CHAPTER 4: HOPE AMID SERIOUS ILLNESS
I, the LORD your God, will hold your right hand,
saying to you, “Fear not, I will help you.”
As I write this chapter, I have just completed my semiannual CT scan. For nearly twenty years, I’ve been making this round-trip journey to the Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, California. It all began in 1994 when I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. I arranged to receive chemotherapy at Scripps, nearer to my home. With each passing year, the staff there has risen higher on my list of heroes.
It was on my first day at Scripps that I met Dr. Alan Saven, the oncologist. After two decades, he still examines me twice yearly. He and Dr. Charles Mason, who presided over my stem cell transplant, saved my life.
Make no mistake, to God be the glory —He and only He holds my life in His hands. But I also know that He raises up caring and gifted people to apply their skills as God’s agents in delivering His gift of health. I’m so grateful for these talented specialists, and I let them know it in every way I can.
I won’t recount all the details of my bout with cancer. You can find them in my book When Your World Falls Apart. But here in this book about hope in the face of fear, I can’t help but revisit those memories. People know I’m a pastor, and they know my thoughts on spiritual issues. Therefore they want to know whether I was afraid as I struggled with cancer. I’m more than happy to answer that question, but I must warn you that it may be difficult for you to truly understand what I’m saying. Cancer is one of those subjects that can’t be comprehended secondhand. It’s larger than life; it carries such powerful implications that it changes a person forever. Whenever I open the door at Scripps, the feelings come flooding back, even though I’ve had consistently good reports for two decades. The good news never quite washes out the memory and emotions of those uncertain times. So was I afraid? Is it fear that comes creeping back even now? Here’s what I wrote in that previous book:
Absolutely! I was desperately afraid. There’s no disputing that. Was I afraid to die? No. I’m not afraid to leave this life, although I’m not eager to do so either. A good bit of my fear focused on losing precious years with the people I love. Some of it was simply about pain. Some of it was about the unknown. How would you respond to the news that you were suffering from a possibly fatal disease? Imagine the thoughts and feelings that might flood your heart at such a time, and you’ll know the same things I experienced.[1]
Missionary Isobel Kuhn wrote a book entitled In the Arena, in which she explains a wonderful truth: a life filled with problems and setbacks can become a life filled with unique tools for sharing the Gospel. Every issue she faced brought one more opportunity to glorify God through the wisdom she learned.
In her final chapter, Isobel told of how she coped with breast cancer. Health became her great concern, and knowing how cancer could spread, her natural impulse was to panic —to anticipate the worst. If she coughed, it must be lung cancer. A toothache meant mouth cancer. Every minor ache or twinge was a harbinger of dire health consequences. She learned that disease is the host of fear.[2]
Eventually, however, Isobel learned that Christ overcomes every fear. That message can change the world, and it can change your life.
The Prevalence of Disease
It’s hard for us to imagine anyone living in perfect health, but Adam and Eve did. Their bodies were absolutely flawless. The very concept of disease would have been foreign to them. Their sin, of course, shattered that reality. It cost them God’s gift of perfection and corrupted the whole created order. As Paul tells us, God’s creation, now afflicted with disease and corruption, groans in agony (Romans 8:20-22). Because of Adam and Eve’s rebellion, disease is now a prevalent factor of our existence. Each of us will spend a certain portion of our lives sick, wounded, or dying.
We view sickness with revulsion and dread, and somewhere in our spirits we sense that things weren’t meant to be this way. God has placed eternity in our hearts, and thus threats to life come as odious intrusions. We long for the day when the curse of sin will be lifted —“eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body” (Romans 8:23). Until then, we must cope with the inevitability of bodily corruption.
As we lose the naive sense of invulnerability of youth, we fret over aches and pains and what they may foretell. We feel anxious over the doctor’s call with a test result or the look on his face as he walks into the room. We panic over a strange feeling in the chest or a lump where none should be. These are basic, primal fears. Death does its work in increments: the erosion of teeth, the growing inflexibility of limbs, the dulling of the senses. There are only so many ways to do maintenance work on the human body. We jog, we work out, we eat right, and then, as comedian Redd Foxx put it, someday we lie down in a hospital, “dying of nothing.”
