My Doctor is Better Than Yours

I have a new testimony. I guess no one will be surprised to read that.

I got some neat healings after moving to Ocala. I burned myself twice, and twice I attacked the problems supernaturally. In both cases, the blisters went away and didn’t come back. I can’t tell you how happy I was. What’s worse than a painful burn on a finger? Every time you do anything, you apply pressure to it, and pain shoots through you. I was spared that.

Last week I injured myself in a brand new way. I always make fun of the warnings on Q-Tip boxes, because Q-Tips are useless if you can’t stick them in your ears. And what kind of idiot hurts himself by shoving a Q-Tip in too far? That was what I asked myself. Now I know the answer. I poked myself in the left ear, and it started to bleed. I had to remove dried blood from my ear canal.

Over the next few days, I started feeling more pain, not less. And I continued finding blood in my ear.

Last night, I woke up, and there was pain in my ear and my left jaw. It was pretty bad. Like a serious earache. I was not happy. I wondered if I was going to have to go to the doctor with a problem caused by ineptitude. And what if the Q-Tip wasn’t the problem? What if I had a giant tumor or something in there, and the Q-Tip simply brought it to light?

Of course, I thought of the burns, and I got to work, after taking some ibuprofen. I asked God to heal me, and over and over, I thanked him in the name of Jesus and gave him the glory, saying I was healed.

I would say I kept doing this for an hour. I had nothing else to do. Then I fell asleep. The pain had abated considerably. Was it the ibuprofen? I didn’t know. Generally, I have found that OTC painkillers don’t do a whole lot. Aspirin is completely useless, and comparing ibuprofen to opioid painkillers that actually work is like comparing a cup of tea to two lines of cocaine.

The best thing about this approach is that when I do it, I start to feel God’s presence, and I am able to remain in it. That’s better than the healing. God’s presence is beautiful, and besides, it brings you authority as well as peace.

In the morning, I had almost no pain at all. I can find the pain if I look for it and move my jaw the right (i.e. wrong) way, but most of the time, it’s not there. I still have some congestion in the ear, but I don’t need a doctor any more. I plan to sit down from time to time and have more sessions with God to complete the healing.

Many of us believe in healing but wrongly assume that if it isn’t instantaneous, it’s not coming. That’s not correct. Even Jesus took several tries to heal a man. Healing may be instantaneous, but it can also be a process, like toasting a piece of bread. You don’t pull your toast out after ten seconds and claim the toaster doesn’t work.

Here’s another thing to think about. When you get natural healing, you don’t expect it to be instantaneous. No one takes an antibiotic and then complains because he’s still sick five minutes later. When a doctor puts a new hip joint in you, you don’t get up off the table and try to dance. God took a week to create the world, and when he ended the drought for Elijah, the miracle started with one tiny cloud, but we expect him to heal us in the blink of an eye.

I hate going to doctors, because I love God’s healing. When a doctor fixes you, God gets no glory, and it does nothing to help you grow spiritually. Also, doctors charge a lot, they do procedures which are painful and humiliating, they make a lot of mistakes, and they can only fix a small percentage of our problems. When they do fix us, much of the time, the fixes are limited, temporary, or accompanied by new problems.

My sister got lung cancer. She was treated with radiation and chemotherapy. The cancer went into remission, but now her brain is fried. She has a head start on dementia. Personally, I would have chosen death. Set me up in a comfy bed, give me Dilaudid on demand, and come get me when I stop breathing. My aunt also lost her mind from cancer treatment. A radiation technician burned my mother’s esophagus so badly she starved. My dad’s dementia may have been caused by his atrial fibrillation and/or blood pressure medications, and you don’t want to know what he went through after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Bobby Riggs got prostate cancer. His doctors castrated him, and he died anyway. That’s what I call defeat. Pain, impotence, incontinence, death…and public humiliation.

I could sit here and list medical failures all day, but God’s healing never fails. He heals correctly, without side effects. He doesn’t make you take insulin every day for the rest of your life. He doesn’t make you sit down for dialysis several times a week. He doesn’t make you take poisonous drugs to keep you from rejecting your new heart.

Medical science is a lot better than nothing, but it can’t come close to the success of the real thing. I prefer to stay away from doctors unless I have no choice. God’s healing is something we should be pursuing, but most people don’t believe it exists, and most of the people who do believe do it wrong, so we’re discouraged. We don’t try very hard to get it.

I can’t promise you my ear problem won’t flare up and send me to the ER, but I got a healing last night, so I’m reporting it. I have no reason to doubt that I will continue to receive healing. I’ll be honest if I have to get treatment.

The last time I got burned and healed, I was worried that I might have to come here and retract my testimony, but it didn’t happen.

I believe the approach I took works for everything, not just healing. I’m trying to use it to get things that are more important. I have been asking God to increase my love and faith. These are things that would be highly useful to me. More useful than a healed blister. I feel that I should ask for things that will build my roots, not just my leaves. If the roots are strong, the leaves and fruit will take care of themselves. When you ask God for a car or an acquittal or some other superficial benefit, you don’t address the foundational issues that put you in a position where you had problems in the superficial realm. Why were you poor to begin with? Why were you on trial? The more screwed up your roots are, the more problems you will have.

God approved of Solomon because Solomon asked him for wisdom, not money or power. Wisdom is better than money or power. Similarly, love and faith are better than many of the other things I want. If I have love and faith, my life will go better, and I will fall into fewer traps and dilemmas.

I remember the comedian Marsha Warfield describing her main activity in church as “asking for stuff.” She was right on the money. “Give me this. Give me that.” We should be asking for inner change first.

I will keep you informed about my ear problem. I hope what I wrote will help you get God’s power flowing in you.