Tuesday, July 2nd, 2024
Every Monday, I go to a small-group prayer meeting at my church. We start each session by looking over a list of prayer requests and talk about this and that. As usual, the list yesterday was filled mainly with health concerns and requests for healing.
Some of the people for whom healing was asked we knew and some we didn’t. None of us knew anything about Marty, who was the uncle of a church member. He was experiencing great pain and suffering from a heart condition that threatened his life. “You know,” I said, “Marty desperately needs healing, but we don’t know anything about his spiritual condition. Maybe his pain and suffering are the very things that will lead him to Christ. With our petitions for his healing, we may be praying him into hell.”
There was a time of quiet as the group contemplated what I had said. Then Gary, the leader of our group, said, “You make a good point, Pat. We need to remember that healing is for a short period of time but salvation is forever.”
I was struck by the wisdom of Gary’s observation. I’m afraid we too often pray for what’s happening in the natural world and too infrequently pray for what’s happening in the spiritual world. May we all learn from what Gary observed.