In Sickness and In Health - Part B

Can I just offer some practical advice? If you happen to be in a family that is experiencing someone being sick and you're not sick, you're the caregiver. If you're the caregiver, here's some advice. Number one, stay healthy. Make sure that you diet, you eat right. Make sure that you exercise.

Make sure that you get away and get rejuvenated because this could be a long haul for you and you need to be healthy. There's practical wisdom for spouses who've been called to give care to a sick family member. But first, here's a resource that will help you understand why fathers are such an important part of God's design for families. America is reaping the whirlwind of bad fruit from a generation of young men who lack the influence of a father. We desperately need to educate men of all ages and stages of life to begin to turn this destructive social trend.

Listen to Skip Heitzig. Where's dad? That's a crucial question in our world today. When fathers abandon their children, a series of dominoes begin to fall with devastating results. We see young men rampaging through streets, destroyed by drugs, then continuing the vicious cycle by creating fatherless homes. We need to educate boys and men of all ages about how dads make a difference. And that's the theme of our current resource package that includes my full hour video documentary called Where's Dad, plus seven of my most important messages to men. I hope you'll order your copy now. Dad's Make a Difference.

That's the title of a critical issues package you can order now. The Dad's Make a Difference package includes seven of Skip's most important messages to men and the full hour video documentary Where's Dad, hosted by Skip. I think it's pretty easy to see from just a reading through of scripture that it is dad's responsibility to set the moral, spiritual tone in the home.

Remember it was Joshua who said, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Get this package in either digital download or CD and DVD when you support Connect with Skip with your gift of $50 or more. You'll be joining us as we take Skip's Bible teachings into more major cities.

Request the Dad's Make a Difference package online at connectwithskip.com or by calling 1-800-922-1888. Okay, we're in Job 1 today as Skip continues the message in Sickness and in Health. The second truth is that though sickness is universal, sickness, when it happens to you, feels personal. It's very isolating.

It's confined to me. Here's the problem I've discovered with our typical reading of the book of Job. Most of us know what happens to Job and we consider him. But most of us forget that it also happened to Mrs. Job. They were a married couple. There was a mutual pain that happened.

Think about this now. Both of them lost property. Both of them lost income.

Both of them lost all of their children. The pain that Job felt was the pain that Mrs. Job felt. There's a commonality and a mutuality in this pain. Yet, on the other hand, it's very personal. Job comes down with the disease. Mrs. Job becomes the caregiver of one who has the disease. Now the pain is becoming more personal and more isolating.

Here's the deal. When sickness hits a family, everyone is affected, not just the one who gets sick. And it feels very personal. They share the common experience but it touches each one differently. One may be vocal.

One may be withdrawn. One may get angry. One may get weepy.

Still another may be very positive and we're going to work through this. But each one feels like they are experiencing it and no one else is quite like that. So the caregiver, the Mrs. Job, might say, you don't understand how hard this is for me. I have to care for you 24-7.

While the one with the sickness, in this case Job, could think, look, I'm the one with the disease. You don't understand how isolating this experience feels. You see, that's the nature of suffering. It's so all-absorbing that typically you are the only one you think about when it happens.

You're carrying your own portion of the weight. So here's the key. The key is to move from the personal to the practical. It's very personal. You have to move that to the practical.

How do you do that? By communication. At some point, you have to communicate your feelings to every other person in that family system so that everyone understands how the others are coping with it, what the expectations are because some of those expectations are unrealistic and others are realistic. You need to communicate that because decisions perhaps may have to be made about long-term care. You may have to bring a nurse in. You might have to bring a therapist in.

Or you might have to make a decision about permanent care, a facility, a nursing home. But when there's clear communication and a clear plan that is understood by all and what our part, what our role is going to be in this, that moves it from the personal to the practical and that makes life more manageable. And a good counselor and a good friend, a good friend can help that family manage through that. I bring up a good counselor because in chapter 2, Job has some friends that come and act as counselors. And the bulk of the book, the rest of the book is about their bad counsel.