The diversity of the human body allows many points of entry for the grim reaper. According to the Federal Centers for Disease Control, the leading causes of death by disease in the United States are (in descending order) heart disease, cancer, respiratory diseases, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, kidney disease, and pneumonia.[3]
Not only do diseases take a physical and an emotional toll, they take a financial one as well. The United States is the most expensive nation when it comes to treating illness.[4] In just one year, the total cost for health care was more than $3.6 trillion.[5] Because of these astronomical costs, a major medical incident can wipe out a family living on the financial edge. When our bodily health declines, so does the health of our wallets.
Disease (dis-ease) literally means “not easy” or “not at ease.” Our experiences confirm the accuracy of that definition. Disease disrupts the patterns of life, robbing us of control and forming barriers with other people. It sends us to expensive medical facilities where we place our fate in the hands of strangers. It builds our dependence on mystifying medications. Commercials for these medicines show happy, healthy people who don’t seem to have a care in the world. But at the end of the ad, the announcer lists ominous side effects in a hushed voice and with the speed of an auctioneer on steroids.
Hospitals are not fun places. They’re a conglomeration of needles, tubes, monitors, pills, thermometers, call buttons, and bedpans —not to mention the total absence of modesty and privacy.
We all fear disease, yet one or more will eventually catch up with each of us. Maybe you’re battling an illness right now. Maybe it’s just around the next corner, or perhaps someone dear to you is fighting desperately for his or her health. Disease is prevalent and inevitable, but how we understand it makes a great difference. It’s no surprise that the Bible has a great deal to say about disease and how people coped with it.
Prominent Biblical Examples of Disease
I’ve never preached a sermon series on “Diseased Characters from the Bible,” nor has any pastor I know. But there would be a wealth of material to mine. For example:
- Paul and his “thorn in the flesh,” which may have been a physical illness (2 Corinthians 12:7)
- Job sitting in his ash heap, covered with boils (Job 2:7-8)
- Lazarus, a young man with a terminal illness (John 11:1-4)
- The woman with the issue of blood (Mark 5:25-29)
- Naaman and his leprosy (2 Kings 5:1)
- King David and the “evil disease” that clung to him (Psalm 41:8)
- King Asa and his foot disease (1 Kings 15:23)
- King Jehoram and his diseased intestines (2 Chronicles 21:15)
- Christ’s Galilean friends with “all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease” (Matthew 4:23)
- Epaphroditus, who was “sick almost unto death” (Philippians 2:26-27)
- Dorcas, who fell sick, died, and was raised from death by Peter (Acts 9:36-41)
As we read of people in Scripture who suffered with various diseases, we recognize the same emotions we feel today. One compelling example is Hezekiah, a king of Judah. Let’s look first at his life, and then we’ll explore his approach to illness. His battle with disease is recounted three times: in 2 Kings 20, 2 Chronicles 32, and Isaiah 38.
Hezekiah was one of Judah’s greatest kings. “He trusted in the LORD God of Israel, so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor who were before him” (2 Kings 18:5).
Hezekiah ascended the throne at the age of twenty-five and inspired a period of religious revival in which he was encouraged by Isaiah, perhaps the noblest and the most eloquent of the Hebrew prophets. Hezekiah opened the long-closed doors of the Temple in Jerusalem and began its renovation, issuing this charge to the priests and Levites: “Hear me, Levites! Now sanctify yourselves, sanctify the house of the LORD God of your fathers, and carry out the rubbish from the holy place” (2 Chronicles 29:5).
The final verses of this great chapter describe the lavish Temple consecration services and the joy of the king and his people, who felt that God was doing a great thing among them. (Reading this account makes us long for a similar revival today.) In chapter 30, we learn that God’s hand was on this nation, bringing its people together in unity and obedience under God. We find a glowing summary of Hezekiah’s reign in 2 Chronicles 31:20-21:
Hezekiah did . . . what was good and right and true before the LORD his God. And in every work that he began in the service of the house of God, in the law and in the commandment, to seek his God, he did it with all his heart. So he prospered.
It was a golden age of faith and prosperity in Judah, and all things went well for ten to fifteen years. Then, when Hezekiah turned thirty-nine, he became ill. The prophet Isaiah came to him and said, “Thus says the LORD: ‘Set your house in order, for you shall die and not live’” (Isaiah 38:1).
