UNBELIEVING BELIEVERS

-Dedicated to the People of Southern  Kaduna, Nigeria.

EPISODE 9.  HELERINA DIED!

"Sorry about that!" Helerina added soberly, "some things are just thorns in the flesh."

"No, become the beginning of the difference in your sickling family." Kanbul steamed into her. "Don't make this sickling pain look like a spiritual appendage or something destined to be borne in your body as the mark of Christ."


"Okay," she shrugged, "Paul, though his handkerchiefs and aprons were healing the sick, he was still given a thorn in his flesh and grace was sufficient for him. God's strength was made perfect in his weakness, so?"

"Did you know Paul in the same Second Corinthians 12 you just paraphrased said, 'For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me.'? Paul had sought three times, maybe 'steadfast seeking' was his own way of knocking, but he sought three times after asking for his healing before tagging it a torn.

"How many a time we just label diseases in our flesh thorns without asking, seeking or knocking for healing from God!" Kanbul lamented.

"I was born into this," she insisted. "It's even more than a thorn in my flesh! It's deep seated in my -"

"Things you should have been healed of, you have made thorn in your flesh," Kanbul interrupted her as his anger flared. "It's God who decides if they are thorns, not you Hele!"

"Anyway, not sure I can be healed of this, it's been way too long. Did I tell you I've been living without a spleen?" Her revelations drew Kanbul's ire as he wondered speechlessly at her unyielding unbelief.

"The disease ate it up," she continued as she flinched in pains, "Our Family Doctor even said the painkillers are killing my kidneys too. But at least, I'm sure the pain wanes once I take my pill before it waxes again. This pain, I've accepted it's my own cross!"

"Thorns, now cross? Oh! You have even shaped the thorn into a cross or is it both now? Given, I mean given to you by who, Christ?"

"Didn't Jesus say, 'take up your cross and follow me'? You forgot crown of thorns laid his head the same day he carried our cross! It's my daily cross of shame Kanbul, different strokes for different folks!"

"Of anyone coming to Christ or after him, yes He said, '...take up your cross...,' " Kanbul took a break and sat on a stool. "Yet he said, 'take my yoke upon you...', meaning there's an exchange of his own cross that is now yours after he carried yours to Calvary. Not the same laborious, heavy load you brought to him at salvation."

"What? Ugh!" She shuddered on her bed.

"What He meant is lay down that which made you labored and heavily laden, and take up my own yoke which is light as your own cross."

"You mean Jesus can't be asking me to take up what I haven't laid down as my cross!"

"It's obvious dear, that you haven't laid down a thing yet in order to pick up the cross. You're still heavily laden, carrying your old yoke. You haven't even began to carry the cross."

"So, Pastor Kanbul," she said slighting him, "how do I know the difference now?"

"This one on you is heavy, Jesus' yoke for you is light and gives rest, so isn't this one heavy?"

"Sure it is! But you know when you carry a heavy load for years, for such a long time as my age, it becomes light!"

"Hele, if it's heavy, it's a weight besetting you. Jesus said, my yoke is light, the yoke of the cross is light because it's a finished work.

"Not our muscle lifting work of righteousness which is just a form of godliness, too much forming that has denied the power of healing."

"Kanbul, don't tell me that! Is it because I haven't told you I have lost count of healing services I attended? See, I've prayed, fasted till it ended up in crisis. If it's about work, I worked in God's house, untill the pain can't make me stand for ushering. Most times I still usher on analgesics."

"Good work! But that's still the work of our righteousness."

"No Kanbul! This one is working as a laborer in God's vineyard," she yelled with tears streaming down her cheeks. As Kanbul attempted to wipe her tears, she took the chance to snap a tablet and swallowed without water.

"What!" Kanbul shrunk and kept the remaining analgesic away.

"I need two more of that, for the drug to work, you can't know how it fee-"

"Back to work," Kanbul broke in, "We are to Labour into rest that Christ promised to give us when he said 'come unto me all you that Labour and are heavily laden', not work that ends in pains. Personally, just before Yersinar's healing, God told me that I'd been seen by the world to be carrying the cross but I was actually turning my back on the cross with doubts."

