60. Speak LIFE

 

Over the course of my life, I have had strep throat, chicken pox, scarlet fever, whopping cough, pneumonia (many times), THE flu, shingles, endometritis and Strep A sepsis. Of course, along the way, I have also had my fair share of the common colds among other things that didn’t get an official diagnosis. Sepsis was by far the worst I have ever lived through, (although many of these that I mentioned could very easily send people into panic now a days). One of the things that I found the hardest to deal with, was the vagueness of the doctors while I was in the hospital. It wasn’t until I found another Infectious disease doctor a month later did someone tell us how bad it actually was and how close it was to having a very different outcome; it wasn’t until then that we even knew I had been in the last stages of sepsis. As we learned piece by piece what I had actually just lived through, reality hit many times over. I was very close to dying.

But no one at the hospital ever let on. No one told me or my family that I was septic. No one told me or my family what that meant or explained the stages. I have actually lost many nights wondering why. A part of me wanted to be angry with the doctors.... Didn’t we deserve to know? To better prepare ourselves somehow? To know what we were facing? But then as I sat and REALLY thought about it, my heart began to soften. I stopped thinking about why they didn’t say anything and found myself thinking, “what would have happened if they DID say something?”

I realized that so much of what we go through is led by the state of mind we are in. If they would have told me I was closer to dying than I was to living, what kind of effects could that have had? In the middle of the physical, emotional and spiritual battle I was facing in that moment, would I have been able to keep my mind focused and my faith strong if the worst case scenario was being thrust in our face? I honestly do not know the answer.

The truth is, whether there is a 99% survival rate or a 1% survival rate, there is always the possibility of worst case scenarios but let us not forget that there is also ALWAYS the possibility for healing and miracles. I believe our faith should always rest in the hands of God; the creator of the universe. No matter what diagnosis a human gives here on this earth, it is NOT the final say. Yet somehow we are finding ourselves in the midst of many people banking more heavily (if not entirely) on the voice of “experts”.

I urge you to be very careful about what comes out of your mouth (including what you write and speak over yourself). To the one sick with ANY illness or the one who may become sick with ANY illness, your spoken diagnosis can have a lasting effect on their state of mind (both good or bad) and ultimately their recovery and I assure you whether you believe it or not, it has an effect in the spiritual realm as well. We must stop speaking the spirit of death over people but instead speak hope and life.

Fellow believers, no matter what someone may be dealing with or what diagnosis they may have been given, we need to be pointing people back to the One who is all powerful, the One who puts the breath in our lungs, the provider of wisdom and our true Healer. WE NEED TO BE THE LIGHT OF HOPE IN A WORLD FILLED WITH HOPELESSNESS. We do not always understand why some get healed and others do not. But our job is not to reinforce the death sentence from man. Whether it be about Covid or something else entirely, those who are speaking of the worst case scenarios as a promise for all, are releasing the spirit of fear and death upon the nation. If one does not know how to renounce that spoken curse over their life, people begin to become stifled and bound by it instead. We should be teaching and guiding and loving people back to Jesus. Leaning into each other when our faith waivers. Leaning into Him and trusting the promises for us found in His word.