On His Will and Our Ill

“It’s never God’s will that you’re sick. Jesus healed everyone. Just claim that healing.”

Several times both through my original cancer journey and this latest drama, I’ve heard this. And well before my own health troubles, I’ve heard it too. Have you? Or perhaps this is what you believe?

I think it’s something we need to talk about. Because I know how I react to it emotionally, and I also know how dear friends and family have reacted to it. Personally, I always find myself thinking, “I understand your belief, and I know you’re saying this out of love and faith. I, too, believe Christ is our Healer, that He can heal anyone. But saying that He will choose to heal me if I just have faith enough is not helpful.” I’ve never said this to an individual before, because the last thing I want to do is lash out when someone’s trying to speak hope to me. But it has lingered in my mind this time.

So let’s ask the question. Does God ever will our ills?

Many people say, “Of course not! God wills only good for us!” And that is absolutely the truth…but I don’t think it’s the full picture. I don’t believe that God wants disease or illness for us, I don’t believe He sends them to us…but I do believe they are an inescapable consequence of our fallen world and that, because God in His omniscience knew this world would fall, He’s made a way not just to deliver miraculous healing in some cases, but to use our ills for His glory in ALL cases…if we let Him. 

First of all, we have examples like Job, where God did indeed will and explicitly allow Satan to bring hardship including disease onto His faithful servant. Now, God did not send the disease. But God did allow the disease. And though, yes, Job was eventually delivered from it and went on to new health and wealth and joy, we can also be certain that he still died eventually. And that would be after he spoke to God directly.

In the New Testament, we know that Paul had some undisclosed issue (most scholars I’ve read assume it was a physical ailment, though of course we can’t know for sure) that he prayed three times to be delivered from. And what did God say?

My strength is made perfect in your weakness.

We also see in the Epistles that new Christians were very confused as to why some of them were dying. Didn’t Christ’s wounds heal them? Weren’t they supposed to live forever? But they weren’t. They died like everyone else. What did that mean? Was their faith false?

Of course not, and Paul explains it all to them, making it clear that eternal life is for now given to the soul, and that the resurrection of our bodies, our flesh, will come later.

And we also need to look at the two thousand years of Church history. We know that every Christian to come before us has died. And we know that they didn’t all die from violence or martyrdom. That many–most–died of some disease or another.

So taking all of this into account, I would have to say that, questions of will aside, we all do get sick, and the majority of us die of some sickness or another. Is this God’s will? Or is it all Satan?

Questions like this feel not only tricky but dangerous. Because obviously God’s perfect will was for man not to sin, and hence not to die–EVER. Which would include no sickness. But mankind did sin and DOES sin, and so we introduced death into the world. And given that God created this world, created man, created free will, knowing all along what would happen, I think we need to accept that there is nuance to the will of God. That while He would love for us all to be perfect as Christ is perfect, imperfection is part of His working will. That includes our sin, our brokenness, and also our diseases.

Which brings us back to today. Do I believe God afflicts us with disease? No. Do I believe that God can and does still give miraculous healings? Absolutely. But I also believe that those people who receive them will go on to die, likely of some different disease, at a later time. We will all die. For many of us, we’ll be sick first. This is reality, and given that there are no 2,000-year-old people still walking around, our faith must take that into account.

For many, many Christians, living with ongoing suffering, with chronic illness, is reality too. And this is not a lack of faith. But I’ve spoken with so many suffering friends who have been told that if they just believed more, they’d be healed. And I grieve with those friends over the guilt this puts on them–a shame they do not deserve.

Because you know what? God uses our pain for His glory. When we are weak–sick, injured, dying, suffering, exhausted–He’s still at work. He is strong, and His strength can shine through us. When we are weak, we are quite often better at sharing the heart of Christ than when we are well. When we are weak, our hearts are more vulnerable to the pain of those around us.

Christ chose to suffer, after all. He could have called down the angels. He could have miraculously healed His own wounds. He could have walked through the midst of the people who came for Him, as He had done before. But He didn’t. He chose instead to be subjected to the most painful suffering humanity had been able to devise. It wasn’t disease, obviously, but it was intense agony. He suffered it for us.

I cringe every time someone says I (or someone else) just needs to claim healing because Christ healed all the sick, and if we have faith, we can claim it too…because this argument effectively says the opposite too: that if you’re sick, if you die of disease, you must not have faith enough for healing. This is dangerous, friends. This is judging people for being what humans have been since the Garden: MORTAL. This is unrealistic and hurtful to those who are already suffering. I have met quite a few people who left a church and nearly left the church because they have a chronic illness and were told they could just be healed if they believed.

Friends, there is healing beyond the physical, and that is what Christ wants for us most of all. You remember the story of the paralyzed young man who was lowered through the roof by his friends, right? Do you remember Jesus’s immediate reaction? He says, “Your sins are forgiven.” The faith of this man and his friends did not immediately garner a physical healing–Christ knew his REAL need, and that was salvation of his soul. That was what He offered first, from His heart. It was the snarky thoughts of the onlookers that spurred Him to give a visible sign, a visible healing.

