Health and prayer Part I OR Frogs, Eggs and tadpoles
The following is a transcript from a discussion with ArchAngel Raphael held on March 15, 2010. File # DW_A0077. He speaks on Health and Prayer and the importance of it on everyone, not just the person praying. He always seems to have a wonderful way of expressing his message with images. Thus the title " Frogs, Eggs, and Tadpoles OR Health and Prayer "
Frogs, Eggs, and Tadpoles OR Health and Prayer
Hello, I am here to be with you this evening. I am your brother, Raphael.
The idea I am sharing with you today is Health: Prayer is health. It is healthy to pray, your health benefits when you pray. The health of all those around you benefit when you pray. Your health benefits when others pray for you. The whole community, back and forth.
I have been following you all day. Have you noticed how pretty and green it has been almost everywhere? This is my favorite month out of the whole year because it is the green month. And the number 3 is very important to me to, because most frogs have 3 toes. Three is the number of healing. Body mind and spirit all together = health. Body mind and spirit separate = dis-ease and dis-harmony.
I know you are working on your project and I have come to tell you about the healing aspect of prayer. First of all, people a lot of times will use prayer because they want healing for someone else. I would like them to allow that they are praying to feel good health within their own physical body at the same time that they are praying for someone else, because seeing someone out here that they are considering to be separate from themselves (which in the big picture, we know is not true), feeling the good health within themselves, now they can share that. Never, never, never, never (I know we do not say “do not” because then certainly you will) don't think that your being healthy is a bad thing if your friend over here is not feeling healthy.
Think of it as out of balance and you are in balance. Imagine yourself in the circus and you both are on a tight rope and you have got one of those long poles. Your friend on the tight rope with you is losing it. You can extend that out to them. Once they grasp a hold of that, now you can balance each other. Prayer is like the balancing stick. As you send out your prayer for this other person's healing, you are extending to them the balancing stick. They have lost their balance. You are in balance. You are extending. God will do the balancing, of course. But your prayer is a gift for this other person. Your prayer is a gift of hope, love, friendship, and the actual gift is balance. Because when you are in balance, everything is healthy and good. That is one aspect of prayer: healing for someone else.
This can also extend to an animal or a thing or a situation. Like your economy right now is out of balance. It needs healing. You could be a farmer and have a sick cow, or a little boy with a pet dog that is sick. Whoever and whatever you are praying for, you are extending your balance through the prayer along with God, the power of God is in it. You are not doing the healing. Whether or not you realize that, it is still taking place.
Now, let's go to the other end of the balance beam. You are out of balance. You need healing. It might not even be a bodily thing. You might be suffering from repossession of your house. Your girlfriend has left you, you are failing at school in your grades, you have a big project that you want to do and you don't have enough resources to pull it off. It doesn't have to be an illness at all. It can be any of those things or many many more. Any of those things show that you are not in balance. So, you can ask other people to pray for you. That means that you are reaching out for that balancing stick. You can ask people that you know, from your church, your family, total strangers and you can call one of these prayer lines. All of that is good and it works.
There is one important person I haven't mentioned yet: yourself. How do you pray for yourself? Now we no longer have two people on the balance line. You are on the tightrope by yourself. Maybe you have asked all of these other people already and you are still out of balance.
What do you do? Where does the balance beam come from? The power of God is what is going to help. You can ask for people to help you and they are extending their own personal balance beam, but it is only going to work if the power of God is in it. So when you grab a hold of someone else's balance beam. Someone else has helped and lets say the problem is a mortgage and you are about to lose your house and someone is offering you money. If you are taking that, you are not relying on God necessarily. Is that going to fix it? Maybe and maybe not. Realizing the higher power, I know there are groups they call them 12 step programs, they keep calling it a higher power. That is exactly what it is because you of your own power are out of balance. You have got to get help from somewhere or someone else. Yes, God will work through those around you, but God will also work with you directly.
Now, how do you do a prayer? What are the elements of a prayer for healing for yourself? Now I am going to tell you that these 12 step people got on to this a little bit. The very first thing is you realize that you have a problem. You realize you are out of balance. Now when you look closer, you might find, even though you are about to lose your house because the bank is going to repossess it, you have also been fired from your job and your girlfriend broke up with you. This is a pattern, not just one thing. If you continue on, it would then show up in your body as arthritis, overweight, or stress or all kinds of things. Your car could break down or run out of gas because you don't have enough money. So you realize that you have a problem.
This takes a lot of humility. And it takes a realization that this is beyond my control. I have done what I can, nothing has gotten better, it has gotten actually worse. Now they are coming to evict me out of my house because the bank has repossessed it. It has gone from bad to worse with all of these other things going on. As you have seen, problems come in clouds like mosquitoes. They usually don't come singly. You may have had people come to help you. Some people have prayed and some have helped you out with loans. Some people may have helped you out with other things, like getting gas for your car.
Now is the key part, and that is the higher power. This is what we are talking about with those 12 step groups. To have the higher power, this is the point at which you acknowledge God. Unfortunately, it takes harsh lessons for some people to acknowledge that there is a God and that you need God. This is the second acknowledgment. First that there is a God and then that I need God.
Now that you have done this, it is time to lay these problems at God's feet. Now is not the time to stop trying. Now is the time to have something you may not have had and that is hope. Hope is based on trusting God that God is indeed going to act in your behalf. Not only are you going to be able to grasp the balance beam, but there will be power in it. It is not going to fall to the floor with you, you are going to grab hold of it and it is going to stabilize you first of all. And then it is going to pull you up. Stabilize, which means stop the wiggling and jiggling. You drove your trailer here during bad winds. That was very difficult. This kind of driving is a lot easier in a line without wavering.
