7 Ways to Cooperate With God for Your Healing

What happened after that is a matter of history, so allow me to report it to you. Bobby survived and grew up to be a bane on that family and community. He was constantly in trouble, disobedient to his parents and rebellious at school. He got into vandalism, truancy, petty theft, alcohol and drugs. He stole money and property from his parents and neighbors and pawned it for drugs, and he was in and out of jail his entire life.

We are not currently privileged to see with perfect eternal vision. We don’t know whether God intervened to save Bobby or whether Bobby recovered on his own. But this story gives us opportunity to ask questions, to explore possibilities, to consider life from a larger view.

Why was Bobby, at age 5, in a life-threatening situation? Did God act to threaten Bobby’s life, or were his injuries a direct consequence of his own actions? Is it possible that God intervened to save Bobby’s life? Is it possible God knew the heart of that mother and understood that she would close her heart to Him if He didn’t save Bobby, and because God didn’t want to lose her, He intervened? Is it possible that if the mother would have trusted God and prayed, “God, I don’t want to lose my son, but I don’t know the future. I don’t know how life will unfold; I don’t know what is best. But I do know You always do what is best. So, Father, I trust You. Please heal my son if it is in Your will,” that Bobby might not have survived?

We don’t know whether God intervened to save Bobby, but this story gives us opportunity to step back and enlarge our perspective when dealing with pain, trauma and loss in our lives. When we’re experiencing trials like these, one action that can help is stepping back and taking a larger view.

Step 4: Move on and say goodbye.

When we lose someone, something or some ability, we feel like life will never be the same again. We can be tempted to sit down in the middle of the road of life and quit, vowing that we won’t go on until that person or thing comes back to us.

Anne, 43, came to see me 10 years after the death of her child. Each morning for those 10 years, she got up, went into the child’s room and held the child’s teddy bear and cried, staring at the ceiling.

Imagine walking in a remote national forest with a loved one and the loved one suddenly collapses and dies. There are no cell phones, no radios and no immediate help available. What do you do? You might sit down with your loved one in the trail for a while, but eventually you have to make a decision: get up and go on without this person or lie down and die with him or her.

Many people who experience loss go through the motions of life but their heart is no longer in it. Paul tells us, “Brothers, I do not count myself to have attained, but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal to the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:13-14).

As Christians, we press forward toward the prize, to the day when all pain, all loss and all suffering will be removed, and we will be restored to complete wholeness.

Step 5: Be hopeful—hopeful while you’re here and hopeful for eternity.

This is helped by perspective, by stepping back and seeing a larger view and by knowing the truth about God and His character of love.