"What!"

"Your cross, the yoke of the cross is not carried by might or power, but by the Spirit. Lots of christians are a lot like the Levites, seen as doing the work of the cross daily but have turned themselves religiously over to unfinished crosses to be carried a lifetime.

"I don't understand that!"

"God showed me Second Chronicles 35 verse 3 that says, "And said unto the Levites that taught all Israel, which were holy unto the Lord, Put the holy ark in the house which Solomon the son of David king of Israel did build; it shall not be a burden upon your shoulders: serve now the Lord your God, and his people Israel,'

"You see," Kanbul continued, "our hands can be full of holdings, very busy with forms of godliness but no work in the direction of faith. Imagine with the loads of all my L.L.M, L.L.B, towers of theological certificates and international testimonials, I was still an unbelieving believer!"

"So, I'm not a believing believer?"

"I was just like that," Kanbul dodged her question and went on sermonizing: "see, I was like this village, there are lots of decorative cobwebs of wire poles here and there, transformers and meters but thick darkness, no electric power. When there's a lot of forming of godliness, appearing to be praying but no effectual power like I was, too much logos of the killing letters but no quickening spirited word, power is denied."

"Kanbul, just give me that drug, I'll swallow it and then I can listen to you."

"Wait a bit."

"I'm the one in pains not you. You're just talking and talking. Do you know for how long I've had to deny myself of painkillers just before the pains almost killed me?"

"That's where I'm going, that you need the work of believing and not just -"

"I know where you're going," she cut him short, "I'm a Registered Nurse with Ph.D Nursing, do you know the number of sickle cell patients, innocent babies I've seen? Marriage is not wise for us, you are AS, I'm SS."

Her utterances of doubt again dealt a crushing blow to his wistful dream of having a better-than-Mamza wife. And for the first time Helerina's beauty paled off to her frail frame. Kanbul's heart started to pivot towards Ewaloju whose voluptuous facade came to fore but somehow, he banished the intruding thoughts by excusing himself pretentiously for a moment into Helerina's rest room.

"Of course I know God can do it," her doubt-filled voice followed him "but He just won't do it. He allowed this sickle cell anaemia, and you can't  understand that these things are amino acids sequences deep written in my genes, in the bone marrow."

"And that's the unbelief I've been trying to break into," now heart-chopped Kanbul reproached her across the closed door, 'Having forgiven all your trespasses, blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross.' That's Colossians 2:4 for you.

"Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief. Read Hebrew 4:10-11. For the word of God is quick...pierces even to the dividing asunder of this your painful joints and marrow, so what?" Kanbul reacted angrily as he banged her closet lid. "God gives new genotype, new spleen, kidneys, didn't he give the man born blind a new eyes?"

"I know, but...the same God, not the devil revealed drugs for caring for this," she contested and stretched in the direction of her injectable painkiller, tipped the syringe to the floor. "I told you I pray on my drugs before use. Hasn't God even revealed my cure to science? Bone marrow transplantation, just that I can't afford it. I told you I have prayed and sometimes the pains would go off but not all the t-."

She stopped talking when she heard the sound of waters flushing, she knew he would soon be back. So, she quickly seized the moment to jab herself as Kanbul responded: "You have a kind of faith that, with God all things are possible but don't believe that to you all things are possible."

Kanbul joined her back in the room only to meet her in the worst frame of pain ever while she could barely wait for the drug to start working.

"It's not that I'm not tired being hospitalized, I sometimes inject myself and that's not ethical," she confessed but Kanbul was too engrossed with her healing to see the naked syringe on the floor.

"'For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.' So Hele, let's put in the spirited mortal quickening work of 'saying' to this mountain right now."

"Okay! I'm healed I'm healed," she said dismissively.

"Be hea-!" Kanbul was halfway declaring when he saw the analgesic syringe. "You used the injection?" He asked angrily as his skyrocketed faith bit the dust.