Right? It got so bad that Job finally turned to them and said, miserable comforters are ye all. You came as my counselors, came as my friends, but I consider you my frenemies.

You're not really helping me out a lot. But what I want you to know, because we're not going to get into that, is that at first these friends, these counselors, these comforters were good. They were great. At first they were awesome.

And here's why. They didn't say a single word. They just sat there and they listened and they watched. And can I just tell you that's helpful? There's something called the ministry of presence. You just show up. You don't have to say much.

You can offer a prayer. You don't have to explain everything. You just listen. But Job's counselors didn't stop there. They opened their mouths and they spoke for chapter after chapter after chapter after chapter after chapter after chapter.

It's a long book after chapter after chapter. And with everything they said, Job felt more and more isolated, more personal, more withdrawn. So let me give a word to the well. If you're healthy and you're going to get around somebody who isn't, you don't have to explain everything to them. Let me give you the theological reasons for the suffering of the world. Stop.

Not going to be helpful right now. Listen to the words of one suffer. I was sitting torn by grief.

Someone came and talked to me of God's dealings and of why it happened and of hope beyond the grave. He talked constantly. He said things I knew were true, but I was unmoved, except to wish he'd go away. He finally did. Another came and sat beside me and he didn't talk much.

He didn't ask leading questions. He just sat beside me for an hour or more, listened when I said something, answered briefly, prayed simply and left. I was moved. I was comforted and I hated to see him go. Listen, it's easy to play Monday morning quarterback with somebody else's suffering, but it's not helpful. Walk softly around a broken heart.

A good friend will do that. Sickness is universal. Sickness feels personal. Here's a third principle that we see in Job.

Sickness can be detrimental because when one spouse gets sick, things get complicated in the relationship very quickly. Look at Chapter two, verse nine. Then his wife said to him, Do you still hold fast to your integrity, curse God and die?

Well, thank you, sweetheart. But he said to her, You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God and shall we not accept adversity? And all this Job did not sin with his lips. You know what she's saying, right? She's saying, Would you quit being Mr. Holy here? Just get your life over with.

God will probably strike you dead if you just blaspheme him and then you won't have to suffer. You could have cut the tension in that tent with a knife. The dynamic between Mr. and Mrs. Job is very complicated. The sickness is detrimental to their relationship at this point. I just got to stop here for a moment. You heard what she said. I got to tell you that I think Mrs. Job has suffered more at the hands of preachers and expositors than perhaps anyone else in scripture.

I'll give you an example. Augustine labeled her as Diaboli Adjutrix, which means the devil's advocate. John Chrysostom said, She's the devil's best scourge. Why did the devil leave him this wife? He asks because he thought her a good scourge by which to plague him more acutely than by any other means. I wonder what John Chrysostom's marriage was like.

The reformer John Calvin calls Job's wife Organum satani, which means the embodiment of Satan. Can I just say, I think she deserves a little bit fairer, more generous treatment than that. And here's why. She just lost 10 children in a single day, and her husband has a disease, and she doesn't know what the future of that is going to be, and it all happens pretty quickly. So this I see, though it's not right, this is an emotional reaction that happens to a person. It's an outburst that happens when this kind of tragedy piles up. And I say that because I don't want you to be surprised when you get somebody who's around somebody who's just experienced deep grief and tragedy.

Things might come out of their mouths and you might say, Well, that's not very Christian. Yeah, but that's a gut emotion you're hearing. Hey, did you know, by the way, that we are hardwired in our brains to be emotional first and logical second? Now, hear me, especially those of you who tend to be legalistic. We're hardwired to be emotional first, rational second.

That's what I mean. Every impulse, every impulse we experience, whether it's sight or sound or touch, enters our brain via the base of our spinal cord. Before it ever reaches the frontal lobe where we deal with things rationally, it first goes through the limbic system, which is where emotions are produced, so that a person is emotional first. When something happens, they're emotional first and they're logical later. They deal with it differently as time goes on.

