Lifelong learning - and healing

I want to share with you from my heart about what it means to be a lifelong learner. I believe this is true for people, specifically people who are in a position of influence, that we continually need to be people who learn. For me a life long learner is a position of humility. It reflects a heart that continually depends on God, and not just God but others and God manifesting through others. A humble heart is able to receive not only from God but also from others.

A very impactful and life changing time happened for me that I want to share with you. In 2006, when I had been in India a little over a year, I began to see lots of healings and miracles. It was probably one of the most exciting, transforming times of my life when I began to see the sick healed and deaf hearing – lots, in large numbers! We saw cripples being made whole, incurable diseases vanishing, stroke victims receiving strength and mobility, and blind seeing. It was such an exciting time.

Our brain begins to think, this is how God works, this is how God moves. But what I have learned is God can never be put into a box. Let me put it this way – there is one box we can put God into, and that’s the box of goodness. God is limited and restricted to a box of goodness. He is good, he is light, and in him there is no darkness at all – he is love. So though we cannot put all of God’s ways and the ways that he expresses his goodness in a box, because he always works his goodness beyond our thinking, we can limit God to a box of goodness and love because that is by nature who he is.

In 2009, several years later, I received some very bad news, probably some of the worst news I’ve received in my life. It was that my mother had become sick with stage three, terminal, ovarian cancer, one of the hardest cancers to beat. The life expectancy was less than five years for any one – very few people survive this type of cancer. I was my mother’s greatest source of encouragement and faith, because out of everyone she knew that believed in the supernatural, she was closest to me and knew me better than anyone else. So not only did I feel a responsibility to minister to my mother and pray for her, but I also felt this large responsibility to be her hope and source of faith. I know that I personally am not, but through Jesus, of course. And I can tell you, I believed for her and fought in faith for her, and to make a long story short I did that until the day she died and breathed her last.

It was a very difficult and emotional time. At that point in my life I was not married, so my mother was the most precious person in my life. And the interesting thing was this, if you could date back to when the doctors believed the cancer started growing, they said about three years. That is right around when God started using me in the healing and deliverance realm. It was like the enemy strategically targeted one of the most important people in my life. And so I had a choice at that moment – am I going to surrender my future to the limitations and bondages of failure and disappointment, or choose to look to Jesus and allow him to mold my future for greater success?

Brothers, sisters, so many of us allow our failures and struggles and disappointments to literally cripple us from that day forward. We may look like we’re emotionally alive on the outside, but our faith has been shackled and we are tied down to past experiences rather than allowing Jesus to overcome them.

The first twenty-four hours after my mother’s passing was really the most difficult and devastating. If anyone knows me, they know I’m quite joyful and very emotional, and very charismatic in nature, but then I felt like a zombie, I felt dead. I was breathing but I felt like I was dead, like a zombie in my emotions and spirit. I remember crying out in prayer to God, trying to connect with God some way, any way because I felt so dead on the inside. I remember crying out to my mom, and I cried out because I knew she was with Jesus, and I said, Mom, I’m sorry, my faith failed you. And then the most unique thing happened. Jesus could have spoken this to me, but he knew what was more personal for me at the moment. He allowed me to hear the voice of my mother, and I heard her so clearly, just like I would hear her on earth, I could recognize it. But I heard it in the spirit, and she said, your faith may have failed me, but your love did not. Now I can see your love so clearly. And after those two short sentences, immediately the Holy Spirit flashed 1 Cor. 13:13 before my spiritual eyes, and then I immediately opened up the scriptures and it said, now faith, hope and love remain, these three, but the greatest of these is love.

See, you know what Jesus does? He doesn’t pick out why you’re a failure and why you failed, rather he points out what you did right, and he strengthens it so you can be successful next time. Jesus must be our source and continual focus. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. He was, is and will always be merciful and gracious. Jesus never let anyone down. This is what I love about Jesus – he is my champion, he is your champion. There was never a battle that he lost, never a situation that he did not overcome. And we are not him! But the more we believe in him, we can allow him to live through us.

Though I have been ministering to the sick and demon-oppressed for thirteen years now, I am continually in a state to learn deeper and more life-changing truths. Why? Because I chose not to hang onto pain, failure and disappointment. After my mom spoke those words to me, and the Holy Spirit gave me that scripture, it felt like life entered my emotions and my spirit once again. Just a few days later I was schedule for a healing event, and I was full of faith, even laughing with joy, because I know my Jesus is greater and he imparts life. And so to be in a place of continually learning, I believe you have to a person who chooses not to hang onto disappointment, failure, but rather continually looks to Jesus. You know, God did not answer me when I was complaining or even accusing him. But he does direct us to the source of all faith, the author and finisher of our faith, Jesus.

I have learned that if I continually surrender my disappointments and failures to him, in turn he allows me to grow in him and see a greater representation of Jesus in and through my life. I am so thankful for the grace and work of the Holy Spirit in my heart, because since my mother passed away, which has been over ten years now, I have seen many, many people suffering, even dying, of cancer healed. I thank God that I am in a position to learn more. Do I need to learn more? Absolutely. Am I seeing complete success? No, but I can tell you this: my heart is in a great place, and I see greater and greater success, and the devil cannot keep you from growing in him when you surrender all your disappointments to him.

About the author: Robert has served with All Nations as a fieldworker in Asia since 2007. He also serves on the Global Support Team training and teaching in the area of healing, deliverance and the Holy Spirit.

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