When the Healing Doesn't Come #2

This grace that Christ has given to you is enough for you even if tomorrow is unknown and uncertain.

Christ knows the number of hairs on my head. Christ has my soul in his hands. I have Christ!

I have all! Welcome to the Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he is teaching God's people God's Word. Hello, I'm Bill Wright. Today Don continues our series titled The Holy Spirit Today with part two of a message called When the Healing Doesn't Come. Last time Don gave us the first two of four points to consider. There is hope in God's plan and in Christ's salvation. On today's program, Don will provide the final two points concerning God's grace and the future, and we'll pick up with point number three right now as we join our teacher in the Truth Pulpit. I want you to turn to Matthew chapter six with me.

This might not be the place that you would immediately go to in this, but I want you to see the nature of things. In Matthew chapter six, in verse nine, Jesus is teaching his disciples how he wants them to pray. And he teaches us in verse nine, he says, Pray then in this way. This is the pattern for the way that you should approach prayer. Think about your relationship to God. Think about your sanctification.

Think about your purpose in the brief 70 years that you have here on earth. Our Father, which is in heaven, hallowed be your name, your glory, O God, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So there's this aspect of God, I submit to your plan, I submit to what you have to me, and I pray that your will would be done.

And then look at this in verse 11. Give us this day our daily bread, our daily bread. Give us what is necessary for today. And Jesus goes back to the idea of today versus tomorrow at the end of chapter six.

And I'm skipping over so many important things here, but we've taught on this in the past. Matthew 6 verse 34 says, Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Beloved, I'm not going to be a false teacher who promises you healing that may not come. There may not be healing for you, either miraculously or through the means of medicine. But what I can tell you, beloved, where you can find hope is that there's grace for today, that there is sufficient grace for today.

And this is where the focus is meant to go. Your suffering is designed in part to relieve you from your dependence on self, to purge you from your self-confidence in what's happening around you. It's designed to cause you to look dependently to your Christ, to look dependently to your God, and to say that your grace is enough for me. Am I in Christ? You say, then I have all that I need. Oh, that hurts, but I have Christ. Oh, this isn't getting better, but I have Christ. And moment by moment, drawing strength from the reality that the eternal Son of God has set His eternal affection on you, He knows you by name, He knows the hairs on your head, and He loves you in the midst of it, and He has eternally loved your soul and given Himself up for you. In such a way that that becomes more important and precious to you than the present aspect of your suffering. That's what the Apostle Paul learned in 2 Corinthians chapter 12.

Turn there with me if you would. 2 Corinthians chapter 12, verse 7. And as I hope you're seeing, beloved, my purpose in saying these things is not to chastise you or to rebuke you at all, but rather to point that which can give strength and comfort to your heart in the midst of those times when the healing doesn't come. I just want to deal with things honestly.

I want to deal with reality. Paul says in chapter 12, verse 7, as he speaks of the thorn in his flesh, whatever that was, he says in verse 7, because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from exalting myself. Paul says my unrelenting trial had a purpose in humbling me. That I would not boast about myself. I would not boast of my apostolic gift or of the visions that I had seen. And the pain kept me from going to the sin of pride. And that was God's purpose in it. And he says in verse 8, concerning this, concerning this thorn I had, I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. God, God, relieve me from this. Stated differently in the terms in which we're using today, Paul prayed three times.

Why? Because the healing wasn't coming for him either. And then verse 9, he says, and he has said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. He says, my grace is enough. My grace is all that you need. And as I've said in the past, you don't know that Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you got.

Right? And it's only when you've been reduced to that kind of spiritual rubble that you can truly affirm this kind of transcendent statement that brings much greater glory to God than any physical healing ever could. Because it is not natural.

It is not human, so to speak. It's not a product of our sinful flesh in the midst of suffering to say that something I can't see gives me satisfaction, joy, and comfort. I have a joy, satisfaction, and comfort in Christ that transcends this situation where the healing is not coming for me.

And suddenly, in a life like that, in a heart like that, the great glory of Christ is put on display, that He Himself alone is enough to satisfy the human heart. I don't need anything else. I don't need my loved one to come back from the dead.

I don't need to know whether they're in heaven or hell. It is enough that Christ loves me, that He gave Himself up for me, that He has secured heaven for me, and He'll never let me go. That's enough for me to be full of joy. I don't need my body to get better, to love Him like that, and for that to satisfy every longing of my heart. His grace is sufficient for me. And that kind of spiritual power is perfected when you are in weakness in the human life. And Paul goes on, and Paul says, this is so great, he says in the middle of verse 9, he says, this is so great, this is so true and real in my experience, that he goes to the other extreme. He'd been praying for his weakness to be removed. Now, in verse 9, he says, I'm glad I've got it. Most gladly, therefore, he says, I will rather boast about my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Verse 10, therefore, I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties. For Christ's sake, for when I am weak, then I am strong.

