Two
Two
God and Healing: What’s the Real Question?
There is a war going on. All talk of a Christian’s right to live luxuriously “as a child of the King” in this atmosphere sounds hollow—especially since the King himself is stripped for battle.
—John Piper
In the first and second decades of my paralysis, there were seasons during which my yearning for complete healing and a return to life-as-it-was gripped my heart. It’s not that those desires have gone away in this, my fifth decade in a wheelchair; it has more to do with a change in my perspective.
In the first place, any concept of “normal” is now something so long ago and far away that it seems more like a distant dream. A pleasant dream, yes, but one that has gradually, gently faded through the years, like a well-loved snapshot in an old photo album. After forty-plus years of quadriplegia, it’s hard to say what a normal life for me would be.
For another thing, as I have mentioned, I find myself in a whole new phase of the battle. It’s not so much the wistful disappointments or occasional frustrations I’m dealing with now, it’s the seemingly ceaseless attacks—wave after wave after wave of throbbing in my lower back and hip. Now when I think of “healing,” it’s more in the form of asking my Father for relief from the intensity of the suffering rather than the ability to pick a flower, ride a horse, or dance across a field of clover.
Relief from chronic pain—even though I remain paralyzed—would be blissfully, peacefully, joyously “normal” for me these days … and all I could ask for. I don’t remember where I saw the following Mary Jane Iron quote, but it comes pretty close to my take on “normal”:
Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are.… Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in my pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return.
That’s my take on normal.
Come to think of it, I’m not even a “normal” quad. I have now exceeded the expected lifespan of a person with my level of injury and paralysis. The bare, unadorned fact is this: Many people in my condition simply don’t live as long as I have lived. So my thoughts haven’t been so much on picking up the old life on my feet I left behind in 1967, as much as stepping into the new life and body that await me.
Longings? Yes, my heart is as filled with longing as it was when I was in my twenties, yearning for the simple pleasures of a body that works the way it was intended. But now I am much closer to my new body of the Joni-that-will-be than I am to the healthy young woman’s body of the Joni-that-was, injured in that diving accident.
Oh … and what will be is far, far better than what was.
My desires have settled in on heaven and the immediate presence of my Lord Jesus. And why not? The Bible says I’m already a citizen of heaven; I don’t need to update my passport or fill out any forms or change of address cards. The Bible says I’m already raised with Christ, seated with Him in heaven; I won’t have to “find my place” when I get there because my place has already been reserved. It’s “an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for [me].” Hooray for 1 Peter 1:4!
The Bible says that Jesus has, in His Father’s house, prepared a room for me where I can see Him every day. I won’t need MapQuest directions to find some lonely, heavenly mansion on a back street of some distant planet.
As with those men and women in the book of Hebrews who were trying to deal with persecution and the loss of so many precious earthly things, I am “longing for a better country—a heavenly one” (Heb. 11:16). And I have the firm assurance (you have no idea how firm, and how assuring) that God “has prepared a city for [me].”
What a city it will be! If you take the description of New Jerusalem in the book of Revelation quite literally rather than symbolically (I do, but suit yourself), it will be like a huge, radiant, translucent, impossibly beautiful cube floating over New Earth, measuring fifteen hundred miles in each direction and flashing like a great diamond in an ocean of light. And I can say with confidence that there won’t be one wheelchair ramp or set of instructions in Braille or handicapped parking space in the whole city! In fact, if there’s a fifteen-hundred-mile spiral staircase from the lowest level to the top, I’m going to run it every morning—before breakfast! (Can you even imagine? Around and around, never tiring, racing with the angels, bathed in colors beyond the spectrum, climbing from glory to glory!)
So when I think of physical healing for myself, it isn’t in the same way I once considered it and longed for it.
Nevertheless, I’ve had to deal with those questions all of my life. We at Joni and Friends answer countless phone calls and letters and emails and spend many hours counseling with people for whom physical healing is very, very much something uppermost in their minds.
In the few pages of this brief chapter I’d like to land on what I consider to be the central question about miraculous healing. The way I see it, the question has never really been “Can God heal?”
Of course He can.
