When the Spirit Brings a Slow Recovery, Part 2

Today, on Insight for Living, from Bible teacher Chuck Swindoll. If the scar is deep, it may not go away for years. It may never leave.

There are crushings and there are bruises and there are pains that are too tough to even admit. And in the process of that recovery, he's preparing us to minister to somebody going through the same thing. It was Hippocrates who first said, healing is a matter of time. And according to Chuck Swindoll, that's not only a good statement, it's also good theology. Today on Insight for Living, Chuck addresses those mysterious seasons when God, who is fully capable of providing a miracle, chooses instead to make his children wait.

Maybe you're in God's proverbial waiting room right now, lost in the deafening silence. You'll appreciate the biblical wisdom and compassion ahead. Our study begins in Acts chapter 28.

Chuck titled today's message, When the Spirit Brings a Slow Recovery. I want to warn you, as Paul models for us here, there will be a whole number of things that you will experience from other people while you are healing. First, you will experience extraordinary kindness. See verse 2? The natives showed us extraordinary kindness for because of the rain that had set in and because of the cold, they kindled a fire and received us all.

There's kindness shown. Second, unjust criticism. See verses 3 and 4?

When Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks and laid them on the fire, a viper came out because of the heat and fastened on his hand. And when the barbarians saw the creature hanging from his hand, they began saying to one another, undoubtedly, look at that word. When you operate from superstitions, you make sweeping statements. Undoubtedly, the man is a murderer and though he has been saved from the sea, justice has not allowed him to live. Says who? Well, undoubtedly, it certainly would look like that anyway. May I plead with all of us, all of us who ministered to the hurting, to guard against unjust criticism?

They're hurting enough without that. Look at the next statement. Look at verses 5 and 6 on the heels of verse 4 where they said, he is undoubtedly a murderer. Look at verse 5. However, he shook the creature off into the fire and suffered no harm but they were expecting he was about to swell up or suddenly fall down dead. But after they had waited a long time and had seen nothing unusual happen to him, they changed their minds and began to say, he is a god.

The third response is inappropriate exaltation. It is remarkable how the opinion of the public will change. It is so fickle. The only place you will find ultimate security, believe me, is in the love of the Lord Jesus Christ.

That is never changing. And how rare, yet how important are those individuals that will let the Spirit of God do his work and we just work in cooperation with him. Now, in the time that follows, verses 7, 8, and 9, we find the apostles' focus on someone else. By the way, this whole episode on the island of Malta, verse 11, took three months, three months time. The Lord, before he took them to Rome, stopped them at Malta to give them time to recover, to heal. It takes time. And in the process of the healing, they began to minister to someone else. That is part of it.

While you are hurting deeply, you are not involved in ministering to someone else. You will, but not early on. That will happen.

You are in fact being prepared for such. Verse 7, in the neighborhood of that place were lands belonging to the leading man of the island named Publius, who welcomed us and entertained us courteously three days. It came about that the father of Publius was lying in bed. Now, notice Dr. Luke diagnoses the illness.

He was afflicted with recurrent fever and dysentery, perhaps a disease in the cholera family or one of the diseases of the islands. He had a fever and dysentery and Paul went in to see him and after he had prayed, he laid his hands on him and healed him. Isn't it interesting that there was, in this case, instant healing. He laid his hand on him and he healed him. This is the only case outside the person of Jesus Christ where any other person heals with a touch of a hand in all the New Testament. From the media today, you would get the idea that that was the common plan for all those who were laid aside. That any number of people could come in with a touch of a hand and bring healing.

Why, that was the exception, not the rule. This was in a period when there was no Bible, there was no basis to determine, is that man of God or is he of the enemy? And God would verify his spokesman on occasion by allowing them to demonstrate his power directly.

This is a case in point. It's a case of instant healing. By the way, just practically speaking, it's interesting that there's no envy on the part of Dr. Luke, that he couldn't do anything about it but Paul could. Paul walked in, there was healing.

Look further. Not only is there instant healing in this relational involvement, but there is also prolonged recovery. Verse 9, after this had happened, the rest of the people on the island who had diseases were coming.