You know how you appropriate that? You know how you make that real in your heart? You come back to this, and you have to speak to yourself. You have to preach to yourself. You have to tell your own soul repeatedly that this grace that Christ has given to you in the moment is enough for you even if tomorrow is unknown and uncertain. I don't know what tomorrow has, but you know what?

You're saying to yourself, but you know what? Christ is with me now. Christ is with me in the moment. Christ loves me. Christ knows the number of hairs on my head. Christ has my soul in his hands. Christ is at the right hand of the Father, interceding for me, representing me before a holy God. What have I to ask beside? I have Christ!

I have all! And you tell that to your soul again and again and again. That's enough for me.

That's what I need. I'm satisfied. I'm satisfied in Christ.

I'm satisfied that he loves me. That's enough to bring peace and joy and comfort to my heart. His grace is enough to give me hope even when the future is unknown, even when it seems like life is on a decline that cannot be reversed. Sooner or later, for most of us, that's going to be our experience.

And, beloved, we need to be ready when that comes, and this is where our hope is. And as you do that, over time you cultivate a hope that cannot fail. Look, anybody could have a positive attitude if they knew that healing was just around the corner for them.

Anybody can have a positive attitude when life is exactly the way that they want it to be. There is nothing supernatural about that at all. What's supernatural, what glorifies God, what Christ is worthy of after all of the infinite work that he has done on your behalf is for you to look to him by faith and say, You're enough for me. You're all that I need. You transcend this sorrow. You transcend this pain. You transcend this difficulty. I love you more than all else, and it's enough for my heart to be satisfied in you, Lord Jesus.

But that's not a one-time battle. That's what you tell yourself multiple times throughout the day, that it would take root in your heart and give you hope. Let me give you a fourth and final point that we've already alluded to here, and that is this, that there is hope in heaven.

There is hope in heaven. One of my primary complaints against those who are fascinated with bodily healing is that they have a completely earthbound approach to life and to sanctification, if you think about it. If you think that God's only purpose when you're sick is for your immediate healing, you have a single dimension view of the purpose of life, and everything is about the here and now, and it's totally contrary to the spirit of the New Testament pointing us forward, drawing us forward, ahead to glory and up toward God.

I want my body healed. Well, maybe there's something more than your body that's at stake. Maybe there's something more important, more transcendent than that.

I would say to those propagators of that kind of stuff, I was trying really hard to think of a P word and nothing came, so just resort to stuff. And let's think about it this way, beloved. If it is God's will for everyone to be healed of all of their affliction, all that we could possibly conclude is that God has been a miserable failure for the past 6,000 years because there's a lot of ashes spread throughout the world. There's a lot of people dead in the bottom of the sea.

There's a lot of cemeteries, a lot of places. Somehow I get the idea that maybe physical healing isn't the big purpose of God in life. And you take it from that limited perspective, beloved, from their perspective within their worldview, those who teach these things, death always wins in the end. Death is undefeated, and it will remain undefeated until Christ returns.

Undefeated except for the resurrection of Christ, you might say. What we're saying is this, sooner or later, beloved, the healing doesn't come, and what then? What then?

Then. For me, for you who embrace a biblical mindset about life, when we hear the fact that death is undefeated on earth save for the resurrection of Christ, nothing has to change about our worldview. Nothing has to change about the way that we think about these things.

We say, yeah, I know, I've accounted for that in the way that I think about life. God has purposes that transcend healing and death. Christ's salvation is more precious to me than life itself. I have grace for the moment that satisfies my heart, even though I don't know what comes tomorrow. It's enough for me to be in His hand.

That's enough for me. Don't you see, beloved? Don't you see this should be clinching in your mind, the fact that in Christ we have something that is far more valuable than physical healing. We have the answer to life. To the one who believes in Christ, this is enough for everything. This keeps me anchored in prosperity. I'm not living for this world.

Nice to have the stuff, but it's not what I'm living for. This keeps me anchored when I'm laboring for breath, knowing that death is imminent. Christ is with me. In just a few short more moments, I'm going to be with Him. Every point in between, that which would cause my heart to flame in hope is real, and it is unaltered by shifting circumstances.

It is unaltered by broken bones or diseased organs that cannot be repaired. Do you see it? Do you see it?

Do you see it? This is what enables us to live life. And what we see, then, is that true Christianity, true biblical faith, soars above the time-bound thinking that says, I've got to find physical healing. Well, what if the healing doesn't come?

Then what? Well, then God's plan, then Christ's salvation, then God's grace for today, and then heaven. Look at Philippians chapter 3. You know, there's a sense in which we could say that for every Christian, God does have healing for them.