"Of course I did," she squealed with a niggling guilt. Now she could sit up.

"There's something called the work of obedience! "Kanbul bellowed, "simple instruction you couldn't..."

"I've  been saying, 'Im healed', 'I'm healed' even before I met you," she crooned. "But nothing happened. Mind you, my dear we are treating the disease not the pain," she added shrewdly.

"No! I don't understand that," he objected reluctantly as he tried hard to hold his nerves. "Is the pain not evidence of the dis-ease, that is 'abnormal ease'?"

"You know you are a lawyer, I'm not ready for arguments now," she answered guiltily and turned away.

"Okay, I believe you are healed still," Kanbul relaxed his voice and turned her to himself, "let's put in the work of going to do your genotype test now."

"It would still be same, Kanbul," she finally betrayed her unwavering doubt.

"Oh ooh! Now, you are making us do the test in unbelief and fear," he complained with frustration. "What I need is our faith and work together.

"Apostle told me, one can have faith and still remain lame duck. Lazy faith! Faith without the work of believing, thats why things don't work." His words got her irate that the anger welling up in her overrode her pain for a moment.

"Kanbul, don't start, not now."

"But faith is now!" He screamed standing over her, " 'now' faith is the substance of th -"

"Who told you I don't have faith that the drug would work? Some people use drug and it doesn't mix with faith in them. You don't even know if the drugs I'm just using are just placebos - dummy pills?"

"Drug is a substance but instead use faith because faith is the substance of the drug not seen, the evidence of the healing hoped for. Stop putting your faith in drugs, have faith in God."

"Whatever! Analgesic to me is just a physical substance of contact for healing like anointing oil is."

"Okay," Kanbul admitted reluctantly. "I respect your level of faith, it works too but that's for the babes in Christ. I also used to claim cheapish contentment with God. As long as bearing the illness or condition doesn't stop me from entering heaven, crumbs are okay for the starving Lazarus in me.

"I turned a blind eye to it, very fine with one eye, let dogs keep licking my unhealed wounds till death. I didn't mind a rich man's under-table on earth, wouldn't mind Abraham's bosom  afterearth, claiming austerity is contentment with God when I should be out there laying hands on the sick."

"Hmm, I understand my Kanbul," she replied softly after reflecting soberly on his faith provoking words. "You know sometimes I-"

"Hele," he cut in, "do you even desire healing?"

"Sure, who won't be?"

"Because Jesus said, 'What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.' "

"The spirit is always willing, but the flesh is weak," she loosened up a bit as the analgesic seemed to have hit just where the pains hurt the most.

"Didn't I tell you this work isn't by flexing your muscles? Paul said, 'work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.' But didn't end there, he added in the next verse, 'For it is God who works in you both to will and to do.' - God quickens your weakened mortal flesh to be willing and do the works of believing by acting. Helerina would you act in the direction of faith for once?" Kanbul went down on one bent knee.

"I direly crave a crisis free life. You know why I left Rann so fast? My steady state was almost over. I desire to be free not only from pains but also from what we called complications of this disease, I've asked and asked."

"You have to leave this level of asking and come to my level of fullness of faith that results in greater works of believing. What does the bible say in Heb 6:3?" For half a minute, Helerina squeezed her face hard enough to make Kanbul realize she was squeezing her mind too, to recall.

"Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God."

He held her by the hands, "we are leaving the Compartmentalized faith that God can do this for me but will not do that for me, mixing drug with faith for me is dead works on arrival."

"Now, you saw right through into my heart, my Pastor and I mean it this time around," she loosened up a bit.

"I have told you, I was just like you before, laid back believer. Wriggling in unbelief which only bring pains instead of believing that bring rest like Heb 3:18-19 said. Hele, you have stayed too long on this mountain, now I want you and I to start moving the mountains together. Works that help turn dead faith into believing is what you need."

"You talk too much Kanbul," she sipped some water, held on tightly to her hip and gripped her shin for yet another surge of tearing pain, almost crippling. "Arrhgrr! But why Lord? Why can't I be healed?" she asked through her window.

