While I was in Brazil I was given the opportunity to serve God through providing church services, working alongside volunteer staff at a camp, witnessing through door-to-door evangelism, planning and providing children’s programs, ministering to orphaned children, and taking care of injured friends. The first Friday night at camp, while I was participating in some of the games, I sprained my ankle pretty severely, and after walking around on it all day Saturday, it had only gotten worse and was incredibly bruised and swollen. That night before going to bed, I prayed that God would somehow provide a way for me to be able to participate with all of the camp activities despite my sprained ankle, and when I woke up on Sunday morning, it had been completely healed. Never before have I had a prayer answered so miraculously, and it was truly amazing to see God’s power in this way that I had never seen it displayed before.
A few days before we arrived at camp, Nathan McFarland had fallen and hit his back leaving some of the muscles damaged. Not knowing the extent of his injury, he continued to run around and play just as hard as he normally would, which only caused more damage to his back. By the second week of camp Nathan had to spend most of his days in bed because of his severe muscle pain. After spending much time in prayer over Nathan’s hurt back, I began to get very frustrated because everything seemed to only get worse. Our last Friday at camp, he spent the whole day in bed and things were looking rather grim for our travels the next day. While Nathan was hurt, we would ask him to rate his pain on a scale of one, being a slight discomfort, through ten, which was nearly passing out, and most of the day he had been around a seven or an eight. Throughout the whole day I had been praying for him, and as I was sitting next to his cot that evening, I felt that God was telling me to lay my hands on Nathan’s back as I prayed. I did so because I knew that it was definitely God speaking to me and not just a random thought that had popped into my head, and after I had finished praying, I left to go pack my belongings for the next leg of the trip. When I had finished packing about fifteen minutes later, I returned to Nathan’s bedside where he informed me that he had dropped from an eight on the pain scale down to a three. I knew that the only explanation was God’s great power, and I was so excited to see that God really did have His hand in all of this pain. Things were finally starting to look really good, and Nathan was noticeably feeling much better. But then just an hour later, his pain started returning and before we knew it was back up at an eight. This really puzzled me because I had thought God was finally listening to our prayers and starting to heal Nathan.
After looking back on it all, I realized that God did not want me to lay hands on Nathan so that he could be healed, but rather so that God could show me He was still in control. It was as if God was telling me, “I may not be answering your prayers in exactly the ways you would like them to be answered, but I am still in control over this situation. And I still have the power and ability to take away his pain whenever I chose to do so.” I still do not understand why Nathan was in so much pain, and why he still is not completely healed, but I am able to confidently say that God is in control of the situation and has been the entire time. Sometimes God chooses to display His might and power to us, and other times He may prefer to take a little more time, but either way God still hears our prayers and still does whatever is best for the situation at hand. One song that we sing a lot at Impact is called “Arms That Hold the Universe,” and some of my favorite lines in that song say, “And the arms that hold the universe are holding you tonight, you can rest inside, it’s going to be alright.” Throughout this whole experience with Nathan’s injury, I was really able to learn the truth in this and that no matter what, even when we cannot see it very clearly, God is still in control and still holds us in His arms.