It's just not in this life. It's in the coming resurrection when we receive new bodies that are fit for heaven, that are fit for the presence of Christ, where we're transformed from this life into something new, not transformed simply for something that's going to die anyway. Look at Philippians chapter 3 verse 17 as we try to bring this to a close. Paul says, Brethren, join in following my example and observe those who walk according to the pattern you have in us. Well, you know what Paul had said earlier in Philippians chapter 1 verse 21? Look at that real quickly with me. Paul said, For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. Gain. Verse 18 of chapter 3, he said, Many walk, of whom I've often told you, and now tell you, even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose God is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame.

Who? What do they do? They set their minds on earthly things. They set their things that are temporal, that are limited to the matters between birth and death.

And that's what they think about, and that's what they want. Paul says, Christian, you live for something else. You live for a hope that's in heaven that long outlives the grave. Verse 20, Our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory.

It's a future reality not present by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself. What do we do when the healing doesn't come? What do we think? Well, we think, but this isn't even what I'm living for. It's not even about this earthly life.

Illness does not have the final word over me. Death does not end the sentence on me. My hope is in heaven, not on earth. My hope is in the body that will be given to me at the resurrection, not the one that I have here decrepit and failing here on this earth. I'm living for something else.

I'm living for a hope that will be given to me certainly in heaven. And you rise above it all in your heart, and your heart finds joy and contentment, and your countenance finds a glow that is reflective of the glory of Christ within your heart that transforms, and everyone who sees it says, that is different than what I've seen before. That is outside the bounds of normal earthly experience. That person is joyful and content without healing. I remember the first time I met Joni Eareckson Tada in her wheelchair.

This goes back 32 years ago, 1986. I was just struck by the joy that animated her being, a joy that she would not have known had her spine not been broken in her diving accident. The body was broken to unleash a different kind of blessing to her, and it is that spiritual blessing that can belong to everyone in the midst of their difficulties when the healing doesn't come.

What can be our experience when the healing doesn't come? Victory, not defeat. Victory of soul, victory of heart, victory of spirit, even if the body is crumbling. Ian Murray describes the final hours of Martin Lloyd-Jones' life like this in the second volume of his larger biographical work on the Great Doctor.

Such a great account. I've read that so many times. I'm going to quote him as he describes the final hours of Martin Lloyd-Jones. He says, At one point in these last few days when his speech had gone, as his daughter Elizabeth sat beside him, he pointed her very definitely to the words of 2 Corinthians 4 verses 16 through 18.

I'm going to read those for you here. 2 Corinthians 4, 16 to 18. Remember, this is the passage that a dying man took his daughter to when he could not speak, and together they read this passage that says, Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.

For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. That's the passage that they read that the doctor pointed his daughter to him on his deathbed. Elizabeth said later, When I asked him if that was his experience now, what we just read in 2 Corinthians 4, is that your experience now?

He nodded his head with great vigor. The next evening, in a shaky hand, the doctor wrote on a scrap of paper for the family, Do not pray for healing. Do not hold me back from the glory. And in his very poignant account, Ian Murray describes how the doctor fell asleep that night, and Ian Murray concludes by saying this. What a great quote. His next awakening was in the land of the blessed. End quote. Beloved, that changes everything when the healing doesn't come. Death has lost its sting. 1 Corinthians 15. Beloved, look beyond your body. Look beyond this life. Look to your redeemer, because your redeemer lives. Your Christ is in heaven.

And spiritually speaking, you have died and your life is hidden with him on high. Colossians 3. What do you do when the healing doesn't come? Three words, beloved. Look to Christ. Today on The Truth Pulpit, Pastor Don Green has wrapped up a message titled, When the Healing Doesn't Come. It's part of our larger series, The Holy Spirit Today. Next time, we'll begin a look at tongues, and we hope you'll plan now to be with us. But Don, this message you preached is a great reminder for us, even beyond the issue of physical problems, isn't it?

Well, I'd sure like to think so, Bill. You know, my friend, sooner or later, life is going to catch up with us. It's going to catch up with me. It's going to catch up with you. Events are going to go against us. Loved ones are going to depart us, and the sun is one day going to set on life. You know, there's no true relief to be found in this temporary world. You and I need Christ, and his hope is real.

That's the best part. His hope lasts forever. If you don't know him, I invite you to repent and believe in Christ.

If you do know him, look to Christ for all of your hope and all of your answers in life. Thanks, Don. And friend, don't forget to visit us at TheTruthPulpit.com to learn more about our ministry. You can also find out more about podcasts and free CDs of Don's teaching. That's all at TheTruthPulpit.com. I'm Bill Wright, and we'll see you next time on The Truth Pulpit as Don Green continues in his ministry of teaching God's people God's Word.