Painful Emotions of Disease
How would you react if you learned that your death was imminent? If a godly man like Hezekiah “wept bitterly” (Isaiah 38:3), then we can understand it’s no sin to express grief when we’re hit with terrible medical news. Hezekiah was not just a godly king; he was a godly human king. And humans naturally grieve in the face of bad news. As we follow the progress of Hezekiah’s illness, we’ll gather helpful insights into the art of managing poor health.
The Prayer
Hezekiah turned his face toward the wall, and prayed to the LORD, and said, “Remember now, O LORD, I pray, how I have walked before You in truth and with a loyal heart, and have done what is good in Your sight.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.
Hezekiah, horrified and in earnest grief, soaked his sickbed with sweat and tears. Later he wrote a memoir of his illness, which we find in Isaiah 38:10-15. The first few verses of that passage offer a vivid and wrenching picture of Hezekiah’s troubled heart. Here, in Eugene Peterson’s memorable paraphrase, are the reflections of this king upon the news of his impending death:
In the very prime of life
I have to leave.
Whatever time I have left
is spent in death’s waiting room.
No more glimpses of GOD
in the land of the living,
No more meetings with my neighbors,
no more rubbing shoulders with friends.
This body I inhabit is taken down
and packed away like a camper’s tent.
Like a weaver, I’ve rolled up the carpet of my life
as God cuts me free of the loom
And at day’s end sweeps up the scraps and pieces.
I cry for help until morning.
Like a lion, God pummels and pounds me,
relentlessly finishing me off.
I squawk like a doomed hen,
moan like a dove.
My eyes ache from looking up for help:
“Master, I’m in trouble! Get me out of this!”
But what’s the use? God Himself gave me the word.
He’s done it to me.
I can’t sleep —
I’m that upset, that troubled.
In my own memoir of illness, I shared that it took me three days simply to be capable of telling my wife the doctor’s news. On the day after my diagnosis, she was scheduled to leave town to visit her mother, and I decided not to burden her. I knew she’d immediately cancel her trip, and for what? There was no point in disturbing her until further tests were done.
So I kept my silence. I drove her to the airport the next day, watched her plane vanish into the clouds, and suddenly felt the pangs of loneliness; it was time to confront the dark jungle of my thoughts. I longed for her comfort, but it would only be a three-day wait. We met in another city where I was scheduled to speak, and that’s where I quietly told her what the doctors had said.
We wept, but not bitterly. Even at such a low moment, we knew we had our faith and we had each other. We held each other for hours as the gray dusk of a new morning gathered outside.
During my previous three days of solitary meditation, I walked in Hezekiah’s sandals. Master, I’m in trouble —get me out of this! I prayed, just as Jesus prayed for the cup to be taken from Him. But just as He set His own desires within the will of the Father (Luke 22:42), I knew what all serious Christians know: my prayers would cycle through a process that would end at the same destination: Your will, not mine, O Lord.
I’m not comparing my plight to that of the Son of God, of course. I just followed His example to the resolution I knew was inevitable. His will, I knew, is infinitely wiser than my feeble comprehension. The cycle of every anguished prayer must move from our frantic human desires to loving, trusting obedience.
Tears and prayer are understandable responses to disease, whether we’re the one afflicted or we’re grieving for a loved one. Though we can’t predict how the Lord will answer, we know the tears and prayers of His suffering people always move Him (Psalm 56:8).
The Promise
The word of the LORD came to Isaiah, saying, “Go and tell Hezekiah, ‘Thus says the LORD, the God of David your father: “I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; surely I will add to your days fifteen years.”’”
Here Hezekiah received the joyful news he was longing to hear: God would heal him. Why did God do this? Why did he heal the king and give him fifteen more years of life? In part, it was because He saw Hezekiah’s tears and was moved by compassion.
Recall the basis of Hezekiah’s prayer for healing: “Remember now, O LORD, I pray, how I have walked before You in truth and with a loyal heart, and have done what is good in Your sight” (Isaiah 38:3). Hezekiah laid out his case before God: “I’ve been faithful to You. I’ve cleansed the land of idols and restored the Temple worship. So in return, please be gracious and heal me.”