"At least you have began to ask the right questions like I began to ask,"  Kanbul puffed up, attempted to fan out the heat in the room with his bare hand. "Asking the right questions like the baby disciples, 'why can we not cast out this demon?'

"Because there's lingering doubt in the finished work of the cross," Kanbul answered by himself magisterially. "A dead faith in the finished work of cross need serious help! That's why the father of that boy cried out, "help my unbelief!"

While she blanked out for a while to allow what he had just said to simmer, he fired on, "Dead faith. Yes! Because it has no action or work of believing to receive the finished work of Christ as a living sacrifice. I know you have faith Christ died for you and you're crucified with him but do you really, believe he rose up?"

"Of course I do!" She rose up to his challenge with a snapping anger, and the pain came again that she pushed away the syringes tray but smartly picked a pill.

"Search yourself deep down, do you believe he rose you up with him? That he rose you up from all forms of deadness?"

Once she noticed it had become a fractious exchange, she mulled in. She felt attacked than being guided out of her doubts while Kanbul bragged on:

"Most times our faith self-bear our yokes, our faith is still mourning at Golgotha, dead or yet to accept the resurrection of Christ in our mortal body and yet to rise up from the dead works."

"See Kanbul," she couldn't hold his heat again, "I have faith Jesus rose up, that's why I'm a Christian!"

"Okay! You are seeing the risen Christ but still looking for holes in his hands like Thomas." He alleged, showed her the center of his palm and distractedly snatched the pain killer from her.

"Alright, I believe I'm healed," she said shabbily with numbing pains. And then repeatedly until she let out a pang, wrestle the pill back from him and finally put it in her mouth, taunting him as she waited to swallow it.

"Don't remain an unbelieving believer like I was, you're too moved by what you see that's why you're missing the blessings.

"The work of believing you need right now is just to look up to the author and the finisher of our faith. You are not healed because you are still looking down to drugs." His words became annoyingly bittersweet that she felt like vomiting.

"You are focusing on the pain and the bite of the snake on the ground instead of looking up to the gain of the brass snake raised on the stick." Now touched and broken to bits like mud in the hand of a potter, she spilled the pills as Kanbul won't stop:

"You are still  following symptoms and signs, that's why signs and wonders aren't following you.

"You have a faith that can move mountains but you can't just do the work of saying to the mountains without ever doubting.

"I ve tried Kanbul, I have," she winced in agony, "but this isn't just working for us, or is it familiarity or should we see Apostle?"

"To follow up with the genotype test you won't." Kanbul let out his frustration as she hurt his pride.

"I'm in the worst pain of my life, do I have to say it?" She yelled out at him at the peak of his mounted pressure.

"You choosing to remain sick is a mockery on us," He concluded.

"You are stressing me up," she reacted frigidly and rolled to the floor to see if her pains would ease.

"How does it sound outside?" he snorted regrettably, "like physician heal yourself ehn! People saying your fiancé heals but his wife-to-be has sickle cell!"

"I know it's your pride we have to save now, but I have to save my future children. They are my own pride."

For the next half an hour, a deafening silence ripped them apart until her surge of pain broke the silence. "For the last time, take me to the hospital now or I call a frr- Dr Mangu."

"It's like you've made up your mind about seeing these lesser physicians than the Great Physician," Kanbul said angrily and drove her to the Rehab Clinic in her car.

By the time Doctors attended to her, she was free of pain but lay in bed in the tempest of unbelief.

ON GOOD FRIDAY, Helerina was fourth day on admission while Kanbul waited angrily in the lobby. Then, Ewaloju rang his phone. As he was contemplating picking up, an orderly screamed that Helerina was gasping for breath.

Helerina's colleagues and Doctors swung into action while Kanbul was barred from entering. After the longest ten minutes of his life, the door slid open and it was confirmed by the Chief Medical Officer, Dr Clarke that Helerina had died.

                             ***
TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT WEEK Friday 5pm. Happy Easter.

This is a work of fiction, all Characters, names and incidences similar to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
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