You better believe it, that word travels. They were coming to him and getting cured. Not only is it another English word, it's another Greek word. The first word, healed him, verse 8, closes with those terms, is a word that means instant healing. But down in verse 9, getting cured is the word therapeutic. We obviously get our word therapeutic or therapy from it. It suggests time, a process, a blending of gifts from God, medicine as well as the divine power of God at work. There was a process involved in the curing. What I'm saying here is that more than just a few went through a prolonged period of recovery and there's only one case of an instant healing. I said I wanted to dedicate this to the hurting, and I do, because I personally hurt with a number of you, as do various members of our staff when we attempt to help, often feeling very, very helpless. But we realize that it is a process of time, of prolonged recovery where God does things in you, and to cut that short is not a task of any individual. It is a process of becoming cured, as it were. Sometimes it really takes a while.

Are you right now in the process? What a question. Who isn't, huh? You would be shocked unless you have vast experience with the needs of people, to know the hurts of those people just within touching distance of you. They don't look like it, but it's true. And I think it is interesting that by and large our messages have to do with something that happens now, or they are sort of a formula response.

Do four things and you got it. The hurts that our family has felt over the past several weeks deny formulas. We're doing better. It's really looking up, but it sure does take time. And I confess to you, I am an instant type thinker. I like for it to happen fast. I like to get up fast. I like to get on with the day fast. So when I get sick, I like to get well fast.

I tell my doctor, give me a fast pill. It doesn't work fast. If the scar is deep, it may not go away for years. It may never leave. God isn't varnishing perfect saints and then standing them up like little blocks for people to look at and say, wow, that's Christianity. There are crushings and there are bruises and there are pains that are too tough to even admit. And in the process of that recovery, he's preparing us to minister somebody going through the same thing. It's amazing how he never wastes afflictions.

He's got the whole thing in view. And you think you're just doing so great and everything's so terrific only to have the bottom dropout in a simple and almost silly way. It happened to me this week. I had gotten a couple of three pieces of fan mail. So I was reading them and gloating over them and thinking how great I was and terrific everything was. And I walked outside to get a cup of coffee and out in the front office and there was a lady there and she said to me, oh, so that's what you look like in real life. She says, I've always seen you on the television. She says, you're a lot grayer than I thought.

Look a little older. So I got my coffee and I walked back inside and I looked in the mirror like, that's really true. You know, ups and downs. Nothing as simple as that. But yours isn't.

Yours is deep. Especially when you had it all set up and it was all arranged and you're on your way. You finally got things together. It drops out. You're supposed to be somebody that keeps it going.

You can't. It takes time. And the deeper the emotional hurt, the less able you find yourself to describe it.

You can't put it in words. We leave Malta too quick. We're so Rome oriented.

We're so Jerusalem settled that we can't even abide Malta. Many a father here has to admit it when it comes to a son that's got to find his own way. But we want to straighten them up. We want to give them the rules and set them straight. You better get your act together, boy. That does us a lot of good.

But hey, some of it, he's got to learn. There's not a parent here with grown children that doesn't understand what I just said. Well, there are practical benefits, I'll tell you. There are really practical benefits that come. I find a couple of them in verse 10. They honored us with many marks of respect. And when we were setting sail, they supplied us with all we needed. Here's the first one. The one who takes time to heal should be respected, not resented.

They respected him. I'm trying to find myself. I'm trying to put it together. Stay with me. Love me through it. Accept me in it. I know the things that I'm suggesting are a little off and wild and they don't square with all the things we've stood for or whatever be your statement in your home. But don't write me off, say the hurting. I want to say that in this church, you will have room to heal.

You don't have to have everything altogether. A little piece written by a prof I really admire. A little five-year-old girl is playing near the curb in front of her house. A drunk driver happens by, loses control of his car and strikes her dead. Her parents choke on the bitterness of needless evil. They look to each other, they look to heaven, they cry to God. They know in their hearts that there is nothing here but evil. No soothing words from decent-minded friends will soften the troubled truth of the evil that caused this event. Yet as father and mother grope their way through the tunnel of horror with no light at the end, they rediscover each other in the darkness of their night.