Everyone who believes in God will acknowledge that. This is the mighty One, the all-powerful Creator and sustainer of the universe, whose arm “is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear” (Isa. 59:1). And our Lord Jesus, who solemnly pledged never to leave us or forsake us, didn’t lose any of His love or compassion or healing power when He left earth to ascend to His Father. Yes, our great and magnificent God can heal anyone, anywhere, at any time, of any affliction.
Period.
End of sentence.
Nor is the question, “Does God heal today, in the twenty-first century?” Absolutely, He does. Every time you bounce back from the flu or heal from a surgery, that’s God performing His Psalm 103:3 thing; no matter what kind of illness or disease we may rise above, it’s His power that’s accomplished it. Besides, how absurd it would be to say that He somehow went out of the miracle business after the last page of the book of Acts. Who can deny the reports of miraculous healing among God’s children from every corner of the globe? What’s more, who would want to? I have a God who certainly intervenes in all sorts of impossible situations in today’s world, doing those things that only He can do to accomplish His purposes. There are far too many in our very midst who have experienced such miraculous healings for us to peremptorily write them off. Many such testimonies come from people who are mature in the faith and blessed with godly wisdom—and many are from the field of medicine itself.
No, miracles did not suddenly disappear after the apostolic age. However, we need to remember that miracles also were God’s way of “authenticating” the true ministry of genuine apostles during the early days of the church. (There really were an awful lot of phony apostles running around back then!) The apostle Paul claimed that the church was able to know he was for real, and not phony, because of his lifestyle and “the things that mark an apostle—signs, wonders and miracles” (2 Cor. 12:12). So I have to bring a little balance to this point about miracles happening whole-scale nowadays. Wonders of healing were God’s way of spotlighting those men that He raised up to begin and lead the church. And those men healed the sick big time!
The Real Question
But that was then. Nowadays, the real question, of course, is not whether God can heal or does heal; it is whether or not God wills to heal all those who truly come to Him in faith. In other words, is it always a given that He will say yes to our requests for healing? Is it a sure thing, a slam-dunk that miraculous healing is always His first and best option?
Some assert that very thing and insist that if you aren’t experiencing this healing, it’s only because you lack the necessary faith or perhaps have some hidden sin in your life. Others still insist that, no, miraculous healing belonged to another era, and we ought not to expect or even seek such divine intervention.
Let me state my answer to the question—the real question—in just twelve words. It’s not a conclusion I have come to lightly; I have firmly arrived in this place after forty years of paralysis and decades of working with disabled and suffering people around this world.
Here is what I believe: God reserves the right to heal or not … as He sees fit.
There are times when I feel almost sure I know what would be best in a given situation. Lord, touch this woman’s body and raise her up! Lord, heal this child! Lord, relieve this man’s pain! Lord, reverse the effects of this terrible disease!
But the fact is I only know so much, I only understand so much, I only see so much, and I only grasp so much of what I do see. With Paul, I sometimes have to cry out, “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!” (Rom. 11:33).
Not long ago, the words of this old hymn drifted into my mind:
I am not skilled to understand
What God has willed, what God has planned;
I only know at His right hand,
Stands One who is my Savior!1
Ah, there are many things that God has revealed—things I do know and understand. But there are many more things that He has not chosen to reveal yet and may not reveal this side of heaven. And one of those things is why He sometimes chooses to step in and supernaturally heal one person and not another.
But as you are no doubt aware, there are branches of Christendom in which individuals really do think they are “skilled to understand what God has willed, what God has planned” when it comes to sickness and disease. They will tell you that it’s always God’s will and desire to heal, and that if you’re not experiencing that healing, then there’s something wrong with you and with your faith.
I think back to a television interview I gave several years ago. It’s not often that I feel uneasy in participating in a live, on-camera conversation. But this was one experience I will never forget.
I don’t need to give the name of the popular Christian TV host, but suffice to say, our televised conversation didn’t go very well. From the moment the floor director counted down the final seconds and the light on the camera clicked to bright red, I felt an unmistakable uneasiness. The questions were pointed and abrupt—occasionally rude.