We must remember, however, that no matter how great a king Hezekiah was, God had no obligation to heal him. We cannot earn His favor with our works. God’s healing is about His faithfulness, not ours. Healing comes the same way salvation does —by grace: “By [the Messiah’s] stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). Healing is part of the very nature of God, and in His grace, He offers it to those who fear Him: “To you who fear My name the Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings” (Malachi 4:2).
We find another reason for Hezekiah’s healing in Isaiah 38:5: God said to the king: “Thus says the LORD, the God of David your father.” God had made a covenant with David that the throne of Judah would always go to one of David’s descendants. The reference to David in this passage is God’s reminder that He is faithful to His promises. That faithfulness was demonstrated when, three years after Hezekiah’s healing, his son Manasseh, who would be the next king, was born (2 Chronicles 33:1).
After Hezekiah was healed, God reminded him again of His faithfulness to His promise to David. He said He would defend Jerusalem against the invading Assyrians “for My own sake and for My servant David’s sake” (2 Kings 19:34).
God’s dealings with Hezekiah and his nation were part of a much bigger story than Hezekiah could see. It was also about the glory of God —as it always is —and about a promise made long ago to David. God is always good, gracious, and compassionate, and therefore He is a worthy place to put our hope.
Why does God heal us? Essentially for the same reasons He healed Hezekiah: first, because of His grace and compassion, and second, for the sake of Jesus Christ —a son of David. Like Hezekiah’s story, ours also is part of a much greater one that we cannot yet see.
The Prescription
Isaiah had said, “Let them take a lump of figs, and apply it as a poultice on the boil, and he shall recover.”
Hezekiah’s fatal disease stemmed from a boil somewhere on his body. We can probably assume it had become infected and was leaching poison into his system. God gave Isaiah directions for healing, which were to be passed on to the court physicians attending the king.
The prescription was a poultice (or paste) made of crushed figs to be applied to the boil. It’s not likely that today’s physicians would think of using pharmaceutical figs, which might be seen as alternative or herbal medicine. It’s more likely they would lance and drain the boil, then administer an antibiotic.
You might wonder why God bothered to use the court physicians at all. Why not heal Hezekiah through a simple miracle? But God has a habit of using people, their gifts, and their resources to carry out His plans. In fact, we were created to be God’s deputies, doing His work on earth (Genesis 1:28). As C. S. Lewis said, God “seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures.”[6] Clearly, God used doctors and prescriptions in Hezekiah’s time just as He does now.
In 1994, doctors treated my lymphoma with chemotherapy. When the lymphoma returned in 1998, I received a stem cell transplant. That’s the scientific part of the story. But behind the scenes, a great many people were praying for my recovery. That’s the faith part of the story.
This raises a question. How much of my healing should be credited to medicine, and how much to prayer? We can’t know, but it really makes little difference: either way, healing comes from above. We are the ones who draw distinctions between the natural and the supernatural. All of it is God’s realm. I simply feel blessed to have both available to me —friends on praying knees as well as doctors with skilled hands.
One positive aspect of medical solutions is that they get us involved. Becoming active agents of God in our own healing process builds our faith by giving us hope. Following the recommendations of my caring and committed doctors was a powerful encouragement to me. I have complete faith that God led me to those specific doctors, and I thank God for them every day.
When we face a serious disease, the first thing we should do is talk to God. Ask Him for guidance, and then take advantage of the best medical assistance available, as Hezekiah did. Ultimately, our God is Jehovah-Rophe —“the LORD who heals you” (Exodus 15:26) —whether He heals us with a miracle, with medicines, or in the world to come.
The Praise
Hezekiah’s memoir of his experience with disease continues in Isaiah 38:17-20, where he records a testimony of praise to the God who healed him:
It was for my own peace
That I had great bitterness;
But You have lovingly delivered my soul from the pit of corruption,
For you have cast all my sins behind Your back. . . .
The LORD was ready to save me;
Therefore we will sing my songs with stringed instruments
All the days of our life, in the house of the LORD.
Hezekiah gave all the credit to God for the miracle of healing. I can’t read his memoir without being reminded of this psalm:
Bless the LORD, O my soul;
And all that is within me, bless His holy name!
Bless the LORD, O my soul,
And forget not all His benefits:
Who forgives all your iniquities,
Who heals all your diseases.