It's the way we're made. So this is her, I believe, emotional outburst and he comes right back at her. You're a foolish woman. It's just tense in that relationship. Now, I'm not going to let her off the hook completely. This is still bad advice.

Blaspheming God is never a good idea, even on the worst day. This is just not good counsel, but here's the point. Sickness has complicated the marriage relationship and it can be detrimental to it.

See, this is a typical scenario. Somebody in the family gets sick. Let's say the husband gets sick. He feels guilty that he's sick. He shouldn't feel guilty, but he feels it. The caregiver, the wife, feels fearful of the future.

What is this going to mean to us, to me, as time marches on past today? According to statistics, 75% of marriages with chronically ill spouses end in divorce. Now, just so you know, that's not even. It's not split between men and women who get sick. I was reading a New York Times article. An oncologist up in the Seattle area was noticing a trend that bothered him. He was treating brain cancer patients.

Mark Chamberlain was his name. And Dr. Mark was noticing that when husbands got sick, their wives were with them the whole way and afterwards, all the way through, whereas he was noticing more and more men drop out of the picture when their wives got sick. And so he asked his colleagues in the area and other institutions to examine this and provide some data. Here's the statement after the data was collected. Women with serious illnesses are seven times more likely to become separated or divorced than men with similar illnesses. In other words, the women being nurturers are going to stick through it.

Men will bail more often than women. So if that's true, can I just offer some practical advice? If you happen to be in a family that is experiencing someone being sick and you're not sick, you're the caregiver, if you're the caregiver, here's some advice. Number one, stay healthy. Make sure that you diet, you eat right, make sure that you exercise, make sure that you get away and get rejuvenated, because this could be a long haul for you and you need to be healthy. So stay healthy. Second, stay social.

Don't feel bad about having somebody sit your spouse, be there in the house for several hours while you're out at church or with a home Bible study and you're interacting with other people. That's healthy for you as well. Number three, stay focused is good counsel. You're thinking, I'm hyper-focused. Are you kidding?

No. I mean, stay focused on the marriage relationship. While you have that sick spouse, stay focused on the marriage relationship. Example, if he or she can walk, walk with them around the neighborhood. Read aloud to them the scriptures or a favorite book. Listen to music. Watch a film that you both enjoy. Get a friend on the phone for a few minute conversation with your spouse.

Stay focused on nurturing and building up with things that break up the monotony. So sickness is universal. Sickness feels personal. Sickness can be detrimental.

Here's the last one. Sickness should be helpful. I realize that is a very bold statement to say. And I thought about it.

And I'll say it again. Sickness should be helpful. In other words, because I believe that God is sovereign, I also believe that he would never allow his children to go through something as serious as ongoing sickness unless he wants to work something deeper into the lives of that couple. That he has deeper, further purposes. Even at the end of the book, chapter 42, Job says, For I know that no purpose of yours can be withheld. You think, what on earth, what kind of purpose could God have in mind by allowing sickness to happen? Well, I can think of a few.

Ready? Number one, humility. You ever struggle with that?

Are you like most people where you have some edges on your personality that could use honing, sanding? A trial will do that. Sickness will do that. The Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12 said, Lest I be exalted above measure, that is in pride, a thorn in the flesh was given to me. I have seen so much and done so much and it would be so easy for me to be spiritually prideful, so God allowed this physical malady to affect my life. That's humility. That's one reason God could allow it. Humility.

Here's the second reason. Purity. You know that a goldsmith will put gold in a smelting furnace under the fire for hours and hours to get the impurities scraped off? To make it more pure? With that in mind, Peter writes in 1 Peter chapter 1, These trials have come so that your faith, which is of greater worth than gold, though refined by the fire, may result in genuine faith. It'll purify you. Few things will purify you like this. So maturity or humility, purity, here's a third, dependency.

Dependency. Have you noticed that your prayer life gets really good when you suffer? Have you noticed that? If you've been slacking off in your prayer life at all, when sickness hits you, you pray like Abraham or Paul or Peter. It's like, man, what happened to your prayer life?