As I look back, the whole scene seems surreal to me—and not like an interview at all. I felt more like a witness being cross-examined by a crafty lawyer. It was perfectly obvious what he wanted me to say. He was trying to get me to state that decades of quadriplegia were actually a result of my lack of faith. In other words, God had wanted to heal me all along, and I really could have been healed—if only I had “believed for it.”
But I wasn’t going to say any such thing. It wouldn’t be true.
So I stood firm on Ephesians 1 and other Scriptures that confirm God works everything in accordance with His plan. And that plan often (actually, most often) allows for suffering or quadriplegia to continue for good and well-considered reasons that we often can’t understand or discern this side of heaven.
The TV host didn’t seem impressed with this line of reasoning. He had already made up his mind that he knew better, that it was always God’s will to heal, and that the problem was all with me. So he listened woodenly as I spoke, mostly without comment, until the interview drew to a close. Then he turned to address the small studio audience and the camera, a window to who knows how many people watching their televisions at that moment.
He explained to his viewers that while it was obvious that Joni hadn’t been healed of her infirmities, they, the viewers, could be. With confession of sin and enough faith to believe, they could experience what Joni had sadly not experienced. The people in the television audience who obeyed the correct formula could be—should be—healed.
Before I could jump in or speak a word in my own defense, the cameras turned to another segment on the studio stage. The red light on the camera blinked off. The interview was over.
I couldn’t believe what had just happened to me! Had this Christian TV icon not read all the scriptural instances in which God specifically tells His followers—even followers with great faith—to expect hardship? Or how the sufferings of Christ are supposed to overflow into our lives? Had he never read in Acts 14 that we must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God? And that’s just scratching the surface of this New Testament teaching!
The man may have had a huge ministry and millions of viewers, but he was wrong. God is God, and it is He and He alone who decides who will be healed and who will not. Yes, faith is vital to everything, and “without faith it is impossible to please Him.” But faith’s focus must always be Jesus Christ—and nobody draws close to Christ who doesn’t first share in Christ’s sufferings. Just stop a minute and consider these awesome words from the apostle Peter, who wrote, “To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps” (1 Pet. 2:21). Christ and the manner in which He approached suffering is to be our focus, especially when the weight of our cross seems overwhelming. Man, it takes real faith to follow our suffering Savior’s example!
Besides, at the end of the day, it’s not a question of who has the most faith, but what God in His wisdom, love, and sovereignty chooses to do.
A Letter from Linda
Believe me, I know this is no mere academic discussion or idle talking point in some seminary cafeteria. Every day countless suffering, brokenhearted people spread their requests, hopes, and longings concerning these questions before the throne of heaven.
Here at Joni and Friends, as I mentioned, I receive so many letters from people who are struggling with blindness, encroaching disease, disability from injury, or maybe those with babies who have been born with a severe handicap. My heart aches with each such letter or email.
A woman named Linda recently wrote that she had taken her little boy with a brittle bone disease to a healing crusade. And even though she and her husband prayed, nothing happened at that crusade. It had been quite awhile, and their child was still struggling with this painful disability. In her letter to me, Linda confessed that the whole incident with the “healer” had nearly shipwrecked her faith.
As I have stated, at times of His choosing, God certainly does intervene and heal. But it’s also true that even though multitudes of devoted, good-hearted Christians pray in great faith, many eyes will stay blind. Many babies will die at birth. Many cancers will not be eradicated until that once-and-forever healing of a new body and a new life in Christ’s presence. And many paraplegics and quadriplegics like me will never regain the use of legs or arms or hands that don’t work.
The Bible simply doesn’t teach that God will always heal those who come to Him in faith. He sovereignly reserves the right to heal or not heal, as He sees fit. Even when Jesus walked the earth, only a small number of people—those who happened to be in His immediate vicinity—were healed. Yes, He fed four thousand people, and five thousand at another time. But many in Israel still went hungry. He drove out demons wherever He went, but many demons remained entrenched. He raised several people from the dead, but it was really only a few, and even those died later on.