This passage reminds us that upon recovering from illness, our first order of business should be to praise God. Some people never think of such a thing; they pray in the time of peril and quickly forget God when they are healed. Do you see a lack of consistency here —or worse, a lack of gratitude? If we pray for healing, why wouldn’t we thank God when healing comes?
Are some illnesses so small and insignificant that we shouldn’t bother God with them? Absolutely not! It’s common for people to thank God when they’ve experienced a close brush with death, as in a barely missed traffic collision, but far too few of us praise Him after getting over the flu or a migraine headache. If we can pray over serious illnesses, why shouldn’t we pray over all illnesses? Nothing that hurts us is too small for His concern.
In fact, Scripture teaches us to pray not just about our health, but about everything (1 Thessalonians 5:17; Philippians 4:6-7). If we pray about everything, shouldn’t we also praise God in everything (1 Thessalonians 5:18)? It’s fairly simple. When can we pray? All the time. When should we praise God? Whenever we pray.
The Problem
Hezekiah did not repay according to the favor shown him, for his heart was lifted up; therefore wrath was looming over him and over Judah and Jerusalem.
Unfortunately, Hezekiah’s medical adventure has a tragic epilogue. After all God had done for him, after the gift of fifteen precious years added to his life span, Hezekiah lost favor with God. How did this happen? His miraculous recovery caused him to lose his near-death humility.
As the heat died down on his problems, so did his passion for God. Rather than living humbly before his Lord, his heart began to swell with pride. And he became obsessed with wealth, looking not to God but to goods.
Hezekiah’s pride in his wealth led him to make the political mistake of showing off his treasury and armory to envoys from Babylon, the empire that would later defeat his nation (Isaiah 39). The king of Babylon had sent his representatives to Hezekiah, supposedly to pay their respects during his convalescence. Their true motive, however, was to curry Hezekiah’s favor toward a mutual alliance against a common enemy: Assyria. This wasn’t on God’s agenda.
In Hezekiah’s prideful strength and overconfidence, he failed to consult the Lord on these developments, and he confided state secrets to his visitors: “There was nothing in his house or in all his dominion that Hezekiah did not show them” (Isaiah 39:2). His new “allies” took careful note.
Isaiah’s heart was grieved when he heard of the king’s foolhardy actions. The prophet foretold God’s judgment on the nation (Isaiah 39:3-7), which later came to pass when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and escorted the people of Judah into seventy years of captivity. They easily looted the treasury and the Temple because they knew where all the wealth was stored. Hezekiah, who had blessed his people by turning their hearts toward God, ultimately failed them just as deeply.
When Hezekiah died, his son, Manasseh, became king at age twelve and completely reversed all the good his father had done. For half a century, Manasseh left a trail of blood, violence, idolatry, and even sorcery through his reign. His father had lovingly cleansed the Temple; the son desecrated it with a carved image of a false god. The result of his evil leadership was military invasion and the blood of children sacrificed at pagan altars. The kingdom of Judah was on the slippery slope from which it would not recover.
God had His reasons for healing Hezekiah, even though He knew the future. Yet we can’t help but observe that sometimes everyone is better off when God says no. The nation paid an exorbitant price for those fifteen extra years of Hezekiah’s life. As the psalmist reminds us, be careful what you pray for; you might just get it:
He gave them their request,
But sent leanness into their soul.
Our problem is that our perspective doesn’t extend much further than our noses, while God’s perspective is infinite. We only know that we hurt, and we want it to stop. But if we could see how our suffering fits into God’s perspective, we would realize there are things worse than our present darkness. Illness may be a necessary cog in the divine plan to bring about some good. Sometimes it is only through pain that we become who God wants us to be.
Charles H. Spurgeon, in his wry way, once declared, “I daresay the greatest earthly blessing that God can give to any of us is health, with the exception of sickness.”[7]
Instead of quickly pleading for deliverance, we might more wisely ask God about the purpose of our sufferings. How can I grow through this, Lord? We please Him deeply when we pray as Jesus did: “Nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done” (Luke 22:42).
Practical Encouragements When Facing Disease
If a sadder but wiser Hezekiah could join us for questions and answers today, what advice might he give that would help us deal with disease? Let me suggest five possibilities.
