Hi all,
A widow of less than a year said to me: “I was believing so hard for my husband to be healed, but he wasn’t, and I don’t understand why. I believed, and I declared the Word.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her she completely misunderstood what faith is.
I was where she was, once upon a time.
Most of you know our oldest son Chris. He was born by emergency C-section with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, resulting in brain damage. As I write this Chris is 44 years old, but mentally about 4 years old.
He was at home the first 24 years of his life, but in a group home the last 20+. When not traveling I pick him up on Friday morning and return him Saturday afternoon. Friday is errand day with dad. Chris gets to pick where he wants to have lunch, and we are known by many store clerks and local restaurants. All greet Chris like a long lost friend when we roll through the stores or come for lunch.
Friday night Barb cooks a favorite meal for him, and Saturday morning he can sleep in. We nearly always do a big breakfast. At the group home they tell them when to get up and when to go to bed – all parts of life are on a schedule – medicines, meals, day program activities. When he is home he can relax and set the pace.
He loves the Lord and talks of going to heaven…
…where he won’t need a wheelchair, and is quite content to wait until then. When we see an ambulance or firetruck race by, he grabs my hand saying: “We better pray.” (So we do) He has never met a stranger, nor a dog he didn’t like.
The Lord promised him something when he was about 21. He came crawling down the hall, pulling himself along the floor like an army man staying low, pulling himself by his elbows.
“Dad! Know what Jesus told me? He said He’s going to walk through the mountains with me, yep, that’s what He said, yahoo! He’s going to walk through the mountains with me. That’s what Jesus said to me.”
Having that word from the Lord directly to him, Chris is not looking for healing. Barb and I are, but we have no word from the Lord about Chris being healed this side of heaven. Does our ‘faith’ count for anything? Is what we have faith? Or is it hope for his healing?
People, strangers, well meaning all – well, most of them – on the Internet and by email and to our faces, have offered links to everything from cures or treatments for brain damage, to finding fault with Barb and I for not believing, not doing more to see him healed.
When we fell away from the Word of Faith (WOF)
There was a point in our young lives that people from WOF concluded Chris must have a demon. To our great shame we let them try to cast a demon out of him – there was no demon, and it scared Chris so we stopped it. A brain injury is not a demon. Injury is not demonic. Others suggested that we have a secret sin. Some thought we didn’t have enough faith for healing.
We were ostracized from the very ones we fellowshipped with each Sunday morning. We felt all alone. Word of Faith with this this son who wasn’t healed – what was wrong with the Fenn’s people wondered? Had we failed God or failed Chris? We questioned all we believed about faith.
In those early days we consulted an attorney to sue the hospital and doctor. They told us directly, that there was such negligence ‘it would be a 7 figure settlement’. (In the millions of dollars) You see, Chris was born December 23. The doctor was home waiting for his son to arrive for Christmas, so when he was told Chris was in fetal distress at 2pm (14.00), he still didn’t arrive at the hospital until 7:25pm (19.25).
He immediately determined to do an emergency C-section
But then the hospital could not find the pediatrician on call which was required to be present for an emergency C-section. Chris therefore wasn’t born until 8:50pm (20.50). Yes, millions of dollars worth of negligence by all involved.
But what we would have to go through to bring a lawsuit was too much emotionally for Barb, and we declined after great struggles emotionally and spiritually, choosing to trust the Father – for better or worse, right or wrong, that just how it was back then when Chris was young.
The turmoil of reliving all that pain was just too much for us, and we just couldn’t do it. We walked away, forgave, and gave up the idea of justice and vengeance and anger and all those emotions, to trust the Father and Lord for healing and provision for Chris’ future needs.
It was in those days…
…of working through us not fitting in to Word of Faith, to deciding not to sue but to trust and believe, that the Lord first visited me. To this day I wonder if our turmoil and wrestling with that had anything to do with His great grace in what has become regular visitations.
The first was April of 1986. Then came the Lord’s first teaching visitation, October 1, 1986. And so began several years of visitations as we left vengeance and man’s provision aside, in the midst of our crisis with WOF, that He came so very often to our almost nightly times of worship. He has been visiting me ever since, several times a year.
Many of the earliest visitations I had with the Lord reshaped my understanding of Him, of scripture, of faith, and are recorded in the book Pursuing the Seasons of God. The sequel: Knowing the Ways of God is about those times too, but that is more about my ‘tour’ of heaven. (Email me at cwowi@aol.com and I’ll send you the PDF)
We started to look into scripture to find what faith really is, and where it comes from. It was in that time I fasted water-only for 15 days, telling the Father I wouldn’t eat until Chris was healed. But I knew enough that when I shifted attention to my spirit, there was no revelation, no peace about Him moving to heal Chris. I learned fasting doesn’t move God, but it sure helped my sensitivity to His realm. There was no life in my spirit for what I was doing, no Holy Spirit witness, so I ended it.
So I know what I’m talking about.
All of that transparency, all me sharing the great pain we have gone through, is to let the reader know this is not theory to me. Barb and I have lived through the process of giving up nearly all we ever believed about the Lord. We’ve had our motives purified – not to walk with Him for what He might do or could do for us or our son, but to just love the Father and Lord with all our hearts in purity, to love others transparently and purely.
We know what grace is. We know what hope is. We know what faith is. We want nothing more of the Father than to know Him. That is what was worked in us in those early days. They brought us back to our teen years when we were all about loving the Father, loving the Lord, with no ulterior motives, no thought of what He might do for us.
When Jesus was accused of casting out demons by the power of Satan, He said He did so by the Holy Spirit. That’s where we will pick it up next week. For it is not just the Word by Himself or by itself, it is by the Holy Spirit, and His presence brings the kingdom to any situation.
Until then, blessings,
John Fenn
