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May 29, 2020 - June 30, 2021
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...
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man named Henry Frost, a Canadian missionary statesman of an earlier generation. His book Miraculous Healing was first published in 1931.
What first drew me to the book was the obvious fact that Henry Frost didn’t seem to have any theological ax to grind.
There are those who point to such miracles as signs of Christ’s lordship saying, “Jesus healed those people as evidence of His authority as the Son of God. By such power, He was proving He was Messiah.”
No, God did not use helpless people to advance His own agenda.
Scripture tells us. He was moved with compassion when He saw the hurting masses.
Oh, I’m so glad for that!
I’m convinced He didn’t heal people only to prove a point about His being Messiah;
He desired to work His will in their lives, not just for His benefit and others, but for the person He was healing.
He does not willingly—that is, He doesn’t from the heart—bring affliction or grief. Suffering may be a part of God’s larger and most mysterious plan, but God’s intention is always to demonstrate compassion and unfailing love that touches people at their deepest point of need.
What Jesus began doing to sin and its results won’t be complete until the second coming.
God “has saved” us, yet we are still “being saved” (1 Cor. 1:18). We are still on earth. This means we’re still going to feel the influence of that old curse.
God has a purpose for my life, an intention He had in mind before the beginning of time—and
you have to do is Google, “God wants you healed.” In two clicks you’ll see all the ministries and Web sites proclaiming God’s blanket desire that everyone who calls on Him in faith will be made well and whole, free of injury and disease.
lack of faith. Because
God obviously wants everyone well.
Believe me, I have seen the wreckage, heartbreak, confusion, guilt, despair, and faith-destroying corrosive power of these hateful arguments for more yea...
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Yes, we are healed by His stripes, or wounds, but we are a work in process, and He isn’t finished with us yet!
Peter looked over his shoulder at John and said, “Lord, what about him?” Jesus patiently replied, “If I want
Jesus has His own purpose for each of us. And whatever situation He gives us in life, we’re to follow Him in faith and trust.
Paul says that as believers we’re clay pots, common earthenware jars meant to hold priceless treasure through the course of our lives. That impossibly valuable treasure is nothing less than “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). Each of these earthenware jars has been handmade by God Himself, our Creator and the master artisan—not stamped out in some mass-production factory in China. So as with all handmade items, we are unique. No two exactly alike. And if our very life purpose is to display the treasure we contain within, that display often works
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Years ago now, my own dear mother, Lindy Eareckson, left this earth for heaven. In that moment, she had no more need of the box that had wrapped her for eighty-seven years. It was empty, with worn-out corners, bends, and wrinkles. And yet it had been the vessel in which the treasure of the Spirit of Christ had dwelt. We loved that “box” because she was in it—and because she let Jesus shine through
Because of her profound weakness, the treasure of Jesus’ life shown through in a way that not even the most technically correct performance on American Idol could have come close to matching.
He will hold resolutely, in answering prayer, to that course which will combine in bringing the largest and most enduring good to pass.
in his life—sorrowful, upsetting, annoying, pressure-packed, or painful as it may have been at the time—had been good for him, and had been specifically allowed by God to benefit him. Say what you will, my friend, but that is a profound realization for anyone.
looking back, he could (now) honestly admit that it had produced a good effect.
It had turned him … and he’d needed turning. He had been heading one direction, then—wham!—he was flattened by this whatever-it-was event in his life.
now, many happy miles down the right road, he was looking back and saying to himself, “You know that was a very hard thing, but thank God for it! Lord, You are good and do good. I’m so thankful. If I had kept heading in that direction—if I had insisted on going my own way—who knows what would have happened?”
In the pages of Scripture, authentic strength—of the sort that wins battles, overcomes impossible odds, and takes on overwhelming opposition—walks hand in hand with weakness.
Ah, but here’s the rub. To access that incomparable resurrection power, you and I must first be thoroughly convinced of our own utter bankruptcy and turn to Him with all our hearts. As C. S. Lewis wrote on one occasion, we must “fall into Jesus.”
