I lay in my bed under the covers, sick. Sick from coming to India. Sick from my body not being used to a new country, and sick from having a host of new things to attack it. It was my third day in bed, and with no apparent reason or cause. I didn’t even feel that bad by that point, I simply wasn’t well.
Another question was on my mind: “Why did God
let the internet go out the entire time I’ve been sick so that I can’t send out an email and get prayer from our supporters?”
let the internet go out the entire time I’ve been sick so that I can’t send out an email and get prayer from our supporters?”
I don’t know.
I didn’t understand then, I don’t understand now, and I don’t think I ever will understand. Yet the questions go beyond me feeling ill from a case of India in my intestines; I want to know about God. Here are some of my reflections on sickness in a world under divine sovereignty. This is not a theological treatise, but rather a few thoughts and experiences that I’ve had from dealing with a very, very tough question.
Even though I don’t know why God didn’t heal me immediately or miraculously, I did become aware of two truths about my sickness. Maybe these will also be helpful to you when you are sick, or know someone going through a rough time, whether it be illness or tragedy.
1. God was not punishing me.
I know God wasn’t punishing me with illness, because while I was resting from illness I read about how God punishes people with disease. 2 Chronicles 21 tells the story of Jehoram King of Judah. Jehoram was one of those wicked kings who got associated with the likes of Ahab, rather than his righteous forefathers Jehoshaphat or Asa. Jehoram led the nation of Judah away from following God, and because of it, God sent him a nice little letter via the prophet Elijah informing the wicked king of what the King of Kings thought of the wickedness.
“So now the LORD is about to strike your people, your sons, your wives and everything that is yours, with a heavy blow. You yourself will be very ill with a lingering disease of the bowels, until the disease causes your bowels to come out” (2 Chronicles 21:14-15).
Yeah, I’m glad I wasn’t told that by God.
Jehoram didn’t have to wait long before God followed through. The Philistines and Arabs attacked Judah and stole everything from the king’s palace, including his sons and wives. Jehoram got sick too. Really sick. And after two years of the painful incurable disease, “his bowels came out because of the disease, and he died in great pain.”
Even though my bowels were messed up, they didn’t come out, praise the God. I shouldn’t have to argue with my friends, like Job did, that God was not punishing me for wickedness. God didn’t send me any warning letters, and I got better before my bowels painfully came out. I’m pretty sure God wasn’t using my illness as a punishment.
2. God was not unable to heal me.
Here the issue gets tricky. Why would God not heal me if He’s sovereign, if we asked Him in prayer, and if I could do more ‘ministry’ if I was up and about? I don’t know. Maybe it was to remind me that I rely on Him. Maybe it was to give me a chance to rest and to meditate on God. Even though I couldn’t “do ministry,” I could be in God’s presence while lying thoughtfully in bed.
Jesus tells us, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9, 10).
Paul’s response is simple but profound: “For when I am weak, then I am strong.” Maybe this is why I was sick—to let Christ be my only strength and to be reminded that I am not in control of this world.
The night that I was beginning to feel better, we had devotions with our host family, in which we read Psalm 41:
“Blessed is he who has regard for the weak; the LORD delivers him in times of trouble. The LORD will protect him and preserve his life; … The LORD will sustain him on his sickbed and restore him from his bed of illness.”
How fitting that we should come across this as God was healing me. Not that I am altogether righteous, but God did not plan for me to die like Jehoram, but restored me from my bed of illness. Why did He wait 3 days? I do not know. However, I do know that God was not using illness to punish me, and that in His sovereignty He is able to save me.
The Question Gets Tougher
I could have ended there, but the question of suffering is much deeper that my three day sickness. I cannot begin to address the great injustices, wars, and plagues in the world which kill and devastate thousands, but recently I questioned God as I experienced my prayers going unanswered.
Last Saturday we were in the slums, going house to house with our local friend and praying with people who wanted prayer. One father was desperate to have us come pray for his daughter Rebekah—a devout Christian and faithful prayer warrior only 38 years old, but sick in the hospital.
We prayed together and I requested God to heal her in the power of the Holy Spirit, in Jesus’ name and for the Glory of God.
But He didn’t.
Yesterday was Rebekah’s funeral. We found out that she had passed away on Monday. Not that our prayers were useless, but God chose not to answer them with a miracle of healing. “Did I not have enough faith?” I ask myself, “Did I not pray with enough zeal?” But I am not going to find answers that way.
Rebekah was surely a righteous woman who did have regard for the weak, yet the LORD in His Sovereignty did not preserve her. Do I know why? No. But I trust Him. One answer that I have heard for why the most saintly among us may pass away young is that God is relieving them of the pain and cruelty of this world. For the Christians in the world, this is a hopeful answer, but still not totally satisfying. I must take the approach of the Psalmist in praising God despite sorrow:
“Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, My Savior and my God.
(Psalm 42:5)
S.D. Gordon has said, "Prayer puts one in touch with a planet. I can as really be touching hearts for God in far away India or China through prayer as though I were there." He says further, "A man may go aside today, and shut his door, and as really spend a half hour in India for God. . .as though he were there in person." (Quiet Talks on Prayer). In other words, prayer has no space or geographical limitations. This is why Alexander Maclaren said, in speaking of the mission field, that much prayer for the cause by those at the home base means power released on the field. I'm sure the Lord has many praying for you this side of India, Kyle and Jason, and I believe His power will come in and through you to accomplish His good and will. "And this is the confidence that we have in Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us; and if we know that He hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him. (I John 5:14-15). Praying His anointing to fall over you and empower you and sustain you.
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