In my conversation with Linda I encouraged her to look at the first chapter of Mark’s gospel. After word spread throughout Capernaum about Jesus’ healing Simon’s mother-in-law, the whole town brought their sick and lame outside Simon’s home. Long after sunset, Jesus was still preaching the gospel and backing up His words by healing people with diseases and illnesses. And then it says the next day, very early in the morning, those people returned, bringing still more friends and more relatives who needed healing.
Jesus, however, was nowhere around.
Simon and his companions went to look for Him, and when they found Him, probably somewhere on the hill above Capernaum, praying, they said to Him, “Jesus, everyone is looking for You.” Translation: “There are lots more people who need healing. In fact, there are some really heartbreaking situations. You’ve only scratched the surface!”
Now you might imagine that Jesus, upon hearing this, would have jumped to His feet, gathered up His robe, and gone hurrying back down the hill to all those needy people who were waiting for Him—waiting in faith! But not so. If you read Mark 1:38, you can almost picture His rising slowly to His feet, dusting off His robe, and then replying after a moment’s thought: “Let’s go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach the gospel there, because that’s why I have come.”
As time has gone by since her disappointment at the healing crusade, Linda has begun to see that God is a lot higher, a lot bigger, and a lot more holy and sovereign than she ever realized. She’s learning that her God is in control—not only for the good of a little boy who still has brittle bone disease, but for her good as well.
Will she give up, then? Will she stop praying for her boy’s healing? Of course not. The gospel of Luke reminds us to pray always and not give up.2 Jesus Himself urges us to keep on asking, keep on seeking, and keep on knocking. God, in His grace and compassion, could yet choose to heal the boy. But it will be in His time, and in accordance with His mighty purposes. And for Linda, though her heart aches, that’s good enough.
In an insightful little volume penned over eighty years ago (I’ll reference this more completely in the next chapter), a missionary named Henry Frost wrote about several of his friends who had prayed for healing but were content to leave the results in the hands of God. In fact, some of these were healed while others weren’t. Did these suffering people all pray in assurance? Yes, Frost noted, but it wasn’t so much an assurance that their specific prayer would be answered. It was rather an assurance of the power, love, and wisdom of God.
He wrote: “The general attitude of those who prayed, and hence, of those who exercised faith, was this: They believed that God could heal; that He would heal if it was for His glory and for the good of the person who was sick; and finally, that He could be trusted implicitly to do what was right and best.”
Frost went on to add: “Those who prayed left the issue of their prayers with the heavenly Father in child-like confidence, repeating the prayer for healing until His will was known, and accepting the answer when it came, whatever it was, with submissive and trustful praise.”3
God’s Desires and My Desires
Some time ago at a Joni and Friends event, I met a man in a wheelchair named Lloyd. He had been in a car accident seven years previous and, as a result, was left a paraplegic—with no use of his legs. As the evening unfolded, I could tell by the expression on Lloyd’s face that something was deeply moving him. Just seeing and interacting with other people more disabled than he seemed to be helping his heart.
When the event was over, I grabbed the chance to speak with him. “Well,” he told me, “I’ve been to three healing crusades and … this is much more meaningful. I need to get involved in more stuff like this.”
Lloyd and I had a chance to talk about what happens at healing crusades. I shared that at one time, years ago, I too had been desperate to get healed. My sister Jay and I heard that Kathryn Kuhlman, a famous faith healer, was coming to the Washington, D.C., Hilton ballroom. Stories had reached us about cancer-ridden people who’d been cured in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at one of her crusades. I wondered if I should go to the healing service in Washington, D.C.
One morning, when Jay was putting my legs through my range-of-motion exercises, Ernest Angley came on television. He was an odd sort of man who wore a bad toupee and ill-fitting suits, and Jay and I enjoyed his antics. My sister and I stopped and watched as people dropped their crutches or got up out of their wheelchairs, many raising their hands and declaring they were free from pain.
“Do you think God could heal you?” Jay asked, staring at the screen.
“Maybe it is time,” I replied. And so, wondering if this might be an answer to the prayers of many, we found our way to the Washington Hilton and the packed healing service in the big ballroom.
