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Sickness and Suffering Explained

It is Gods Job to Heal, it is Your Job to Trust

Getting Closer to Jesus: Suffering—where does it originate? When someone gets sick, contracts a disease, or is born with a disability, is that the result of personal sin—either theirs or their parents? Has the devil inflicted the suffering upon them? Did God cause it? When we, or the people we love, are forced to endure suffering, we get quite passionate about finding answers to those questions.

What Jesus said was that not all sickness and suffering is the result of a specific sin. However, in a general sense, because we live in a world broken by sin, bad stuff that was not a part of God’s original plan for human beings now happens. And to be sure, the Bible does teach that I can bring some physical suffering on myself. If I do not follow God’s principles, my body will experience the consequences. If I do not eat right, sleep enough, and exercise regularly—which is a sin since my body is a temple of the Holy Spirit—then I should not be surprised when my body reacts with infirmity. If I do not listen when God’s Word says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but pray about everything” and I worry a lot—which is a sin—if I get an ulcer, then I am to blame. If resentment builds in my spirit—which is a sin, since I am not to allow bitterness to take root and defile me—then the doctors say that what is eating me will not only eat away at my mental health, but it will also take bite out of my physical health.

So, when it comes to suffering and sickness, for sure, I need to pay attention to the sin-factor in my life. When sin is at the root, then James says that confession and prayer is the appropriate response to my suffering:

Are any of you suffering hardships? You should pray. Are any of you happy? You should sing praises. Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed any sins, you will be forgiven. Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. (James 5:13-16, NLT)

However, not all suffering is the result of specific personal sin. Jesus blew that idea out of the water here in John 9 when he talked about the man born blind and cleared up the notion that the blindness was the result of neither his nor his parents’ sin. Sometimes God permits suffering in your life simply because He wants to heal you and let it be a testimony to the world. John 11:4 tells the story of Lazarus, who was sick and near death. In that case, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.”

Now God doesn’t heal every sickness; if he did, none of us would ever die and go to heaven. But for sickness that is within the Lord’s will to heal, James 5:14 says that we are to do a couple of things: One, we are to take the initiative and summon the spiritual leaders of the church, and two, we are to have those elders anoint us with oil and pray.

This prayer for healing is to be done “in the name of the Lord.” The “name” represents Christ’s authority, which is the basis for all healing. When we offer prayer for healing under these conditions and in that manner, James says, “Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well.” (James 5:15, NLT)

God is the healer, not the person praying. Let’s never forget that! In this age of flamboyant faith healers, sometimes you get the idea that it is their ability and spirituality that gets the job done. It is not; God alone deserves the credit.

That brings us back to what Jesus said about suffering and sickness: Sometimes it is not the result of sin. It is simply so that God’s power and glory can be revealed in the restoration!

Never forget, it is your job to trust—no matter what, no matter how long. It is God’s job to heal now, later, or in the age to come.

Take the Next Step : If you are suffering from an illness, study James 5:13-18 and follow what it says. And memorize Jeremiah 30:17, “‘I will restore you to health and heal your wounds,’ declares the Lord.” That is a pretty good promise to claim, wouldn’t you say? And, in the in-between time of praying and healing, no matter how long that takes, trust!

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A Forced Choice

Take or Leave It—Jesus Claimed to Be God

Getting Closer to Jesus: There were many reasons, I suppose, the Jews wanted to kill Jesus: They were jealous of his popularity with the people. They hated that he didn’t defer to their spiritual authority and were put off that he wasn’t impressed by their religious heritage. They were irked that he ministered to marginalized people, hung out with the wrong crowd, operated outside the lines of Jewish protocol, and a thousand other things that he did, or didn’t do, that bugged the daylights out of them. In general, the genuine authority and real power that Jesus displayed in his life and ministry exposed the spiritual impotence of these Jewish elites, which in turn, brought out fierce insecurities displayed in their childish opposition and irrational hatred of the Lord.

