When the Answer Doesn’t Look Like an Answer

 In Prayer

Yesterday in his message, my handsome husband spoke on the topic of fasting. Eek. Not exactly a warm fuzzy subject, is it? It’s such a special and important spiritual discipline, though, and so many of us have lost sight of it altogether.

I mention fasting, because as Jason was speaking, he spoke in general terms about some of the amazing breakthroughs that we have seen personally as a direct result of prolonged periods of fasting. One such time that comes to mind is several summers ago. I had been hospitalized with pneumonia that turned into sepsis – a blood infection that can turn deadly. This hospitalization was just the sour cherry on top of a rotting cake of illness that I had been dealing with for several years following my time with chemotherapy and cancer.

We felt completely depleted and defeated. It felt as if I would never be healthy again. So my husband fell to his knees and began to pray. But more than that, he fasted. He fasted and prayed that God would heal me and that I’d find freedom from all my health concerns. After a time of fasting, we were led to an allergist who told me that I should have my antibody responses tested. Upon testing, he discovered that my immunity was damaged, comprised, and defective. He literally told me that he had never seen numbers as low as mine. There was good news, though. He talked to me about an immunity-boosting treatment called gamma globulin that would help bolster my counts and rally my immunity.

From there, I began a series of treatments that I still partake in to this day. I go to a clinic every 4 weeks and get a “boost” of gamma globulin for my immune system. Since starting this treatment, I went from being someone who was sick constantly, to someone who is regular and healthy. It is nothing short of miraculous.

But the very fact that the big answer to our desperate prayers was, in fact, something as practical as a medical treatment may not seem all that miraculous to some. You may argue that it would have been far more miraculous if God had just healed me outright and this treatment was not even necessary to begin with. While that may be true, I do not discredit this answer as any less of an answer because it is one that I have to walk out daily. In fact, I thank God for it all the more. Every time I go to the clinic to get my treatments, I am reminded of how far I’ve come. I thank God for my health. In the case of an outright healing, there’s a very real possibility that I might not have even remembered to thank God past the initial excitement of the healing. Now, however, each time I watch the gamma globulin flow into my system, I remember and I thank Him.

Some of you need a total 180 on what you consider “answered prayer.” There may be a whole lot of answers that you have yet to even thank God for, because you were so stuck on the answer that you assumed would meet your need, that you missed the answer that actually came. Take assessment today and realize that no two answers to prayer look the same. They may not even look like answers, but if you look at the results of their presence in your life, you’ll realize that they are, in fact, answers.

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