I remember the night so well. Miss Kuhlman breezed onto the stage under the spotlight in her white gown, and my heart raced as I prayed, Lord, the Bible says You heal all our diseases. I’m ready for You to get me out of this wheelchair. Please, would You? But the spotlight always seems to be directed toward some other part of the ballroom where apparent healings were happening. Never did they aim the light at the wheelchair section where all the “hard cases” were: quadriplegics like me, stroke survivors, children with muscular dystrophy, and men and women sitting stiff and rigid from multiple sclerosis.
God answered. And again, His answer was no.
After the crusade I was number fifteen in a line of thirty wheelchair users waiting to exit at the stadium elevator, all of us trying to make a fast escape ahead of the people on crutches. I remember glancing around at all the disappointed and quietly confused people and thinking, Something’s wrong with this picture. Is this the only way to deal with suffering? Trying desperately to remove it? Get rid of it? Heal it?
Lloyd asked me, “How did you resolve that, Joni?”
I took a deep breath and sat silent for a moment.
“Lloyd,” I said slowly. “I did resolve it. I resolved the issue with one simple Bible verse. Psalm 37:4: ‘Delight yourself also in the LORD, and He shall give you the desires of your heart.’”4
Lloyd shot me a quick look. I knew what he was thinking. It would seem like that kind of verse would be a guarantee of healing!
“I can read your thoughts, Lloyd,” I said with a smile, “but let me explain.”
And so, for the remaining time we talked, I reflected on how after that Katherine Kuhlman crusade, I had embarked on a quest to delight myself in the Lord. “I started reading the Bible more and praying and asking God to reveal Himself,” I told him. “I asked Him to show me His heart, give me His passion for the lost, keep me from temptation, and help me be a better witness.
“In the process of my pursuit, I just ate God up. I made it my goal to simply delight myself in Him. And not with the purpose of holding back on a couple of desires I’d hoped He would quickly fulfill once I delighted myself in Him. No, I didn’t center on what God could do for me. Not how He could please me, but how I could please Him. I kept putting my wants and wishes in check and, instead, made certain my goal was simply to enjoy the Lord being … the Lord! And you’ll never guess what happened!”
Lloyd shook his head and didn’t try to guess.
“God gave me the desires of my heart!” I said.
Lloyd looked at my wheelchair, then back at my face. He was listening very intently.
“It’s true,” I said. “He really did. The thing was, because I had delighted myself in God, He miraculously replaced my little private lists of wants and wishes with a list of His own. His desires became mine. And what are His desires? That the gospel go forth, that the kingdom be advanced, that the earth be reclaimed as rightfully His, that the lost get saved, that His glories be made known.
“That’s when it hit me, Lloyd. My wheelchair was the key to seeing all this happen—especially since God’s power always shows up best in weakness. So here I sit … glad that I have not been healed on the outside, but glad that I have been healed on the inside. Healed from my own self-centered wants and wishes.”
It was then Lloyd’s turn to take a deep breath, be quiet for a moment, look at his own wheelchair, and then … smile.
How Does He Care for Us?
Every now and then, as I mentioned in my introduction, I still meet people who want to pray for my physical healing.
As I’ve said, I never turn someone down who wants to intercede for me. But recently, when a woman named Karen asked if she could pray for me, I first asked her to pray specifically about things in my life that truly needed healing—such as my tendencies toward selfishness, my lazy attitude about important spiritual disciplines, and things like that.
I could tell that wasn’t what Karen had in mind. She wanted to see me get up and walk. Right then. After we had prayed, she continued to press her point about God’s care and compassion for “people like you, in your wheelchairs.”
She pointed to 1 Peter chapter 5, where God tells us to cast all our anxiety on Him, because He cares for us.
“Joni,” she said, “God doesn’t want to hurt you. He wants to help you. That’s in His nature. He’d go to any lengths to release you from severe pain and a difficult disability.”