But the main reason their hatred turned murderous? It wasn’t that Jesus sort of acted like God. It wasn’t that he beat around the bush about his deity. It wasn’t that he made some veiled and esoteric claim about Messiahship. No—he flat-out claimed to be God.

That is why they wanted to kill him. In fact, Jesus committed the ultimate faux pas by using the revered designation for God that no god-fearing Jew would utter so causally and irreverently: “I AM!” Are you kidding me: “Before Abraham was, I Am!” What was he thinking? Saying that about yourself in that culture could get you killed.

Of course, Jesus knew that. In fact, his bold claim would get him killed. Jesus didn’t care—he was God come in the flesh, and he wasn’t going to back away from that claim one inch. That is why he came, and that is precisely what he claimed—no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

When you consider that claim Jesus purposely made about himself, you are forced to eliminate all the other nice-sounding, politically correct things people say they believe about him. In other words, Jesus cannot be just a good teacher, just a great moral leader, just a respected prophet, just a great figure of history. With Jesus, you have to eliminate “just” from your vocabulary. Jesus left the Jews with no other option, and he doesn’t leave you with another option either. As C.S. Lewis said,

[With Jesus] you must make a choice. Either He was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman, or something worse. You can shut Him up as a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that option open to us. He did not intend to.

I am sure glad the Great I Am forced that choice on me! How about you?

Take the Next Step : Jesus! You got to do something with him. You’ve got to love him or hate him…but you really can’t live with anything in between and live an intellectually honest life. So, be honest—where do you line up with Jesus? I hope you go with what he claimed—and proved—about himself.

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Enjoy Your New Time Zone

Be Totally Aware and Completely Submitted to God’s Timetable

Getting Closer to Jesus: Twice, we are told in John 7 and 8 that the Jewish leaders, increasingly threatened by Jesus, tried to arrest him but couldn’t. The reason they couldn’t? Because Jesus’s time had not yet come!

Several times in John, Jesus reveals his total awareness and complete submission to God’s timetable. In John 2:4, Jesus tells his mother, who is insisting that he perform the miracle of turning water into wine, that this is not the right for him to “go public” with his ministry. In John 12:23 and 27, Jesus reveals to his disciples that he will be crucified as a part of God’s redemptive plan for mankind. He is grappling with that reality as a man (his own suffering and death) and as deity (taking into himself the world’s sin), but at the end of the day, he is willing to submit to the beautiful but awful reality of dying on the cross—because the hour—the perfect time—has come. In John 13:1, Jesus reveals his perfect love to his disciples by washing their feet, knowing that the hour of his arrest and crucifixion was at hand. Speaking of which, in John 17:1, Jesus realizes the weightiness of God’s hour—the ultimate triumph of Divine life over death through the cross—is now upon him, so he offers his moving “high priestly” prayer that we have come to know and love.

We may think time marches on, unimpeded by fate, uncontrolled by human planning or Divine intervention, but Jesus had a different view of time. And why not, as the Word, the creative agent of the Holy Trinity, he had created time and gifted it to the Father as servant to his eternal plan. Jesus knew that time was in God’s wise and loving hands—every day, every hour, and every split second!

A man named David had also come into that revelation. In Psalm 139, King David wrote, “Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.” (Psalm 139:16) David knew and relied upon this immutable truth that Jesus was depending on, that God knew the exact number of days that David would live, and he would not die a day sooner nor live a day longer than what God had foreordained. And for David, nothing could change that—not betrayal, not war, not poverty, not disease—nothing. God alone held that power over David’s life and foreknew the hour of David’s death.

That’s why David and Jesus found this world a perfectly safe place. That’s why even in the midst of his crisis, they could calmly walk into the storm, courageously walk into battle, and fearlessly face the angel of death—circumstances that would cause ordinary humans to lose heart—because they knew it was the Lord who was sustaining them.

When you understand that your life—your days, your hours, your life—is in the sovereign hand of God, you just think that way; you just live your life that way. Time—your time—is servant to the Master’s plan.