Who can understand the ways of God? As Solomon noted, “A man’s steps are directed by the LORD. How then can anyone understand his own way?” (Prov. 20:24). The truth is that you and I—if we see anything at all—perceive only the dimmest outline or shadow of God’s plan and purpose. His ways are often mysterious, and it’s beyond our capacity to analyze His actions or predict what He might do next.
The ancient stones glowed bright and golden. You could see details on carvings that hadn’t been visible in decades. It was like a different cathedral. What a wonder a bit of strategic sandblasting can accomplish! When I use the word sandblasting—and
But the beauty of being stripped down to the basics, sandblasted until we reach a place where we feel empty and helpless, is that God can fill us up with Himself. When pride and pettiness have been removed, God can fill us with “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Suffering doesn’t teach
Jeremiah. God tells the prophet, “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”
So many of us settle for second-best things that really cannot and do not satisfy. And here’s the jarring thing: God calls that sin. It is an offense to Him when we Christians know full well that Jesus is the clear, fresh, and satisfying Living Water … and yet we turn to the attractions of this world, telling ourselves that such substitute pleasures truly can and do refresh and satisfy. Where are our heads?
Jesus is the spring of Living Water, and when we drink of Him, out of us flow rivers of living water. And the offense against God comes when we know that Jesus is the only one who satisfies, yet still dig around in the dust and sand, groping for cisterns that can’t hold half a teacup of tepid
Thirsty, dry, and weary beyond telling, we finally push aside our leaky canteens and fall on our knees beside the Never-Failing Stream. We come back to the fountain. And when we do, we sometimes realize that if God hadn’t allowed the hurt or suffering in our lives, we might have wandered for years, subsisting on stale, rationed canteen water rather than plunging our faces into the very essence of refreshment and life. If we allow it, suffering will lead us to the bank of the stream,
Friend, you may be going through a time of wounding right now and, if you are, take heart, because your heart is being set to God’s, and there is no saving work apart from pain. Your life will produce so much more fruit from it all—fruit that you probably won’t even see or know about.
Maybe it all comes down to this. Do we really believe what we say we really believe? Do we believe that this life is just a brief staging area before real life begins on the other side, in heaven with Jesus? Are we truly counting on the fact that though these physical bodies of ours may change, or become incapacitated or severely limited, our authentic life—hidden with Christ Himself—will continue to grow and blossom and bear fruit through the rest of our years—and then forever beyond that?
Her grafting to Jesus, through many wounds, is profound beyond telling. You and I may not see it with our physical eyes, but it is being seen … by the hosts of heaven and hell, and perhaps by those saints who have gone before her who fill the heavenly grandstands and cheer her on in the race of her
Such questions will come, of course. With David, I sometimes sigh, “How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?”1 It’s all right to ask the questions, and certainly God is neither put off nor offended by our anguished, middle-of-the-night queries. But
there is also a time to set the questions aside and think again about answers—good, satisfying answers—He has already given to me through the years.
Celebrate, you say? The dictionary defines the word as observing a day or commemorating an event with ceremonies or festivities. Honestly, I can’t think of a better word, given all the good things that have happened as a result of my wheelchair.
I’ve now crested more than forty years in my wheelchair, and my bones are thinner and more fragile than ever. In the Bible, the number forty usually means a time of testing. Like the forty days it rained on Noah’s ark, or Jesus’ being tested in the wilderness for forty days, or the Israelites’ wandering in the desert for forty years.
don’t know if I’ll ever see a miraculous healing this side of my gravestone. But I do know that usually after forty years of testing, after the forty-year trial, there are always moments of victory, power, and jubilation. It’s been ages since a Maryland crab and a broken neck began the unfolding of God’s plan for me and for the ministry I lead to reach other disabled people with God’s loving–kindness.
When you find yourself in chronic agony, life gets reduced to hours rather than days—and sometimes minutes and seconds. When I am in physical distress in the night, unable to sleep, unable to move, and unwilling to awaken Ken (again) to turn me, I need to know that God’s concern and care for me is literally breath by breath, heartbeat
That’s another truth that enables me to keep going. Whatever strings are broken in our lives— if we concentrate, if we apply what we know—we can still play beautiful music with what we have left. In fact, it will be music that no one else can play in the same way.
