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Saturday 7 February 2009

The "Healed or sick" debate goes on!

    I have a circle of friends that this week we have all been trying to understand the reason for illness. One said he feels like he gets slapped in the face each time he goes to church, because the lessons are "If you accept Christ, you will feel joy and love and happiness and everything will be great." He can't even grasp those concepts when he is in such pain.
     The Lord actually didn't teach that. He taught that Christians might have MORE problems, but we have help with them. I think Satan awards those who follow him with money and any earthly thing they want, but it leads to spiritual emptiness, and I think those rewards they get on earth, if they don't find the Lord, will be the only rewards they get. We who seem to have missed the "millionaire lifestyle" but choose the spiritual life, will be rewarded eternally.
     Another friend is just sure that she is not healed because she has not developed her faith enough yet. I wonder what she will feel about herself if the Lord chooses to heal her later, not sooner, or maybe not at all. It is not only based on faith. It also has something to do with the Lord's will for your life. Perhaps there is a lesson you need to learn, or someone in your circle of friends, family or acquaintances will learn things from your illness.
     The Lord DOES have reasons for people being ill. If not, then He would not allow anyone to be ill.
     Another just wrote to me and said "OF COURSE we are all supposed to be healed. None of us are supposed to be sick!" Well If that's true, the Lord could cure all illness from the earth with one swipe of His hand. If there is no reason for illness, why doesn't He cure everyone. I'll tell you why. Because illness develops qualities in us that we need to learn.
    The earth is a school. Life is a school. We are supposed to learn as much as we possibly can. We are supposed to become the best being we possibly can. We are supposed to become as much like  God as possible. "Be ye therefore perfect, as your father in heaven is perfect." Life is a journey toward perfection, and there is still not enough time in 80 years to become perfect, so there is more time after we are resurrected to continue our learning and growing. In this life we only use 10% of our brain. Maybe in the resurrection we will develop powers we never knew were possible.
    What I wrote to the friend that said "Of course we are all supposed to be well!":
 
You said "Of course we are all supposed to be healed so none of us will be sick". I will have to kindly agree to disagree with you on that. My theory is that life is a school. We are here to learn as much as possible, and to become as much like God as possible. "Become ye therefore perfect, even as your father in heaven is perfect."
    So how would anyone learn compassion if no one in the world were sick?
     His number one message was to love one another and serve one another. How would we serve anyone if there was no one to serve? 
     His main message was of comfort to the poor and broken hearted and suffering. If we took out all the messages of the Lord that did not eventually lead to the subject of comforting, loving, serving those who need it, feeding those who are hungry, clothing those who are poor, we would have a very short new testament and short section of words from Jesus Himself.
   Everyone in the Bible was not healed, and often the cause for the illness was explained plainly. What about the prophet Paul? He had a "thorn in the flesh" that no one really found out what it was, we just suppose it could be this or that, but it was enough to make him suffer and keep asking the Lord for healing, and the Lord answered to Him  "MY STRENGTH WILL BE ENOUGH FOR YOU. YOU HAVE NO NEED OF HEALING." Why? Because when we have a weakness, we must lean on someone stronger than us. If we choose the Lord to lean on, then we are given some of his strength, and we do better than we would have done with only our own strength.
      There are lessons to be learned from being ill. Sometimes when the person has learned that certain lessen, THEN the Lord allows them to be healed. Sometimes he doesn't, because others learn from being around us and from being close to us. They learn patience and longsuffering and empathy and compassion and possibly even independence, because they have to do the things you can't do for them, and I'm sure there are a dozen other qualities people can learn from illness or from being  ill. I know one great lesson is that those who are in pain or living with someone in pain, very often become closer to God and out of the world. Our illness gives us time to "be still and know that He is". It makes us think of spiritual things, and eternal things rather than just worldly things. Sometimes God allows us to be sick or be in the family of a sick person so that we will come closer to him. God could cure everyone on earth with one swipe of his hand if he didn't want anyone on earth to be sick, so there MUST be a reason why some people never get healed. By chance do you think that you are sick because you just don't have enough faith? That is what a lot of churches are teaching people, and insulting us in the meantime who have more faith than they can imagine, but we have not yet been healed. Write when you can. Interested in reading your viewpoint.
 
Yes, I know the subjects we are supposed to avoid in order to keep friends are politics & religion. I guess I am getting controversial. Yes I do HOPE to be healed someday, and would welcome it, so I could live life seeing how the other half lives, the healthy half! But after years of fighting this illness, and making myself worse by fighting it, and fighting with God, and begging Him, questioning Him, beating myself up for not being "HOLY" enough, and then finally realizing that I was not going to be cured when I need it most, I had to accept that I have an illness, there must be a reason for it, I must learn to work around it, and try to learn as much as possible from it. Maybe if I learn enough, then I can be released of this beast of illness...and maybe not. We all know people with incurable diseases, some were born crippled and with health defects, and certainly those innocent babies cannot be blamed for being sick "because they did not have enough faith". Therefore, I have to disagree that we are all supposed to be well, that there is not supposed to be any illness in this life. I'll say it again. If illness was not meant to be part of this life, God would wipe it all away. Any comments?
 

1 comments:

Sheila, I think you have said it all, in this excellent post--I can't think of anything to add!
Except that I still would wish for you to be healed, but as you say, there are many lessons to be learned from being here in this imperfect world! And thank you for being such a wise and loving teacher!

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