God seems silent. Friends are powerless, yet their souls throb in pointless pain. They move awkwardly into the only truth there is in the whole world for them. We have a future together.

Now get this. Putting a hand on the hand of the other, each comes to know that in spite of hell and their private world, life is really worth trying to live. As this almost unbelievable truth begins to grip their souls, they find maybe for the first time that they came to life's paramount discovery together. Light has dawned and inspiration has seized them. For the first time, they know together that life is good in spite of what has happened. Through the pain, the horror, the loss, the grief, the death of it, they have for the first time come together. They are to be respected. And death is an enemy.

The last one Christ will destroy. It is not something that we rejoice over. Our great tendency is to deny it.

Deny it. If my child dies, it is an enemy that took that child. Now of course God is good. Of course God is great.

Of course it will work together for good. That's what scripture says. But the process that took the child from me is painful and grievous and hard to deal with.

So let me cry and let others. Not as those who have no hope. For some, it doesn't take as much.

For others, it takes a long time. And they are to be respected whether they weep or smile. Second, the one who is healed will be better equipped to help others when they had supplied all we needed and we set sail. The one who is healed will be better equipped to help others. You want to know who is going to understand the loss of your baby? Another mother in this congregation, in this family of God that has lost a baby.

You want to know somebody that understands what it means to go through a mental hospital and come out and work your way back to dignity and respect. Somebody else who was in a place like that. And God has given us in the family those kind of people. You are not surrounded by the perfect people.

You are surrounded by those who have been through or are now in hurts. That's what makes us real. In a little book that we became acquainted with on Mother's Day called A Velveteen Rabbit, we met a little creature that found his way into the boy's Christmas stocking. Little perky satin ears and silk thread whiskers and absolute spotless fur set there in the stocking. And a little later in the nursery met a creature called Skin Horse. Skin Horse had been around forever. The uncle had broken him in. Skin Horse had a foot, a hoof missing.

Tail was gone, bulged on the right side. And here was little Velveteen Rabbit. And they talked about being real. Real isn't how you're made, said Skin Horse. It's the thing that happens to you.

When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with but really loves you, then you become real. Does it hurt? asked Rabbit. Sometimes, said Skin Horse.

He was always truthful, by the way. When you are real, you don't mind being hurt. Does it happen all at once or bit by bit? Doesn't happen all at once. You become.

Takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily or have sharp edges or have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you're real, most of your hair has been loved off. Your eyes drop out.

You get loose in the joints and very shabby. Some of you are very real people, by the way. And you are the most valuable to the hurting, the real, whose eyes are dropping out and joints getting loose and hair loved off. They're the ones we turn to. We don't go to plaster saints. We've had enough of them.

We don't need varnish. We need real life. Scarred, bleeding, scab people. Says once these things happen, it doesn't matter because once you're real, you can't be ugly except to people who don't understand. Emerging from this ministry must come people who care or we will have lost the very purpose of our origin.

And don't miss that. Not just people with answers. People who care. Not smart people. Wise people. And people who can cry and can feel. And people who understand the pain of healing. It says in Isaiah 53, by His stripe, we are healed. It occurred to me that we have made something very simple, quite complicated. And on the other hand, we have taken something that is very complicated and tried to make it simple.

I'll give it to you fast. Salvation is very simple, not complicated. If your hurt is sin, lack of forgiveness, no security with God, never had faith in Jesus Christ, that's simple. By His stripe, you're healed. Believing in Jesus Christ answers that.

The world around us says that's very complicated. You've got to learn the stuff. You've got to go to church. You've got to be baptized. You've got to carry a Bible.

You've got to use new words. You've got to run with Christians. And by and by, you work really hard, then somehow you get in. God says it's a gift. My son died for your sin. I give you eternal life. Believe in my son. But I fear, on the other hand, that we have taken something that is quite complicated, the complex mechanism of a human being, the hurt and pain and the horror that sin takes on that life. And we have, with equal clout, said with a passing of our hand, won't be healed. Get with it. Straighten up.

