A. Continues the fight: July 17

A. is continuing to have a difficult time. Her enzyme count is progressively increasing, and she is panicking. What if Jesus doesn't heal her? What will happen to her son, M. and her husband, H.? What will happen to her mother and brothers, who assured her that if Jesus healed her, they would believe in Him? She is beginning to worry that she is losing her faith.

When we are stressed we often revert to what is automatic, and what is automatic for A. is to see God as Divine Despot. For 37 years she has only known Allah, and he was a god of testing and punishment. Recently, conversing with her about our God is like talking with a hyper-calvinist. She has a wonderfully complete understanding of God's sovereignty; but just introductory experience of His compassion. "I am not human; I am an animal," she said to me Sunday, crying from a pit of depression. "God does not love me."

Her life story has been a harsh one. Every time things seemed to ease up something horrible would follow. When her beloved father died, she had to support the family. That meant she had no time for friends or fun, muchless marriage. People began to call her nasty things, because she had no husband. Her own cousins made fun of her, and her aunt never tired of pointing out her own daughters' accomplishments and social standing to A. and her mother.

Once she married H. and left her native country, she had a little over a year of absolute joy. There followed nine months of rough pregnancy; and four months after M. was born, the news that she had stage IV stomach cancer. Then chemo, which gave her several months of remission that she took for healing. But the raised enzyme levels signaled otherwise. It was at that point that her dreams began, of a man in white beckoning her to come to him. It wasn't long after that that she learned about Jesus, began reading the NT and decided to become a Christian.

Those were exciting times. Who knew what God would do next? H's relative who had converted quite a while ago sent her tapes and reading material in Farsi from her church in California. Steve and I were careful to counter some of what we suspected she was getting from those tapes, so that intellectually A. knew that trusting Christ was no guarantee for healing. But her heart must have been convinced otherwise: Jesus is God! God is love! Surely He will have mercy on me, show His power and remove all traces of cancer from my body!

Now it seems like God is not going to heal her, and Satan is exploiting the situation: "See, God is not love. This is the will of Allah. He desires that you suffer. He wants you to die. He wants your son to be without a mother. He wants H. to marry again, and M. will not ever be a Christian if that happens."

This is not the time to reason with A. "This kind can only come out with much prayer." May the Lord give me His mind so that I can pray well , and may I be able to embody Jesus' love so that A. will see Him, and not me.

And if you are still reading this, ora pro nobis.