'My mind has run through exactly the same thoughts about a million times.
Here’s where I’m at:
I’ve come to believe that God’s sovereignty means that He plans ALL things to bring glory to Jesus. ALL things. I believe that He gives diseases to accomplish that.
I find it very odd hearing myself say that. Because for a very long time I didn’t believe it.
For the longest time, I was just plain confused. But during 6 weeks traveling around the States, finishing up at the Passion2010 Conference, He gave me answers that apart from the light of His grace, I would never have been able to see as His truth. As His beautiful truth.
I agree that He is Lord over diseases. But that was not the reason He came to earth. I know you know that, I guess what I’m saying is that He didn’t heal all the sick people – out of the multitudes by the pool, He chose to heal just one. I acknowledge that He is able to heal all – but if He will be more glorified if a person is kept sick, I believe He is committed to His glory. And what I’ve realised is that His glory is my good. His glory is what I was wired to worship, and it is in His glory that I find my deepest satisfaction and joy. It’s in Him, more than physical comfort or painlessness.
He is my delight; not health.
I understand what you’re saying. Like, I really do. And I’m constantly torn in two.
But I don’t think Jesus died for our healing. I think He died to free us to worship Him, to magnify the glory of His grace.
I worship a God-centred God. Not a man-centred God.
And that is my ultimate good. It really, truly is.
I’m 20, and for 5 years I’ve had a Parkinsonian condition called hemidystonia; I haven’t been able to use my right side. Sure, it sucks. But giving us diseases isn’t undermining Jesus’ work on the cross; far from it!
I know that for me, my condition has hurtled me closer to the foot of the Cross than if I had never been sick. And although I believe that He is my Father who will make me well, I know that He wants my good more than He wants my comfort; and I trust Him with that. I trust Him that what He has worked out for my life will glorify Him more than what I would have planned for myself. And more than anything, I want my life to reflect the face of Jesus into the darkness of the world. If being sick does that more effectively and more brightly than being well; bring it on.
I just finished Piper’s book ‘A sweet and bitter providence’. I found it so clear, beautiful and full of much needed truth.
‘I learned He never gives a thorn without this added grace,
He takes the thorn to pin aside the veil which hides His face.’
- Martha Nicholson
I still believe that Jesus has power to heal, and that we should wait on Him, ascribing Him the glory of being all to us (to paraphrase Andrew Murray). But I believe that as we see in the next chapter of John, when Jesus feeds the multitudes, we see that He is frustrated when they see Him as merely USEFUL for satisfying their unregenerate cravings. More than anything, I want to crave HIM. More than healing. More than calm seas, I want His presence. I want HIM. I want all my delight to be in Him. All of my hope. All of my strength.
Being sick helps keep my gaze on Him. Being dis-abled removes so many distractions. Not all of them; self-pity and desire for comfort are struggles.
But, gosh.
‘One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to GAZE upon the beauty of the LORD, to seek Him in His temple.’
He has made me whole. He might heal me physically in this life; and I will wait on Him in faith for that. But I refuse to believe that God did not plan my sickness. Because that means He was not in control of it. Instead, He planned it out.
Praise Him for it.'
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