Center Your Mind
God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
The human imagination is a powerful force that can create beautiful visions of a desirable future or conjure up every worst-case scenario. These dark products of the imagination can put us in the grip of fear —a place God would never have us go. As this Scripture verse shows, the power that banishes fear is a sound mind.
We maintain a sound mind by “bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). Paul wrote those words when false apostles in Corinth were spreading lies about his ministry. When a thought that is not from God enters our heads (“I’m sick; I’m going to die!”), we examine it in light of “the knowledge of God” (verse 5). Does this thought have any basis in reality? If not, we take it captive. No longer can it run free and lead our imaginations away from God’s goodness and into unhealthy fear.
When Isobel Kuhn was fighting cancer, she realized that the real enemy was something too deep for the surgeon’s scalpel. It lay in the invisible world of her imagination. She wrote,
I had to refuse to allow my imagination to play with my future. That future, I believe, is ordered of God, and no man can guess it. For me to let myself imagine how or when the end would come was not only unprofitable, it was definitely harmful, so I had to bring my thoughts into captivity that they might not dishonor Christ.[8]
How different would your life be if you could simply take your thoughts captive for Christ? How much better would you sleep at night? How much happier and less anxious would you be? How much more joyful would friends find you?
Gaining a sound and centered mind is not as difficult as you think. If we simply read the Scriptures deeply, thoughtfully, and openly every day, we will invite the Holy Spirit to whisper new strength into our thoughts. He and He alone can tame the reckless power of the human mind. A mind centered on the truth of God is the key to being sustained and not losing heart.
Count Your Blessings
In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
What would you think if you opened your Bible to Ephesians 1 and read, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, when we are well and healthy, has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (verse 3)?
You probably know that the italicized words I inserted in that verse are nowhere to be found in Ephesians or anywhere else in the Bible. God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ —period! Whether we are strong or weak, sound of body or wracked with pain, we are blessed. “From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another” (John 1:16, NIV).
You may wonder how in the midst of debilitating illness we can possibly feel blessed. It’s not a matter just of feeling blessed, as if it is something we must conjure up from our imaginations; it is a matter of seeing the enormous blessings that are truly there. In her book Gold by Moonlight, Amy Carmichael compares living with pain and disease to a hike through a rugged terrain. Even a bleak landscape, she observes, has cheering surprises, like “bright flowers of the edelweiss waiting to be gathered among the rough rocks of difficult circumstances.”[9]
In times of sickness, our blessings become clearer, richer, and more meaningful. Something therapeutic happens deep in our hearts when we count those blessings. We can rejoice in the prayers of our friends, in a note from a loved one, in the compassionate care of a conscientious nurse, in the smile of a doctor, in the verse of a hymn that comes to mind, in a neighbor who mows the lawn, in a Bible verse that shows up at just the right time, in a prescription that lessens our pain, in a column of sunlight that cuts through the window of the room, in the intricate design of a flower in a nearby vase, or in the innocence and cheer of a grandchild who visits us. In sickness, our focus sharpens, and our perception of what’s truly important narrows to exclude the peripheral values that clutter our lives when good health keeps us too busy to appreciate the simple blessings, which are often the best ones.
Training ourselves to spot these “wildflowers in the wilderness” is the secret to learning to “count it all joy” (James 1:2). This may not be easy, but it is essential to maintaining our spiritual and attitudinal health. It frees us from the tyranny of being limited to a deteriorating physical frame. It’s liberating to realize that disease does not define who we are —that we are more than our aches and pains.
Illness also leads us to shift our focus in another way —from the earthly to the heavenly. This is a vital shift that can play an important part in our eventual healing.
Dr. Ed Dobson was senior pastor of Calvary Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, when he was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) —a degenerative and terminal illness. For several years he tried to maintain his pastoral ministry with the earnest support of his church. When it became obvious that he couldn’t continue, he stepped out of his pastoral role with great reluctance.