When Karen shared that with me, the first thing that came to mind was the way God cared for Timothy in the Bible. The text says that this young man had to deal with frequent illness, and there is no record that he found healing. Instead, the apostle advised him to use a little medicinal wine to settle his stomach.5 God also cared for James, but James was run through with Herod’s sword because of his testimony.6 God cared for John, but allowed him to be exiled and left isolated on a lonely island.7 He cared for Stephen, from the first stones that struck the young man’s earnest, unmarred face to the last one that sent him out of his broken body.8 He cared for Paul’s companion Trophimus, whom the apostle had to leave behind sick in Ephesus—though he was desperately needed for ministry.9
While I’m not saying God enjoys watching us struggle, His Word clearly indicates He allows wounds to prick and pierce us. But that doesn’t mean He has stopped caring. God expresses His care in different ways. As many have said so eloquently, sometimes He delivers us from the storm, and at other times He delivers us through the storm.
And even if the storm happens to take our earthly life, He delivers us safely into the best and most joyous place we could ever wish for in our most agonizingly beautiful dreams. Just look at what happened to Paul near the end of his life. While sitting in a dank prison, he writes confidently to his friend Timothy (in the last letter he would ever write), “The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom” (2 Tim. 4:18). A short time later, a Roman soldier lifted his sword and, with a swift stroke, killed the old apostle. That was one evil attack from which God obviously did not rescue Paul. Instead, that Roman’s sword became the blessed key which opened the latch on the pearly gates to welcome Paul into heaven! Just another example that healing and escape from suffering isn’t always God’s priority for us.
On other occasions when Paul sat in a prison cell, he no doubt cast all his anxiety on God and had confidence that God cared about his situation. In fact, the Lord Himself appeared to Paul and said, “Take courage! As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome.”10
The Lord came to Paul. Spoke to Paul. Encouraged Paul. Isn’t that proof that He cared? And yet after that encouraging visit by the Lord Himself, Paul remained in custody at least two more years. Did God stop caring for Paul during those twenty-four long months in confinement? Of course not. And God proves it by giving Paul the kind of peace that allowed him to write from his prison cell, “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation.”11
Could God have caused Paul’s chains to drop off and open the prison doors to allow him walk free? Who could doubt it? He did it for Paul and Silas in Philippi—with a great earthquake! He did it (twice) for the apostle Peter. But was it any less of a miracle to meet with Paul in that dungeon and give Him a supernatural contentment in that place? Was that a somehow lesser thing?
You may not be in prison (although you might), but you may be lying in a hospital bed, or a bed at home, struggling for weeks with being sick. Or you may still be laid up from your knee surgery or hip surgery. You might be struggling in your marriage with unhealthy and unhappy circumstances that have gone on for years.
Well, today grab hold of the truth of 1 Peter 5, and cast all your anxieties on the Lord. He may not miraculously touch your knee or hip, throw open the doors of the prison, instantly erase your migraine, raise you up tonight from your sick bed, lift you out of your wheelchair, or immediately change your spouse’s heart. But He will give you contentment, deep and profound, in any and every situation.
Someone might ask, “Have you always had such contentment, Joni?” And I would have to answer no. I well remember the first Christmas I got out of the hospital, my first visit home since the accident. Depressed and frightened, I remember going to church with my family on Christmas Eve. One particular carol stands out in my mind. I remember singing, with tears falling from my eyes:
Hail the heav’n-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Son of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings,
risen with healing in His wings.
When we got to that third verse of “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing,” I thought, I’m sure this Christmas season I’ll get up out of my wheelchair—risen with healing in His wings!
Little did I know (and I don’t know if I would have understood even if you had explained it to me) that in due time, God would heal me—but on a level I would have never dreamed. Just two years later, on another Christmas, I found the very peace and contentment that had eluded me. I also found joy, simply because I had embraced His will for my life.
And what is His will?
That you and I be in the best position, the best place, the timeliest circumstance in which God can be glorified the most.
For me, that place just happens to be a wheelchair.
That happens to be my place of healing.
Don’t Miss the Miracles All Around You
Many Christians don’t see God in their trials. If no dramatic miracles seem to be happening—if the floods aren’t receding or the cancer isn’t in remission—they think God must not be at work. That’s because they think of miracles as the sort Hollywood’s special-effects wizards manufactured in the movie The Ten Commandments. “Those ten plagues on Egypt … now that was God up to something!”