Arthur W. Pink wrote, “A consciousness of our powerlessness should cast us upon Him who has all power. Here then is where a vision and view of God’s sovereignty helps, for it reveals His sufficiency and shows us our insufficiency.”

Yes, God is sovereign, and he has infinitely large hands—big enough to hold everything that exists. And like Jesus and David, your life is there in his hands too. You know that…or maybe you don’t. But even if you don’t, that truth remains firm, and because of the saving faith that you have expressed in Jesus Christ, your address has permanently changed to God’s hands.

It’s high time you start enjoying your new time zone.

Take the Next Step : Memorize Psalm 139:16. Every day this week, when you are tempted to worry over your life, quote that verse to your worries.

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Not Guilty

A Grace Grenade

Getting Closer to Jesus: If I were writing this story instead of John, the scene would have called for Jesus to order down fire from heaven to torch this nasty bunch of teachers of religion who had brought the adulterous woman before the Lord. At the very least, I would have had Jesus snatching the poor lady from their grasp and beaming over to Galilee to set her free. That would have made a great story—Oscar-worthy, I’m sure!

But as we have come to expect of Jesus, he does the unexpected. Instead of special effects and edge-of-your-seat drama, he simply stoops over and writes in the sand. Do you ever wonder what he wrote? “Jesus was here,” or perhaps he traced out the Ten Commandments, or better yet, a list of the religious elites’ secret sins or maybe even the names of their mistresses?

Whatever it was, the religious “KGB” kept pressing until finally, he said, “Look, if any of you are without sin, you can be the first one to throw a stone at her.” Then he began to scribble again, and with those words, Jesus lobbed a grenade into their midst that exploded their smug self-righteousness. Having been disarmed, one by one the Pharisees, from the oldest to the youngest, walked away, leaving only Jesus and this sinful woman.

Now what would happen to the adulterous woman? Could she expect to get preached at again, some more condemnation, another helping of humiliation, and a pile of rejection? That had been the pattern of her life so far. But instead, Jesus gently asks, “Where are your accusers? Has no one judged you guilty?”

She replied, “Sir, they’re gone…they didn’t judge me guilty.”

Then Jesus lobbed another grenade—this one a grace grenade that utterly exploded this sinful woman’s self-condemnation and turned her sad world right side up, perhaps for the first time ever: “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.”

So just what was it that Jesus wrote in the sand? I think it is highly likely that he bent over and with his finger, etched these words: “Not guilty!”

A few weeks later, Jesus again wrote those very same words in the sand. This time, it was not with his finger but with blood that dripped from his nail-pierced hands and feet, leaving an indelible stain on the ground at the foot of the cross. This time it wasn’t just meant for an adulterous woman, it was meant for unfaithful, guilty people like you and me:

“Not Guilty. Paid in full. Completely forgiven.”

I don’t know what that grace explosion does for you, but it makes me want to “go and sin no more.”

Take the Next Step : Have you thanked the Lord lately for his grace—grace that has covered all of your sins? Perhaps now would be a great time to do that. And maybe today would be a great day to extend his grace to another undeserving sinner like you.

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Grace

Every Saint Has a Past, But Every Sinner Has a Future

Getting Closer to Jesus: In one of my favorite books, What’s So Amazing About Grace, Philip Yancey writes,

Grace means there’s nothing we can do to make God love us more—no amount of spiritual calisthenics and renunciations, no amount of knowledge gained from seminaries, no amount of crusading on behalf of righteous causes. And grace means there’s nothing we can do to make God love us less—no amount of racism, pride, pornography, adultery or even murder. Grace means that God already loves us as much as an infinite God can possibly love.

That’s why I love this story of the adulterous woman’s life-transforming encounter with Jesus; it just exudes grace! And it reminds me of how God looks right into what Lewis Smedes called this, “glob of unworthiness that is me and offers to accept me, own me, hold me, affirm me, and never let go of me even if he’s not too impressed with what he has on his hands.”