Save right. And it doesn't work. It takes time to heal. And for some, not much time. For others, a lot of time. And parents, be gracious and careful with your child where it takes time.

If you don't, you'll lose him. And Christian, be careful with your friend who needs time. And to my amazement, I need time too. I never thought I did.

I really do. And for the first time, I can say that without shame. Thank God for helping us.

Let's bow together. It may be that today your problem is really not as complicated as you thought. Hey, when you hear that Christ cares and He paved the way and He picked up the tab, believe it. Don't make that complicated. There's no mumbo-jumbo in that. He makes an offer.

His integrity stands behind it. And He says, believe now and I'll come in. That's eternal life. It's yours. We'd like to talk to you following the service. We'd really like to help you understand that change from darkness to light and death to life. We'll help you with it. I give you my word.

We'll be careful with your feelings. But for you that need some time, extreme difficulties sometimes need extreme remedies. Thanks, Lord, for not punching out plaster saints, turning us into squared off, erect replicas of perfection.

I'm grateful that you've never used a can of varnish. And I thank you for the blows of life that force us to see our helplessness and need. Help those who minister to the hurting to understand the horror of pain and then give them wisdom, working it through with a friend, with a child, even with a parent. I pray that you would use these emissaries of mercy as your earthly angels of encouragement and strength. We pray these things, Father, trusting you for the outcome and for the glory in Jesus' dear name.

Amen. You're listening to Insight for Living and the Bible teaching of Chuck Swindoll. To learn more about this ministry, we invite you to visit us online at insightworld.org. Well, Chuck titled today's message When the Spirit Brings a Slow Recovery.

It's number 11 in a 14-part study. And it's also chapter 11 in the 14-chapter book that Chuck wrote about the Holy Spirit. If you're prepared to take a deeper dive into the subject of waiting on God and the many other topics we address in this series, I'd highly recommend Chuck's book called Embraced by the Spirit. In Galatians 5 25, Paul wrote these words. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Strong counsel from the apostle about cultivating our walk with God. And in Chuck's book, you'll discover the wonderful outcomes when we walk right alongside God, keeping in step with His Spirit.

To learn more about walking in this way, request your copy of Embraced by the Spirit. It's available for purchase when you call us. If you're listening in the United States, call 800-772-8888 or visit insight.org slash store. Finally, we'd like to extend a word of profound thanks to all those who give generously to support Insight for Living. Your partnership means more than you could know, and we couldn't supply these daily Bible teaching programs without your consistent giving. So thank you so much. As God prompts you to join the team and financially support this nonprofit ministry, we invite you to give us a call.

If you're listening in the United States, call 800-772-8888. Your gift, large or small, will make a difference for those who rely on this Bible teaching every day. In fact, a small portion of your gift will be applied toward taking Chuck's teaching around the world in our mission to reach all 195 countries with the message of God's grace.

We call this mission Vision 195. To give online today, go to insight.org slash donate. That's insight.org slash donate. In March 2023, Insight for Living Ministries is hosting an unforgettable journey to Israel. We plan to deepen your understanding of the Bible and draw you closer to God.

Here's Chuck Swindoll. For thousands of years, no place has been more meaningful to God's children than the land of Israel. The rugged landscape reminds us to find refuge in God alone. The fertile valleys invite us to follow our shepherd. Jerusalem's position at the very center of the world announces the good news of Christ to every nation. And now you can see Israel with Chuck Swindoll and Insight for Living Ministries March 5 through the 16th, 2023. Every time I visited the Holy Land, I've returned home with a refreshed heart for God and a renewed vision for the world.

Really, I mean it every time. And so I want you to have the same life-changing experience. To learn more, go to insight.org slash events or call this number 1-888-447-0444. Insight for Living Ministries Tour to Israel is paid for and made possible by only those who choose to attend.

I'm Bill Meyer. Tomorrow, Chuck Swindoll describes what it means to employ the power of God's Spirit right here on Insight for Living. The preceding message, When the Spirit Brings a Slow Recovery, was copyrighted in 1979, 1984, 1993, and 2003. And the sound recording was copyrighted in 2003 by Charles R. Swindoll Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.