(Full disclosure: I love to recommend resources to help you in your journey, and when I do I use Amazon affiliate links. If you purchase something through my links, I may receive a small commission. But if there’s a resource you want, I encourage you to get it wherever works best for you!)
Sometimes, when I pick up a book, I intend it to be just a prayer room book. This one, Undefiled Access by Elizabeth Flora-Swick, spilled out of the prayer room and I found myself reading it in the break room, in the lobby, in my kitchen, and on my back porch.
Elizabeth is the quadruplet sister of one of my best friends from IHOPU, Rachel (Schulze, who now serves as base director of OneEleven Global with her husband Blake). I was excited to read this not only because Elizabeth is my friend’s sister, but after meeting her a couple of times and hearing about her for years, I knew “Lizzie” to be brilliant, highly educated, and passionate.
Elizabeth is a fervent lover of the Holy Spirit and all His gifts, including healing. Also, she was born with cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, giving her a unique perspective of two worlds that often don’t quite know what to do with each other. The charismatic world often sees people with disabilities as merely “pending miracles,” as she says (pages 5, 152, 158), and this attitude understandably doesn’t engender much trust or warm fuzzies from the disability community. This book was written to “heal the worldview divide” between these two groups.
Personally, what struck me most was Elizabeth’s candor about her sweet, vibrant, intimate relationship with Jesus. She could write an entire book about only that and I would read it eagerly. He has been her nearest friend (I love how she writes about the nicknames and inside jokes they share- read chapter 3 for how many disciples God says it takes to change a lightbulb!), and she is determined to take full advantage of her blood-bought “undefiled access” into His heart as He tenderly cares for her and she returns that love as much as He enables her. Really, Jesus is the star of this book, and His beautiful goodness shines in every chapter.
As you might expect, Elizabeth is quite aware of the tension between her full faith in Jesus’ ability to heal and her current lack of physical healing. She’s very vulnerable about that tension and all of the times she’s asked for healing, but it seems that she settled something in her heart long ago. She chooses to love and trust no matter what, and to put her faith in the unshakable truth of His character rather than hanging it all on whether or not she is healed. Some of the sweetest meditations are in chapter 2, “Lovesick for the Bleeding Healer”, in which Elizabeth ponders the physical pain Jesus endured in the crucifixion, and finds herself drawn to love Him lavishly in response.
“I know exactly where I was when I understood crucifixion meant death by slow asphyxiation our to not being able to exhale. At that moment, I realized Jesus knew what it felt like to not be able to breathe, and we shared this experience… Jesus is more intimately acquainted with muscle spasms, nerve pain, and restricted joints from six-plus hours of his life than I have ever been in all of mine.”
(Undefiled Access, pages 43-44)“My endgame is to make the cross sweet for Jesus, to be as good to him as he enables me to be… [this] means choosing intimacy, obedience, and surrender to the fullest extent possible… It means remaining loyal at cost. Believing God heals supernaturally and choosing to trust his character in that are matters of great, personal loyalty to me.”
(Undefiled Access, page 51)
With this joyful, intimate lifetime of experience with God’s goodness as her backdrop, Elizabeth moves forward into addressing the history of division and hurt between the charismatic church and the disability community. With remarkable grace and humility, she illuminates the stigma that disabled people have experienced, often being made to feel that they are worth less, their lives are pitiable or not worth living, or they are dehumanized and reduced to a condition. This has understandably caused mistrust against Christians who see a disability and immediately think only “Gotta get that person healed” rather than “What would best show God’s love in this moment?”
Elizabeth comments on a book by Amy Kenny called My Body Is Not a Prayer Request:
“[Kenny] says, ‘I wish prayerful perpetrators were free from the lie that I am worth less because my body works differently.’ Ah, there’s the wound. What should I do? I’m the hateful prayerful perpetrator. The one who supposedly spits upon Kenny’s value by denying disability is anyone’s identity. I’m the backward charismatic who needs to repent of my internalized ableism… If I come close, should I rip her wounds open with my theology? I have the knowledge to discredit the disability identity worldview from the Scripture, but of what use is my knowledge if I cannot reach my sister’s heart.”
(Undefiled Access, page 99)
Of course, Paul said the same thing in 1 Corinthians 13:
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.”
(1 Corinthians 13:1-2)
Elizabeth herself has been on the receiving end of many well-meaning, insensitive prayer times at the hands of her fellow charismatic Christians. She shares a number of those stories, and the sting of them bleeds through the page. Even as she has learned to have grace for the misunderstandings she faces, she longs for a time when the church could learn to let love rule their interactions, rather than their eagerness for a miracle. She writes with tender, humble boldness as she spends several chapters challenging the charismatic church on a number of our harmful tendencies:
- using disabled people as simply “inspiration” or a reminder of humility for abled people
- reducing disabled people to a wheelchair that needs to get healed, like the conference that used the image of a stick person standing up from a wheelchair in its marketing
- assuming that disabled people come to a service only for healing, rather than to encounter God’s presence like everyone else
- violating boundaries by praying without asking, shouting, telling a person in a wheelchair to stand, etc.
- hyping up healing in a conference atmosphere and turning people with disabilities into guinea pigs
- telling people they must not want their healing enough, or don’t have enough faith, or are in agreement with a spirit of infirmity
Really, the solution to all of these come down to a few simple core principles: Love. Consideration. Humility. Seeing the image of God. Elizabeth reminds us, “Certainly, signs and wonders follow the sharing of the gospel. But we are not to be distinctive by our power, but by our love.” (page 165)
In her final few chapters, Elizabeth offers suggestions on how a church’s space and culture can best honor and provide accessibility for people with a variety of disabilities. She holds up the example of Jesus’ healings in the gospels and calls us to emulate His tender, personal love and care as He interacts with each person.
I am so grateful for this book and for Elizabeth’s courage and vulnerability in sharing her story and wisdom. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been provoked and encouraged by Elizabeth’s reminder of the full access we have to His heart by the Holy Spirit, and the intimate communion He longs to have with us. I’ve also been challenged to carry God’s heart in the forefront of my own whenever I have the opportunity to pray for healing– and to remember that praying for healing doesn’t always need to be the immediate priority.
The tagline on the back cover says, “Supernatural ministry is supposed to be as good as God’s beautiful heart.” I am praying that God will use this book to lead many into a deeper love for Him and for those He loves, as we partner with the Holy Spirit to see foretastes of His kingdom manifest on the earth.
You can get Undefiled Access on Amazon, and you can follow Elizabeth’s journey at elizabethfloraswick.com.