Winter 2007Emily Martin
We’re used to the teaching that when you break the rules, here are the consequences. For example, in my house we had rules, and if I broke the rules, I knew for how long I would be grounded. That’s how most people are raised.
Last year when I was in Mexico, I suffered with asthma really bad because of all the pollution in the air. When I came home, I was really sick with asthma all through the winter. I came to Tierra Nueva and saw people being healed, but I didn’t ask God to heal my asthma, because I got asthma from smoking marijuana for so many years—I thought it was my punishment from God. I smoked weed for all those years, and so now I thought I had to live with asthma, because that was just the obvious consequence.
I never felt I could ask God to heal my asthma, because obviously it was a punishment for having done something I knew was wrong.
Then one Sunday at the Tierra Nueva worship service, Bob was telling stories about guys in the jail who had gotten in fights and broken their hands, and God healed their hands anyway. So I thought I would ask God to heal my asthma. That Sunday, there were so many people in the service who needed prayer for healing that Bob said we should all put our hand on whatever part of our body needed healing, and he would lead us in a prayer. I put my hand on my chest, and we prayed as a group.
Later, I realized that I could go outside in the cold air and still breathe. I played soccer at night with some of the guys from Tierra Nueva, and I was fine. Then I went to Oaxaca over the summer where the air pollution is really bad—protesters were burning busses and tires—but I was fine. When we went to Mexico City, the air pollution turned my eyes red, but I didn’t cough hardly at all.
Now I don’t have asthma. I learned that there are consequences, but that’s not the same thing as punishment, because God’s not about punishment.