So first we stabilize through hope, and then we move forward through trust or faith. To trust two people: God and yourself. To trust yourself to do the right thing because there will be little tests along the way. We have just entered school. Healing is a school. The healing is teaching you how to be better by doing things God's way. It is up to you to figure out what God's way is and doing that to the best of your abilities.
So this is not a one time thing. “Oh God please let me stay in my house! Let them not repossess it!” and then you go on about life without making a single change. No, that ain't it. That did not work because you didn't go through all of this process. Healing is a process. Actually, health, let us not say healing but health is a process of being in balance. Yes, you are on a tightrope, sometimes you are on a wall, or a dance floor. Things change, situations change, people, change, God is the same. That is your mystery. One of the great mysteries of the universe is that everything is changing and God is the same. Who and what is the creation? It is God! I think God is having fun, don't you? [sometimes] oh, I believe he is. At times we are amusing and at times we are tragic. So healing prayer, for yourself, which is far more difficult than praying for someone else because you think you can fix someone else.
For yourself, I have a problem, I acknowledge I have a problem and that it is out of my control, the things that I have done to fix it haven't worked and possibly made it worse. There is a higher power. I can approach this higher power and ask for help. I trust this higher power will help me, is helping me. And accepting it [this help] that is hope and faith together. Think of them as twin little angels coming along with you: hope and faith. In your darkest darkest hour when things are the very worst, those are the two you want with you: hope and faith. I can think of a third little girl angel for you, I call her Gracie, because in Spanish, gracias means thank you = Gracie. Her name means Thank you, God.
Because even if things are going horribly and they have taken your house and your car is out of gas and it won't matter as they are repossessing that too. It has gone from bad to worse. Even after you have asked! Maybe God is just clearing all of that out. God is going to give you a better job, better living quarters, a much nicer vehicle, and a family to be in that house with you. Maybe more than just work. Maybe a career that you can feel good that you are making the world a better place in what you do for a living. Your job is making the world a better place, like a super hero. How nice would that be? All of those things are out there, possible. It takes a little looking first at yourself and saying, I don't have what it takes completely. Things are beyond my control, from outside that I am not expecting that have happened and I have sought for resources in other people and it has only gotten worse. What do I do? There is a higher power.
Higher power is so impersonal. Isn't it nicer when you are reaching out to the balance beam to get your sense of balance knowing the power of God is in there, wouldn't it be nice to know that God is at the other end of the balance beam, and that God is a real person that cares about you and wants to work together with you? Wants to assist you and bring you up to a higher standard so you can do even more than you have been doing? Make you a better person? You can become the potential that is within you, like a good teacher in school that sees the potential in you and maybe is a little bit harder on you than everyone else to bring you up to a higher level than everyone else in the class. You don't call the teacher, oh great one, you call him Mr. Davis or her Miss Jones. After you have graduated, maybe you keep your mentor relationship going. Now you can call him Mr John or her Miss Phyllis. You become even closer.
As you work with God, because you don't just say a prayer just once, it is part of living. Part of living and being healthy is to pray and converse with God who is the higher power. But also who is your balance, mentor, teacher, provider, one who trains you up and gives you opportunities that you must do. Praying is a way of life, a way of health, a way of sharing.
As you become a better person, holding the balance beam and recognizing at the far end, it becomes shorter and shorter, closer and closer, every time you pray and interact.
You are now capable of putting the balance beam out to more and more people around you. People that cannot see God can see other people. Those who are desperate will see God in certain people. This is why we have some of them on television. These people speak well and they are charismatic. They teach about God and a person that is desperate and doesn't have any friends can look into that box and see and hear and begin to believe, have a little bit of faith. Once they open, God will send them a real live person that is not in the box. They can start being with and working with them. As you heal, as you have help, balance, you are now capable of being God's balance beam for someone else. Maybe not for a person, it might be a horse, a project at a school, an invention. It doesn't have to be another person, God will use you to bring health, life, creation.
Just think of my friends the frogs. They have thousands of eggs every spring. Maybe hundreds of babies that actually make it. Think of your prayer as an egg. Think of the answer as a tadpole. Because not every prayer will seem to be answered. Just keep them coming! What would spring be without frogs? The earth is unhealthy without frogs. Frogs are necessary for the environment. They also provide a bit of humor. So keep the eggs coming, look for the tadpoles and when you have got a tadpole by the tail, watch it grow. Watch your little prayer answered. Before you know it, that answer is going to be helping others, not just you. Every answer is desired by God to bring the greatest good to the greatest number of people. So you should not squeeze it too hard because it is not just for you. Even though you asked for it and it came to you, it is not just for you.
The idea I am sharing is health: prayer is health. It is healthy to pray, your health benefits when you pray
The health of all those around you benefit when you pray. Your health benefits when others pray for you. The whole community, back and forth.
Back to my friends the frogs: you have got a pond in the spring time. When one frog croaks, another one answers over here and another one over there. Pretty soon we have a whole symphony going. That is what prayer is like – a symphony. The more voices in the symphony, the healthier the entire community is. Because your health affects and is affected by all of those around you, whether you know them or not.
No request is too large or too small for God to handle. Only God knows what God is going to do. Only God knows the entire plan. There is a plan. One must never give up. The hope and faith and trust and don't forget Grace. That you are still alive is something to be thankful for.
