faith unfaded

I find myself much like the disciples today after Jesus cast out a demon of a child they could not in Matthew 17.

Jesus tells them that this kind goes out only through prayer and fasting.

I wonder if it’s a discipline issue that I have not been able to pray off an illness I currently have. I usually walk through these easily, the symptoms dissipating when I refuse to acknowledge them. But this time I had to go to the doctor. Sinus infection and bronchitis.

I question my faith when that happens.

It isn’t a matter of feeling punished by God but rather an inward search to see if something is blocking my healing. I’d been planning to go to a retreat today and finish the edits on my book. Each retreat I’ve been on this year has come with an attack so I was prayed up.

And yet I still ended up too sick to go.

Perhaps it’s not Satan at all but the Lord wanting me to stay home this weekend. Too often we give the devil credit for something the Lord has orchestrated.

This will allow me to do some things later this week-end I’d had to initially decline. There is a silver lining regardless of who sent the cloud.

I won’t overthink- there’s not enough room in this congested head for errant thoughts- but I won’t dismiss it either. My devotion this morning was Matthew 17:21: Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.

It was exactly what I’d been asking God for the last 24 hours. Why can’t I pray this off? Oswald Chambers had no idea when he published this in 1927 that I would be questioning my illness on October 3, 2024.

But God did.

This will be a lesson for me, one that I will make an enjoyable one. Because I now have two unexpected free days at home and a body that needs rest, I will guiltlessly watch The Price is Right and read the old Mary Higgins Clark novel I pulled off the shelf last week. I’ll eat Chicken in a Biscuit crackers in bed and just chill.

And I will prepare myself for prayer and fasting the next time I know an attack is coming. I went into battle unprepared this week and learned a valuable lesson.