But nothing could stop Ed from continuing to bless the Lord in all things and to develop the disciplines of praise and personal worship. Ed and his oldest son had once taken a course in Judaism at a local synagogue, where they’d learned the traditional Jewish blessing that begins, “Blessed are you God our God, King of the universe. . . .” Dobson wrote,
In the midst of my disease, I began blessing God for all the gifts of life. I use this official formula (I learned to do it in Hebrew), and I bless God for each day. I bless God for the ability to shower and clothe myself. I bless God for the ability to button buttons. I bless God for the ability to lift food to my mouth even though I can no longer do it with my right hand. I bless God for everything I can do and for every gift that comes from Him.[10]
It is always good spiritual arithmetic. If we ask God for a calm, thankful heart that sees all the blessings His grace imparts, He can teach us many lessons in illness that can never be learned in health. As the old Puritan preacher Thomas Watson put it, “A sick-bed often teaches more than a sermon.”[11]
The Bible doesn’t say we have to be thankful for all things, like the pain and discomfort of illness. But it does say we should give thanks in all things —including illness: “In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18, KJV). Be thankful that even your sickness gives you an opportunity to glorify God.
Continue Your Work
We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
Many Christians know how God saved them —by grace through faith —but not all know why God saved them: “for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). And as the great NBA star and Hall of Famer Jerry West once said, “You can’t get much done in life if you only work on the days when you feel good.”
As long as we’re on this earth, there is work we can do. Even when we can’t walk in the body, we can walk in the Spirit. On his deathbed, the prophet Elisha continued to counsel Joash, the king of Israel (2 Kings 13:14). History is filled with examples of saints who served God as long as body and breath would allow.
As Isobel Kuhn battled cancer, she discovered that staying busy was good medicine for her. Though largely confined to bed, she drew up a daily schedule that fit within the limits of her strength. She worked on her book, engaged in a ministry of prayer, read, studied, and rejoiced in letters and cards that came from all over the world.
When she lacked the strength even for these activities, she wrote, “Sound health and a normal life I cannot have while on this platform. Therefore I accept the fact and do not fret about it.”[12]
Isobel Kuhn passed away on March 20, 1957, full of faith and joy. “Facing the end of one’s earthly pilgrimage is not a melancholy thing for a Christian,” she wrote. “It is like preparation for the most exciting journey of all. . . . And so the platform of a dreaded disease becomes but a springboard for heaven.”[13]
The Englishman John Pounds (1766–1839) is another example of someone who faced illness faithfully. He was a tall, muscular, teenage laborer at the docks of Portsmouth who fell from the top of a ship’s mast.
When workers reached him, he was nothing but a mass of broken bones. For two years he lay in bed as his bones healed crookedly. His pain never ceased. Out of boredom, he began to read the Bible.
Eventually, John crawled from bed, hoping to find something he could do with his life. A shoemaker hired him, and day after day, John sat at his cobbler’s bench, a Bible open on his lap. Soon he was born again through faith in Christ. John gathered enough money to purchase his own little shoe shop, where he developed a pair of orthopedic boots for his crippled nephew. Soon he was making corrective shoes for other children, and his cobbler’s shop became a miniature children’s hospital.
As John’s burden for children grew, he began feeding homeless children, teaching them to read and telling them about the Lord. His shop became known as “the Ragged School.” John often limped around the waterfront with food in his pocket, looking for more children to tend. John Pounds rescued five hundred children from despair and led every one of them to Christ. His work became so famous that a Ragged School movement swept England. In John’s honor, Parliament passed a series of laws to establish schools for poor children —boys’ homes, girls’ homes, day schools, and evening schools. All had Bible classes in which thousands heard the Gospel.
John collapsed and died on New Year’s Day in 1839 while tending a boy’s ulcerated foot. He was buried in a churchyard on High Street. All of England mourned, and in the church was hung a tablet that reads, “Thou shalt be blessed, for they could not recompense thee.”[14]
What might John Pounds have become had he not been severely injured? We don’t know. But we do know what he became in spite of his injury —or perhaps because of it. It’s an inspiring reminder that our afflictions and limitations don’t mean God is finished with us. The weaker we become, the more God’s grace is multiplied (2 Corinthians 12:9). Going through a rough patch often equips us for further service. It also allows us to empathize with and minister to people who otherwise would never have crossed our paths.
We would discard suffering as a vile thing, but God wastes nothing. In His hands, suffering becomes the means for miracles. He will open new doors of witness, and His strength will shine through our weaknesses.
Claim Your Promises
[Jesus said,] “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
I said earlier that healing has a dual purpose —our good and God’s glory. Jesus went a step further when He said that even death can glorify God.
