0611 WHEN THE HEALING NEVER COMES

WHEN THE HEALING NEVER COMES

You have heard the easy answers, I’m sure. Name it and claim it. Get ready for your miracle today. God’s will is to heal you, so just tell  that old Satan to go back to hell because you are receiving your healing from Jesus today.

But what if that healing doesn’t happen for you? Is it your fault, because you just don’t have enough faith? Is it because God doesn’t exist and it’s all a sham? 

Or even without the wild claims from faith healers, there’s enough disappointment from prayers that go unanswered and healings that never come, either for myself or for someone else whom I love. Why does the healing not come? Why, when the stakes are highest, do my pleadings seem to fall on deaf ears?

Sooner or later, all of us are tempted to ask the question, why me? We join with David who said, My God my God why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest.” In fact, our Lord Jesus himself quoted those same words while he hung on the cross.

The apostle Paul reveals one of those very disappointing moments in his own life. He says,

“I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.” 

Three times, Paul? You pleaded? Sounds like this was no small matter for you. A thorn in your flesh? It was from Satan, to torment you? Some wonder if it was an eye disease, or if it had to do with all those shipwrecks or flogging or stoning. In any case, it was a cause of suffering, not just of inconvenience. And yet God did not answer your pleas? Aren’t you the one who said if God is for us, who can stand against us? Why would he not respond lovingly in answer to your desperate request?

Well, unlike most of us, Paul actually heard an answer from the Lord in the silence of unanswered prayers.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” 

This might be a bit hard to decipher, but I think it will be worth it to explore what Paul is saying that he heard. He heard God tell him that his daily sustenance and his salvation in Christ (“my grace”) is enough. You don’t need a healing. You don’t need to live in comfort. You need to rely on me alone, and this “limp” of yours will help you both know and show your dependence on me. No one will be able to say, “I’d love and serve God, too, if he had blessed me the way he blessed Paul.” So his grace truly was sufficient, because that’s all he had.

And here is Paul’s conclusion and lesson learned:

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

I have heard these words juxtaposed before: when I am weak then I am strong. But I’m not sure I spent much time reflecting on it. I think Paul is saying that his tendency would be that if the sun was always shining, if God was always providing depth of insight and revelations, then Paul would inwardly be proud. He would judge others, as if their lack of faith keeps them back from becoming as powerful and blessed as Paul was. So this messenger from Satan was actually (allowed to be) sent to humble Paul, into not having easy, glib answers for others. No, Paul could not say if you follow Jesus you will be as blessed in every way as I am. He had to stand before others with an obvious flaw, but that human weakness helped Paul’s credibility when talking about the downhill side of the mountain.

And so Paul “delights” in weakness just as surely as he would have boasted in his strength. And with all understanding, Paul can say “when I am weak, then I am strong.”

May you be weak enough to be invincible in Christ Jesus today. Amen.