Jesus movie in Haitian Creole in both the adults’ and children’s versions.  “I felt real good about the Jesus films,” he said.  “Ernest cannot change anyone’s life, but I felt the Jesus film would touch a lot of lives, and I wanted to be there.”
He continued.  “It’s not that the others couldn’t have done very well without me.”  But, he said, “It was real disappointing.  I felt like the disciples on the way to Emmaus – where is Jesus?  Where is He when things don’t make sense?”  However, he added, “I did not want to go if the Lord did not want me to go or if I would have been a hindrance to God’s work.”

In the following days, he had plenty of time to think.  Even in the struggle to accept the unwelcome truth, he began to sense the Lord speaking to him.  “Finally,” he said, “I got the urge to tell Jesus, ‘Thank You for letting this happen.  I know it was for a reason.’”  And so he obeyed.

“I kept thinking in the back of my mind that the only way I could go is if the doc told me I was completely healed.”

To his great surprise, the doctor returned on Wednesday, a mere two days before the team was to leave, with astonishing news.  The infection was gone, the pockets had healed, and while he would still require surgery down the road, he was cleared to go to Haiti .

“When he told me I was healed and that I could go,” Dad said, “It took awhile to sink in.  And then it got scary.  As sick as I was, what if it had happened there?

“The Lord kept asking me, ‘Would it not be a lack of faith if you don’t go since I healed you?’  It took a lot of faith.”  Then he added dryly, “I’ve got a Ph.D. in faith.”

So it was that in spite of all the odds, my father went to Haiti where they built a house, put a roof on a porch, and introduced 70 to 80 Haitian children to the delights of roasted hot dogs (150) and toasted marshmallows (5 lbs.), courtesy of Dad.

He did get to be there when they showed the Jesus film to both children and adults, and he did get to see souls come to Christ.  Worst never came to worst as he’d speculated, and the team didn’t have to throw him in the Côtes de Fer river after all.

Afterwards, he had this to say.  “I still don’t think I would’ve been healed if I had not told Him thank you, though I may be wrong.

“I don’t care what happens.  God is in control.  God is great!  It was a great lesson for me.”

Rhonda Schrock gives her mother, who stayed behind, a heartfelt shout out.  She thinks that soldiering through an ice storm and a power outage all alone in Dad’s absence also required a certain amount of faith.  To quote a grandson, “Joo job, Mama!”  Good job.