I know that young man rejoiced to leap from his mat. But what do you think really gave him the most joy–use of his legs for another decade or two, or an eternity in Heaven with his Lord? 

Every week in Mass, there’s a part where the priest holds up the host and says, “Behold, the Lamb of God. Behold, He who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those called to the Supper of the Lamb.”

And the congregation answers with another Scripture, but with a single world that reflects on our own situation, every day, rather than the centurion’s. We say, “Lord, I am not worthy that You should enter under my roof. But only say the word, and my soul shall be healed.” The Scripture, of course, says servant. But we say this as a recognition that we do not come to Jesus every day, every week, to ask that a servant and friend be delivered of a fever. We come to Him every day, every week, to be delivered from the sins that plague us. It’s our souls that He heals every time we ask–fully, completely, eternally. It’s our souls that most urgently need to be cleansed from disease. 

The test of our faith is not whether or not we get sick, suffer, or die. The test of our faith is how we get sick, suffer, and die. By which I mean, how do we handle it? Do we make the best or the worst of it? Do we affix our eyes to Christ on the cross as we’re suffering, asking Him to take our pain and join it to His world-changing sacrifice, or do we complain about everything and cling to despair instead of hope?

Because yes, the world is watching. And while a miraculous healing might win hearts…so does God-lent strength amidst our trials. God can be glorified through our healing, but He can also be glorified through our suffering.

In this world, we will get sick. And whether or not our Lord chooses to heal us, our part is to cling to Him through it. Our testimony is not whether or not we are healed this side of Heaven–our testimony is whether or not we’re pointing to Heaven through it.

A friend recently reminded me of a passage from the little freebie I make available to newsletter subscribers, The Heart of His Brother. This is just a chapter that’s part of the Secrets of the Isles series, about the older brother of the Tremayne siblings who we never meet in the books because he’s already passed away, but whose memory and legacy is a very real part of Oliver and Beth’s story and even has a profound effect on Bram, hero of book three, who is a visitor to the Isles. Morgan was always plagued by disease and always knew he would die young. But he chose to live life in a way that made every moment count. My friend quoted this passage to me, and I think Morgan’s reflections here sum up my own beliefs rather well (and this was written years ago, well before any of my own health struggles):

“This infirmity, whatever it is,” he’d said to Beth, “is not from God. But He will use it. He will redeem it. He made me to be as strong as Oliver, and though my body betrayed that, He will perfect me in some other way, if I let him. For everything I cannot do, there’s something I can, that I’ve only discovered because of my limitations. And if I fail to do that, if I wallow in the ‘not’ instead—well, that’s my own fault, isn’t it? The Lord made me to praise Him. If I can’t do it with a leap, then I’ll do it with a shout.”

We should never stop praying for and believing in miracles. I absolutely, one hundred percent, believe that God can and still does deliver those miraculous healings. How can I not?

He’s already given me the most miraculous healing of all. He’s already forgiven my sins, taking my dying soul and restoring it to perfect life in Him. My body? He can heal that too. But if He doesn’t, then I will trust. I will trust that He can work more glory through pain and disease than He could through miraculous physical healing. I will trust that there’s still something I need to learn about Him that I can only learn here. I will trust that a healing received in Heaven is no less real, no less miraculous, no less beautiful than one given on earth. And I’ll know that I will see that there because He’s already granted that MORE important healing.

Pray for healing, friends. Always. But also remember that healing is never perfected this side of heaven. Lazarus went on to die a second time–bodily. But that is no cause for despair. Remember the words that Jesus told Martha outside that tomb:

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live,  and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25, ESV. Emphasis my own.)

Do we believe this? Do we believe that, though these earthly bodies fail for now, in the way that matters most, WE SHALL LIVE? That day, Jesus raised Lazarus bodily from the grave. In another day, He’ll raise us bodily from the grave. It doesn’t matter if we were already sick and died. It doesn’t matter if we stink or have decomposed entirely, if our bones have been burned to ashes even.

When the Word that created the very universe says, “Come forth!” that’s exactly what we’ll do.

Because the only death that matters is death of the soul–and if we believe in Him, that’s the death we will never taste. The only healing that ultimately matters is healing of the soul–and if we believe in Him, that’s the healing that we can know. Every day. Every hour. Every minute.

So to my friends with chronic illness; to my friends with terminal disease; to my friends who suffer every day in a body that has betrayed that perfect vision, know this. You are already healed. And healing of the soul…that takes far more faith than healing of the body. That is the work that only God Himself can do. Physicians can stitch these limbs back together, perform surgery, do such amazing things to prolong physical life.

But the Great Physician is the only one who can give that most miraculous healing of all–the healing that makes us ready for eternity.

I don’t know if my cancer will ever spread, if it’ll come back again someday, if I’ll die of disease eventually or something else entirely, if it’ll happen in a year or a decade or a century. But I do know this.

I am already healed.