I had a distinctly unpleasant conversation with a person recently.
I suspect if you also talk with human beings, you have those interactions from time to time too. 😉
As any good overthinker would do, I replayed the conversation in my head repeatedly, trying to make better sense of it. While I attempted to remain respectful, I must confess that exchange derailed my week a bit.
Maybe you can relate to grappling with confusion, anger, hurt, analyzing your own contributions to the problem, or any other number of feelings. In the days that followed, I have found myself asking God, “Why?” more than normal.
Why are people unkind? Why does it bother us so much? Why do some little things significantly trigger old pain? Why does this world hurt so much? Why does trauma linger so? Why does God not just heal it? Why does God not heal everything?
I have walked (and limped, and run, and crawled) with God a lot of years now. And there are some things that I can somewhat make sense of in the grand themes of Scripture, but boy, I do not like to live through.
Do you have some of those things in your own life? Pains that don’t have an easy solution? I think on some level, we expect problems to flow like a novel with a beginning, middle, and end. But what happens when there is no real end?
This is where American Christianity clashes with the Bible.
Not all sufferings are promised to end in this life.
Our obsession with instant gratification is marring our understanding of God’s word.
Because we don’t know what Scripture actually says, we render ourselves unprotected from our wounded emotions and the temptations of the Enemy. When we unknowingly or intentionally read what we want the Bible to mean instead of what it does, we gravely harm our ability to cope with this world’s pain.
The Old Testament is full of humanity’s cry for healing. People like Moses and Elijah obey God’s commands to provide healing for people. David begs for physical healing in the Psalms and the prophets petition for the healing of Israel.
Time and again, God calls out from heaven, declaring Himself the Holy One who saves His people. (Isaiah 41: 14) He moves to save the lives of individuals like Hagar (Genesis 21: 17) and King Hezekiah (2 Kings 20:8).
The New Testament is the same. The Gospels show Jesus walking from town to town healing a wide variety of ailments. Some of my favorite verses say Jesus looks out over the crowds and “has compassion on them.” Surely this is the Holy One come to heal His people, just as He promised He would!
The disciples and early church, filled with the Holy Spirit, see unimaginable miracles as God heals through them.
These stories ignite our faith and rightfully deepen our prayers for healing. James 5:14 tells anyone who is sick to go to their elders to be anointed, a symbolic picture of submitting to God’s loving healing.
It is a good and right thing to turn to God immediately when healing is needed- physically, emotionally, relationally, and collectively. Scripture is very clear on this.
But those same Scriptures do not promise that every request for healing will be answered the way we are likely asking.
The same God who drew close to King Hezekiah in his sin and distress, is the same one who refused the snake’s poison to harm Paul. He intervened to prevent death in both the Old and New Testament.
And this healing God also stood to His feet to welcome Stephen to heaven as he was stoned (Acts 7:56), certainly against the prayers of horrified believers.
Paul says he prayed repeatedly for God to remove a “thorn in his flesh” and instead God responds with a verse the saints have clung to in every generation since:
But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.”
2 Corinthians 12:9a
So how do we reconcile these things? God promises to come to His people to save, heal, and sustain them, and yet, sometimes He… doesn’t?
Ah! This is a perfect example of why studying the Bible can be likened to a treasure hunt. What we might think we see at first, is more fully revealed as we dig.
In Genesis, we first learn that God created time, so thus, He must exist outside of time. His promises are sometimes fulfilled immediately and some we are still waiting for in perfect completion. This is the tension of living in the time after Jesus and before His final return. The work is finished and yet the glory is not fully revealed.
It’s the hope of the now and the not yet.
Maybe you find yourself in this same longing.
Have you have been crying out for healing of a chronic illness or a desperate medical situation? Sometimes the yearning for daily, functional health is as painful as the condition itself.
There are times where health is so dire, life itself cannot muster one more breath unless the Lord intervenes. Even now, around the world in every walk of life, people kneel beside a loved one screaming for God to help. Maybe you know this feeling intimately.
Perhaps sin in this world has catastrophically affected you. Someone wronged you so severely, the rest of your life will be marked by its effects. Trauma can feel like a life sentence unjustly thrown upon you by someone else’s choices.
Sometimes daily stress or simply genetics make despair a familiar friend. The darkness seems to tighten its grip and it feels impossible to drag yourself through one more day.
Perhaps your heart aches for your community or an injustice that needs supernatural power.
There are countless other examples not listed here that you probably relate to. If so, I hope you know you aren’t alone in those feelings or wrestling with God’s goodness in those situations.
In my limited life experience, I think most of us are walking around with deep, unhealed wounds. We’ve maybe tried a wide variety of healthy and harmful ways to cure the ache- prayer, therapy, fasting, self-medicating, revenge, or bitterness.