A glob of unworthiness—that’s me…you, too! And that’s God—loving us, without limit—because of his incredibly great grace! King David, who knew a lot about personal failure and unworthiness, wrote in Psalm 103:8-14,

The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love…he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we’re formed, he remembers that we’re dust.

That theology of unconditional love, undeserved mercy, and unlimited grace is what’s fleshed out here in this story in John 8. And it’s not only the message Jesus wrote with his finger as he stooped to scribble in the dirt, but he also wrote it with his blood as it dripped to the dirt from the cross. Grace is his life-message! Amazing grace, how sweet the sound! It’s the one thing that’ll touch your core need today; it’s the only thing that’ll transform our lost world.

In 1988, a concert was held in London’s Wembley Stadium, and throughout the day, bands blasted the crowd high on booze and drugs with their ear-splitting music. But for some reason, the promoters scheduled an opera singer as the closing act, Jessye Norman. At the finale, she walked out with no band or singers —unknown to the crowd, which was shouting for more Guns ‘n Roses. Jessye began to sing, “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound. That saved a wretch like me!” And remarkably, 70,000 fans got quiet.

By the second verse, “Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved”, they were putty; by the third verse, they were digging into their memories to sing along, “and grace will lead me home”. As she sang, “When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun; We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise, than when we first begun,” a transcendent reverence had enveloped the stadium.

What on earth wields that kind of power over a beleaguered psalmist, or an adulterous woman, or a stadium full of drug-addled rock-n-rollers? Grace!

Now don’t miss the point of this story: The adulterous woman reminds us that every sinner has a future, but every saint has a past. We’re all born broken, and we become whole only by the mending of grace, God’s glue. And no matter how bad, how unworthy, how disqualified you think you are, you are not beyond the renewing reach of God’s grace. That’s why prostitutes, publicans, and other sinners responded to Jesus so readily—still do. They knew their sin; that’s why forgiveness was so appealing.

And no matter how good, worthy, and qualified you think you are, apart from grace, there’s no good in you. In fact, on your best day, apart from grace, Isaiah said your righteousness is as filthy rags. (Isaiah 64:6) That’s why, as C.S. Lewis said, “[Adulterous women] are in no danger of finding their present life so satisfactory that they cannot turn to God; [it’s] the proud …the self-righteous [that] are in that danger.”

So, wherever you fall on the continuum—from super-saint to seedy sinner—just remember: every saint has a past, but every sinner has a future. And grace is there waiting for you! Grace! It’s only by grace that the brokenness we’re born with and live with is mended.

Take the Next Step Take a moment today to simply and gratefully reflect on God’s grace—if that is humanly possible.

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The Great Offer

God Is Not Just With Us, He Is Now In Us

Getting Closer to Jesus: In the beginning, God created the earth and walked upon it in unfettered intimacy with Adam and Eve. But they sinned, and the face-to-face intimacy they enjoyed was now broken. God no longer walked the earth in relationship with man.

But then Jesus came to earth to re-reveal the Father to sinful man. After centuries of his physical absence, as the prophet had said, God was now with us again, but this time in Jesus, our Immanuel. Jesus, who was the “Word”, who was with God, who was God, and who created all things that exist, now “took on human flesh and took up residence among us.” (John 1:1 & 14)

Then Jesus left earth to go back to heaven, and in the process, he promised the Father would send the Holy Spirit to be in—not just with—his followers. (John 14:16-17) The Holy Spirit would represent and further reveal God in unprecedented and unconfined ways. (John 15:26-27) He would guide into truth, comfort, and empower. He would fill Christ’s followers to full and overflowing with the abundance of God. They would experience “rivers of living water” filling them up and spilling over from their lives.

What an offer Jesus was making! What other leader could ever come close to that? Obviously, no one could match the great offer of the Holy Spirit coming to dwell, fill, and overflow the life of the believer. To have intimate fellowship with God fully restored; to have “God with us” now become “God in us,” and continually, no less; to have the guiding, comforting, empowering force of God at our disposal, permanently and profusely—this is the great offer!