Well, yes. Thunder and hail, rivers of blood, armies of locusts, and frogs in Pharaoh’s bed (to Yul Brynner’s great discomfort) made for a great film back in the fifties. Ah, but if we could only watch the real movie of how God runs the world from behind the scenes!
Oh, the infinite complexity of it all! Talk about God doing miracles! Just think of the miraculous way He wrenches good out of evil, like blood from a turnip—the way God operates behind the scenes, always exploiting Satan’s worst escapades. And think of the miraculous, divine balancing act of weather systems that assure the arrival of summer. Think of the way God even infiltrated grace and salvation behind the barbwire of Soviet death camps. And look at the miraculous way God rallies the exact number of white blood cells, calling each one into action to defeat your illness.
I tell you, if we could only watch the way God works behind the scenes, we would have a greatly expanded view of the miraculous. The superbly conceived, delicately balanced, invisible workings of our great God—this is the real drama.
Meanwhile, He just wants us to trust Him.
As Jesus told skeptical Thomas in John 20:29 right after the resurrection: “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
So why do we still doubt? We know God is always shifting and pulling and pushing and making things happen behind the scenes. Why do we agonize? Why can’t we trust Him? Why can’t we rest in His “good, acceptable, and perfect will” for our lives? Each of us must experience a thousand miracles in our lives every day! Maybe it’s because in our heads, we can’t find mental wrapping paper wide enough to neatly package such truths. It takes faith to realize that our almighty God is moving miraculously in our lives every day.
Friend, our inability to comprehend something doesn’t make it untrue or any less miraculous. Count His miracles today. Count the many narrow misses. Count the smiles and words of encouragement and expressions of gratitude sent your way today. Count the safety and well-being of your children and grandchildren. Count the miracle of being able to worship God freely in a country like this. Count the miracles of grace, of which 1 Peter 1:12 tells us that “even angels long to look into these things.” And thank Him. Honestly, it’ll be healing to your bones.
In John 14:12 Jesus said, “Anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”
I’ve found that an interesting thing takes place when you “fix your faith on Jesus.” You begin praying and asking for the sorts of things that He wants accomplished rather than zeroing in exclusively on your own private prayer list. You pray for the success of the gospel, even for mountains to be moved that His word might go forth. You pray for despair and discouragement to be alleviated in ten thousand obscure places around the world. You pray for souls to be settled and for God’s people to experience peace that is profound. You pray for lives to have intensity and depth; you pray for joy and peace in the church without a lot of parade and noise.
Those are among the greater miracles in which I move every day, and I would not trade them for the lesser miracle of being healed from quadriplegia.
Henry Frost concurred with this point of view. In his study of people in his own sphere who had prayed for healing but not received it, he noted that “special spiritual blessings were given to the persons who were permitted to be sick, and that most of the persons, if not all of them, were finally constrained to testify that they believed that the sickness had proved to be even better than health could have been.”12
The veteran missionary and friend of Hudson Taylor added this notation:
If I may be permitted to refer to my own experience in this connection, I would witness to the fact that the deepest, the most precious, and the most abiding spiritual lessons which God has been pleased to teach me were learned in consequence of enduring my various experiences of sickness. This last is particularly true in respect to the prayer-life, the praise-life, the life of dependence upon God, and the life which chooses to live not for the seen, but for the unseen, not for the temporal, but for the eternal.…
I feel it would have been nothing short of a calamity to have missed the physical suffering through which I have passed.…
I am positive that I have sometimes met with God’s refusal to heal when I have been most in fellowship with Him.13
And so it has been in my life.
A no answer has purged sin from my life, strengthened my commitment to Him, forced me to depend on grace, bound me with other believers, produced discernment, fostered sensitivity, disciplined my mind, taught me to spend my time wisely … and widened my world beyond what I would have ever dreamed had I never had that accident in 1967.
My affliction has stretched my hope, made me know Christ better, helped me long for truth, led me to repentance of sin, goaded me to give thanks in times of sorrow, increased my faith, and strengthened my character. Being in this wheelchair has meant knowing Him better, feeling His pleasure every day.
If that doesn’t qualify as a miracle in your book, then—may I say it in all kindness?—I prefer my book to yours.