My wife Amie wasn’t feeling well one Saturday afternoon, and Syd wanted to play. Amie told her that her stomach hurt and she
needed to rest.
Little Syd put her
hands on Amie’s stomach and prayed a simple prayer of, “Jesus, help Mom’s
stomach not to hurt so she can play with me.”
Literally seconds later,Amie told Syd, “My stomach doesn’t hurt any more, Jesus healed me!”
said, “I know mommy… let’s go play!”
A couple weeks later, I was working on some emails and Amie came walking
through the room holding her head. I asked, “What’s wrong?”
“I’ve got a bad sinus headache.”
you.”
me.”
A new neighbor moved in around this same time. She had 2 big cats — a well
known vice of Sydney’s. They bathed their cats, and on one occasion got
some soap in the cat’s eye. An infection set in and the eye soon turned
white.
Being new to the area they didn’t know any local vets, so they
went across the street to ask our other neighbor for a reference.
They did give her a name of a good vet, but they also asked if she had
met the Bokelman’s daughter, Sydney.
told her, “When Sydney prays for people on the block they get better. You should have Syd pray for the cat.”
The neighbor loaded her cat up to and took it to the vet. Later that
day, the new neighbor stopped by to introduce herself and to tell us
this story.
sick people and they get better. Well, I have this cat that I really
love that is going to lose his eye.”
gotten back from the vet, the infection had already caused the
eye to become detached, and it was only a matter of time that the
eye would just shrivel up and leave an empty cavity in the cat’s eye
socket.
Amie said she would mention the cat to Syd during bedtime prayers
that night. That evening almost as an afterthought, Amie shared the
prayer request to Syd. She said, “Aww, what’s his name? Does his
eye hurt?”
The next day, the neighbor came over herself to thank Sydney for
praying. She said, “When I woke up in the morning, I remembered I
had asked for Syd to pray for my cat, so I went looking for him. I
pulled him out from underneath the bed and found that he had a new eye
in the place of the dead one. God healed my cat.”
I remember struggling with the success that Syd had in praying for the
sick. Why didn’t that happen when I prayed for people? I asked God that directly in a prayer, and some thoughts immediately came
to mind.
I immediately thought of all my doctrinal limitations and past
experiences of praying for the sick that so eloquently, rationally, and
sophisticatedly explained away all of the things God doesn’t do — or
can’t do — any more. But I’d rather walk in the simple faith and power of my 5-year-old than lay hold to an arsenal of powerless Ph.D’s.
unbelief… And give me the faith of a 5-year-old.
