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Listen, I know what I’m talking about here. I’ve seen this situation myself. My mother died on Easter Sunday when she was only forty-nine years old. She was the single most powerful spirit-filled Christian women I’ve known. She was a strong Bible-believing woman. She believed for a healing of cancer for herself and was healed of it — twice!

That day in the hospital, she didn’t have to die. Between my daddy and me, we had enough faith to keep her alive. In fact, we did just that for a while. But do you know what? My mama wanted to go home to be with Jesus. She was tired of fighting. She no longer had a burning will to live. And that was the clincher. Sure, she didn’t really want to die sick. But she made a decision in her heart that going home to be with Jesus was better than hanging out on the earth.

We fought her decision tooth and nail. My daddy wanted his wife. My family and I wanted our mama. We wanted her to stay in Louisiana more than anything else.

Mama let us pray over her. She even agree in prayer with us. But she was an honest woman, and she couldn’t let us keep praying when her heart was hiding a secret that fought our prayers at every turn. And eventually she told us point blank and bluntly, “Leave me alone! Let me go!” We hollered, “No! You’re going to be healed!” She was such a strong-willed woman. It was hurtful and irritating to see her letting her life slip away. She had the power to fight! I knew this from firsthand experience. Sick or not, this woman had the strength of God in her. Yet, she was slipping.

Angry, I left the room. My eyes hot with tears and my heart thumping with adrenaline, I flew into a torrent of angry prayers to God. I was mad at my mama. I was mad at the situation. I was mad at God, too. Wasn’t He listening? With fierce prayers and determination to see my mother healed, I started talking to God, “What is going on here?! I’m praying! Dad’s praying! Why isn’t she healed? You cannot allow death to defeat me. God.

You made a covenant with me through Jesus’ blood! And that covenant says ‘by His stripes we were healed’! Where is that healing? If You break this covenant with me, You’ll have to cease to be God! You must keep covenant with me. You must obey Your Word!” I was honest with God. He knew how I felt, so what was the point in hiding it? I was confused, I was hurt. I didn’t know what else to do.

I Have a Covenant With Your Mother As Well

That is when God spoke up:
Jesse, I have a covenant with you, yes. But I have one with your mother as well. You are praying for her healing. She is praying in her heart for Me to take her home. Now, I will obey My Word. But you and your daddy are battling your mother’s will. And it is her life at stake. You have Me in a hard place, Jesse. Someone has got to give in. Get yourselves together and tell Me what I am to do!

I flew back into my mother’s room. I looked at her. She was the most hard-headed woman in the world. You know, my mama never listened to anybody. She did what she wanted to do most of the time. And she always said that when all her family was saved, she’d go home to be with Jesus. Well, we all had come in and here she was, obeying her own negative word of death. It made me mad. How stupid! Only forty-nine years old! But I knew I couldn’t fight her forever. She had more staying power than all of us. That we knew.
So, I talked to Dad. And with hearts wrenched with anger and sorrow, we release my mama. We let her have her way. And do you know what? The second we agreed to let her go, she stopped breathing, the sound of her heart monitor went flat. I heard her breathe her last slow raspy breath. And then…she was gone.

Immediately my sister, who was in the waiting room, heard mama’s voice, “I’m free, Debra! I’m free!” Debra didn’t know what happened. She came running in the room. Mama had just gone home to be with Jesus. It was Easter Sunday morning, 1982. It was just like Mame to go out dramatically. Just like her to die on the day all of heaven would be having a party.

See, I believe God’s Word. I believe His Word over man’s experience. I could say that God didn’t heal my mother. But that would be a lie. God did heal her. She just didn’t accept the healing.

God cannot and will not lie. Stripes were laid on Jesus’ back for healing and health for all. But they are received through faith. I know this because Jesus said it over and over throughout the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Faith isn’t lip service; it’s heart service. Although the words of your mouth are powerful, they don’t mean much if they aren’t coming from the heart. I believe that it’s not what you pray with your mouth so much as what you believe in your heart that counts when it comes to faith.

My mama agreed with our prayers, but it was lip service. She was honest with us in the end. Some people aren’t honest about what’s in their hearts; they’re afraid of what people will think. But I’m glad that Mama let us know what she really wanted. I thought she was being stupid, acting like a crazy woman. I still think she should have tapped into that healing power and saved herself from death. But I couldn’t break her will with my own. She wanted to go.

How many Christians pray in lip service, while their hearts contradict those fervent prayers? How many have been on their deathbed and, like my mother, would rather die and go to heaven than fight the fight of faith? How many die not telling their loved ones that they are finished fighting and ready to go home? How many others have died because they were surrounded by unbelieving, negative-speaking people who sowed unbelief in a situation that requires pure belief. How many were too weary to fight their doubt and the sickness?

There are all sorts of issues in situations such as these, but not one of those changes the Word of God. His Word is eternal. It is Truth. It is Life. It is all these things to those who receive it.

Source: God is Not Enough, He is Too Much! by Jesse Duplantis
Excerpt permission granted by Harrison House Publishers

Author Biography

Jesse Duplantis
Web site: Jesse Duplantis Ministries
 
Jesse Duplantis is a dynamic evangelist who has traveled throughout the world since 1978 preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He is the founder of Jesse Duplantis Ministries (JDM), which has its International Headquarters in America and additional offices in the United Kingdom and Australia.
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