I have a balance disorder that I’ve lived with my entire life. Because of it, I didn’t learn to walk until I was three. It took me longer to learn how to ride a bicycle and I never mastered roller skating. I easily lost my balance and fell, even as an adult. Since poor equilibrium kept me from walking a straight line, I couldn’t march in military basic training. Over the years, I’ve learned to compensate quite well, but that doesn’t mean I don’t fall on occasion.
Right after I accepted the Lord as my Savior (1974), a helpful friend from church told me to pray for God to heal my balance. She quoted a verse about asking and believing; then she said that if I believed when I prayed, God would heal me. I couldn’t argue with the verses because I read them myself. The Bible did say that. (This was before I learned how to rightly divide the Word of God, and that those promises are always accompanied by conditions. I didn’t know all that yet. I was still a baby in the Lord.)
I started praying about my balance, asking God to heal me. I prayed and prayed and prayed. Then I believed and believed and believed. And when I got discouraged because God wasn’t answering my prayer, someone encouraged me to keep on praying by telling me the story of the unjust judge and the persistent widow in Luke 18.
By this time, I was in the Air Force. I faithfully attended church and a Friday night Bible study, so I was growing spiritually. But I was still praying for God to heal my balance. Then one Friday night at the Bible study, God spoke to my heart and said, “Okay, Marj, I will heal your balance.” That was all I needed to hear. God keeps His Word. There was no need for me to ask Him again, so I didn’t. And because I so trusted God to answer that prayer request, I never gave it a second thought.
Thirty five years later…It hit me. I still had a balance problem. Yet I knew that God said that he would heal me, and I truly believed that He would. But He hadn’t. That baffled me. So I asked Him about it as I went about my daily routine. I said, “Lord, what happened? You said that you’d heal me.”
Are you ready for His response? I will never forget it. He said to me, “Yes, Marj, I did say that I would heal you. One day you will be with Me, and then you will be healed for all eternity.” At this point, I was okay with that. I accepted His answer with great appreciation for all He’d already done for me and with the anticipation of what He would do in the future. But then, I was no longer a babe in Christ. I was now a mature believer.
You see, God doesn’t always answer our prayers the way we’d like Him to. But for a believer walking with the Lord, growing spiritually, trusting God in everything, God always blesses them with an answer – even if that answer is “One day you’ll be with Me, and you won’t deal with that issue ever again.”