So just what did Jesus mean when he referred to this as “rivers of living water” that would completely satiate the thirst of those who drank? How about this?

Satisfaction: Obviously, spiritual hunger would again, as in the beginning of creation, now be fully and forever satisfied as the Holy Spirit of God took up residence in each believer. That which Jesus promised—life more abundantly—would now become real and practical.

Significance: Not only would the Spirit satisfy, but he would enable those he indwelt with the very life force and creative power of God through supernatural gifts (1 Corinthians 12:7-11) to carry out the works, speak the words, and fulfill the will of the Heavenly Father. Through the Holy Spirit, believers could now be used to do things previously only God could do.

Success: To know (“the Spirit will reveal and guide you into all truth” — 1 Corinthians 2:10; John 16:13) and do (“you will receive power after the Holy Spirit comes upon you” — Acts 1:8) the will of God is the height of human success. God with us is now God in us doing through us what only God can do. There is no greater, more lasting, significant, and satisfying expenditure of one’s life.

That is what is possible through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. That is, indeed, the great offer!

Wise leaders should have known that the human heart cannot exist in a vacuum. If Christians are forbidden to enjoy the wine of the Spirit they will turn to the wine of the flesh….Christ died for our hearts and the Holy Spirit wants to come and satisfy them.

Take the Next Step John 20:21-24 tells us that after his resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples and said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” If you would like to be inundated with the life force of the Holy Spirit, make this bold request of God: “Spirit of God, breathe new life into me!”

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A Baptism of Clear Seeing

We Must Learn To Balance Truth and Grace

Getting Closer to Jesus: People were making judgments about Jesus, and as we see in John 7, increasingly, those judgments were not very positive. In fact, opposition and outright hostility were coming to a boiling point, and it would soon lead to his death.

That is the way it was with Jesus—still is. In his day, people either loved him or hated him—there was no neutral ground. Being around Jesus demanded a position on one end of the spectrum or the other. But staying in the middle was not an option.

To arrive at an opinion of Jesus, a judgment had to be made. Sadly, those who rejected him formed judgments that were not based in righteousness and truth. Their judgments were based on the fact that Jesus had made them uncomfortable. He had challenged their traditions. His ministry had colored outside the lines of established theology. His way of doing things didn’t look like theirs. Why, he even had the audacity to actually heal someone in dire need on the Sabbath—and they didn’t like that one bit (even though, as Jesus pointed out, their outrage was pretty selective on this one).

Never one to shy away from controversy and confrontation, Jesus challenged their attitudes toward him as well as their approach to life in general. He called them to reject this judgment-by-appearance mindset that was keeping them from seeing God for a clearer view of life as seen through the lens of righteousness. Learning to make righteous judgments would make all the difference in their world—it would lead them to see God in the daily details of their world, and in the end, it would lead to eternal life.

Unfortunately, most of the people in Jesus’ day rejected what he had to say. But the story is not meant to end there. Jesus’ challenge to “judge with righteous judgment” (NIV) or to “look beneath the surface” (NLT) calls us to reexamine the way we arrive at the opinions we hold and honestly ask ourselves whether they are based on appearance, built on preference, colored by pre-conceptions, or rooted in righteousness.

We form judgments and opinions every day—perhaps every hour—about the people we encounter, the events we observe, and the world we live in. Every moment of our day presents an opportunity to either see the work that God is doing in the people around us and events that encounter us or to miss it entirely. Depending on how we form our judgments, we will either embrace God’s work or, like the people in Jesus’ day, reject it and miss out on the greatness of God in the daily ordinariness of life.

Open your heart—God is at work all around you. Open your eyes—you will find God’s thumbprint on everything you encounter. And if you will learn to root your opinions, conclusions and attitudes in righteousness rather than mere appearance, you will discover Jesus in the details of your day!

Take the Next Step Let me suggest that you offer this prayer: “Father, help me to practice your presence in the daily ordinariness of my life. Teach me to make righteous judgments so that I experience you in every person I meet, every event I take in, every plan I execute, and in every detail of my world.”