It just got turbocharged by sickness. It kicked it into a whole different kind of a gear because you realize I'm out of strength. I'm weak.

I must depend upon someone with greater strength, i.e. the Lord. That's exactly what happened again to Paul the Apostle, that whole thorn in the flesh episode. When Paul writes that, he said in prayer, he was asking God to take this thing from him three times. Take it away.

Take it away. Finally, he said, while I was in prayer, the Lord spoke to me and said, My grace is enough for you. My strength is made perfect in your weakness. And so Paul writes, therefore, I will be glad in my infirmities or take pleasure in my infirmities, my sicknesses for when I am weak that I'm strong. In other words, here's Paul going, I get it.

I get it. When I'm sick, I'm weak. When I'm weak, I depend more on you. You're strong and that's the way you want it.

You want me to depend on you. So, humility, purity, dependency, and fourth, I'll close with this, maturity. Maturity. James chapter one, he says, the trials test our faith. Faith produces, after the testing, perseverance. Let perseverance have its perfect work that you may be perfect.

Lacking nothing. The word perfect is mature, teleos in Greek. Mature. So I guess, as you grow old, it's best if you grow up.

Doesn't always happen. But God wants, as you grow older, to grow up. And he will use adversity and sickness to get you to maturity. Listen, if every irritation in your life were removed once you were a Christian, you'd be the most shallow human being on the face of the earth. Well, I'm a Christian now. I should be able to confess away problems and sickness.

You would be like worthless without that testing that is necessary. I'm going to close with a paragraph. And this is a paragraph that was written by a 20-something year old about 50 years ago or more. As a 20-something, he was writing this to his fiancée before they were getting married. They were engaged. He wanted to write her a note about the commitment that they were about to take in marriage.

But I want you to listen to the maturity of this 20-something. I want you to know and be fully aware concerning the marriage covenant which we are about to enter. I've been taught from my mother's knee and in harmony with the word of God that the marriage vows are inviolable. Now, by entering into them, I am binding myself absolutely and for life.

I am not naïve concerning this. On the contrary, I am fully aware that mutual incompatibility and other unforeseen circumstances could result in extreme mental suffering. If such becomes the case, I am resolved for my part to accept it as a consequence of the commitment that we are now making and to bear it, if need be, to the end of our lives together. I've loved you dearly as my sweetheart, and I will love you as my wife. But above everything else, I love you with a Christian love that demands we never act in such a way as to hinder our prospects of entering heaven, which is the supreme desire of both our lives. What a way to say, I love you, sweetie. What a classy way to say it, to say, you know what? I don't know what the future is going to hold.

It might get really gnarly. But for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, till death, not till death, till death, do us part. That concludes Skip Heitzig's message from the series Keep Calm and Marry On. Find the full message, as well as books, booklets, and full teaching series at ConnectWithSkip.com.

Right now, here's Skip to tell you about a special resource we have for you this month. Dads make a difference, and that's the title and the theme of our resource package this month. It includes seven of my most important messages for men, such as Seeing God as Father and The Legacy of a Godly Dad. Now, these teachings are full of practical biblical principles for fathers and encouragement for men at any age or stage of life. You will also receive my hour-long video documentary, Where's Dad? I'm joined by Josh McDowell and other experts on biblical manhood. You'll see stories of men who have been restored to their families after long periods of abandonment. Where's Dad?

will educate and encourage, and it'll make a great gift. I hope you'll order your Dads Make a Difference package now. To order this Dads Make a Difference package, just call 800-922-1888 or go to ConnectWithSkip.com. That's ConnectWithSkip.com.

Tomorrow on Connect with Skip Heitig. Skip begins a message about the high calling of a parent. Being a parent is, aside from having a spouse, the most important job in the world, but it's also the toughest job. And here's why it's tough.

By the time you're experienced, you're out of a job. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast all burdens on His word. Make a connection, connection. Connect with Skip Heitig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever changing times.