Perhaps the greatest truth in the entire Bible as it relates to sickness among Christians comes from the words of Jesus in John 11:4. His friend Lazarus was ill and went on to die, and when Jesus arrived, His friend had been in the tomb four days. But Jesus didn’t say that Lazarus’s sickness wouldn’t include death. He said that it wouldn’t end in death. It would provide instead an occasion for God to be glorified.
Because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we must cling with hope to the promise that, although our illnesses may include death, they will not end in death; we, too, will be resurrected. Armed with this truth, we can see how God can glorify Himself even through disease. And when we are faced with life-threatening sickness, our fear can be replaced by a determination to glorify the One who “works all things according to the counsel of His will” (Ephesians 1:11).
Consider Your Future
I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.
Suppose you won a free trip around the world for you and a loved one. It included first-class accommodations at five-star hotels, private planes, lavish gifts, and personal tours. (See how powerful the imagination is?) But suppose as you opened the envelope containing the tickets, you suffered a paper cut on the end of your finger. You might say to your companion, “Oh, I cut my finger!” You’d grimace for about half a second before grinning from ear to ear and saying, “Who cares? We’re about to take the trip of a lifetime!”
I would say nothing to trivialize disease; I know the misery of it firsthand. But according to Paul, and from the perspective of our eternal God, the sufferings of this present world are less than a paper cut in relation to the glory yet to be revealed to us.
Although Christ has conquered sin and death, the effects of both linger. But only temporarily. Disease must be accepted, but only for now —and always with the knowledge that its master, death itself, no longer has power over us. If this life were all we had, then cancer and every other life-threatening illness would truly be tragic. But because death’s prison doors have been destroyed, death can no longer hold us captive. This is why Paul says, “To live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). We look forward to our new resurrection bodies, perfect and free from all defects. As Paul explains, Christ will “transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself” (Philippians 3:21).
It would be nice to be healed here and now, as Lazarus and Hezekiah were. But if not, we’ll simply be healed later. Every one of us who belongs to Jesus Christ holds a Lazarus coupon. What Jesus did for him, God will do for us. The big difference is that our restored lives will be eternally free from further disease. “God will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).
Dr. Jonathan Thigpen, former president of the Evangelical Training Association, was forty-five years old when he began having some muscular disorders. The diagnosis was the same as that of Ed Dobson —ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. This disease is debilitating and terminal: it has no known cause or cure.
Thigpen describes the chilling fear he felt after learning of his diagnosis: “I remember walking out of the doctor’s office in Carol Stream, Illinois, and deep in the pit of my stomach there was a feeling of overwhelming fear. . . . It felt like I was being hugged by something so dark and so horrible that I can’t describe it.”[15]
Then an old, familiar voice echoed through his memory —the voice of his father, Dr. Charles Thigpen, reading the words of Psalm 46:
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear,
Even though the earth be removed,
And though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;
Though its waters roar and be troubled,
Though the mountains shake with its swelling.
Many times Jonathan had tagged along as his dad visited hospital patients and read those soothing and powerful words. Now it was his own soul that was soothed. As he reached his car, the dark clouds overshadowing his spirit began to dissipate. God was still in control —he knew it for a certainty. Jonathan didn’t have any answers, but he knew that “fear cannot stand in the face of a faith and a God who does not change. My fear had left.”[16]
Jonathan took hold of Psalm 46 as so many of us often do with particular Scripture passages that hold remarkable power just when we need it. In the months that followed, Jonathan’s spirit was willing but his flesh was increasingly weak as he traveled the country sharing those words about his refuge and his strength, the help he had found to be very present in his time of trouble. Once again, Christ claimed victory in the face of what had seemed a meaningless misfortune.
A Puritan preacher once wrote, “Sickness, when sanctified, teaches us four things: the vanity of the world, the vileness of sin, the helplessness of man and the preciousness of Christ.”[17] The last of those, I submit, overpowers the emptiness of the others. If heaven is what lies ahead for us, what can we possibly complain about?
Instead, think of the best: we have a Great Physician who raised His own Son from the dead, leaving behind an empty tomb. We have a heavenly home with welcoming doors opened wide. We have a sympathetic Savior who never imparts a spirit of fear but a spirit of power, love, and a sound mind. To understand that is to enjoy a spiritual health that overcomes the darkest days that disease can inflict.