I think a lot of times for a non-Christian, the reality of these pains boils down to the thought, “If God even exists, He cannot be worthy of worship if He allows this.”
For Christ followers, it might sound more like, “Is God really good?”
“I must be unlovable by even Him if He will not remove this.”
“If He will not fix this ache, I will do what I want to make it feel better, even if I know it is wrong.”
Yes, you should take those thoughts, and with great curiosity ponder why those responses surface for you. You should ask God if they are true. Ask Him to reveal Himself to you exactly as He truly is.
Deep faith will not be discovered on the mountaintops. It is rooted in the valleys.
You cannot love what you do not know. Christians with great faith have wrestled with what and why they believe what they do.
In a moment of vulnerability, I’ll share with you that this post is less about any reader and more about preaching to my own heart. Even so, I’ve found anything I have struggled through, someone else has too. The last several years in our household have been extremely hard. In fact, my husband and I mostly don’t even refer to them by dates anymore, simply titles like, “The Year of Hospitals,” or “The Year that ‘XYZ thing happened.’” We mark time by whatever catastrophe seemed to dominate that season.
In this, my husband has quoted this verse countless times.
Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, YET I WILL REJOICE IN THE LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
Habakkuk 3:17-19
God, the Lord, is my strength; He makes my feet like the deer’s; He makes me tread on my high places.
Emphasis my own
Chris has repeated these words in a scary hospital room and in the quiet darkness when we weren’t sure what would happen next. He wrote it on the floor of our house after it flooded, wanting it to be under our feet every night at the dinner table when we’d one day move home again.
Habakkuk the prophet, knowing unimaginable trials awaited him and his country, made a choice. Whether the worst has already happened or has yet to happen, we too can decide to take joy in the God of our salvation.
Maybe struggles seem to mark a large portion of your life recently. Maybe you can relate to one small trigger, one frustrating conversation, that brings all the hard memories to the surface and leave you scrambling to reorganize your thoughts with truth.
Sometimes God reaches down to heal in an instant. I’ve seen Him do it.
And sometimes the healing hurts.
The road to eternity might have more limping than skipping.
And that’s ok.
I want to break down a verse with you, bit by bit.
This is from the Isaiah, probably my favorite book in the whole Bible. Isaiah was an Old Testament prophet. He prophesied during the reigns of multiple kings; he saw God punish and rescue. His words were intended directly for Israel, calling them to repent and turn back to the Lord. But this book is special, because there are parts that point directly to the coming Savior, Jesus, and parts that can be applied, in proper context, to our lives as modern-day Christians.
In this particular section, God is bluntly calling out the sins of Israel, while promising that His anger will not always burn. He says He has seen their disobedient ways, but He will still come to heal. (Isaiah 57:18)
For thus says the One Who is high and lifted up, Who inhabits eternity, Whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.”
Isaiah 57:15
Hear his phrasing, “Thus says.” God is talking and Isaiah is simply relaying the message. God is identifying Himself as the One Who is high and lifted up; He is above all gods and kings, worthy of all adoration.
And don’t miss this special line. He inhabits eternity! God is reminding His people that He always was and always will be. He is outside our sense of time.
His name is Holy. He is only good. And thus, can only do what is good. He is entirely set apart from us in His purity.
He lives in the high and holy place. His home is heaven- where no filth can stain His presence. His is above all things and people.
AND. This precious word- and.
And He dwells with the person with the contrite and lowly spirit. Contrite can mean something similar to guilty or downcast, but this specific word is also used in another verse and translated there as crushed.
The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.
Psalm 34:18
Emphasis my own
He is with the contrite and lowly spirit. The lowly. The humble, the low stationed, the humiliated.
God dwells on a glorious, heavenly throne AND with the broken. Why? To revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite. Who needs to be revived? Someone dead or very, very close to it. He isn’t talking about physical life and death here though. He comes to bring to life again those whose inner breath, spark, or life is waning, to revive them. And to restore their mind, understanding, will, and thoughts.
This one little verse, hidden away in a very long book of prophecy, shows us a glimpse of the entirety of Scripture.
God is altogether holy, mighty, and glorious. He is far above anything we could imagine or understand.
AND.
And He comes to dwell with us. Jesus is even called by a name that means this- Emmanuel.
He hasn’t forgotten the people He made. He hasn’t forgotten to heal. He is healing even now. He both made all things right in Jesus and is making all things right until the end.
So friend, if starting a new year has you more afraid than excited, or if your heart is humbled under your situation, you can look around you for the promised God who came for us. His truth isn’t found in our emotions but in the words He gave us. Complete healing is offered to all who will become His.
Whether today is the hardest day you’ve ever faced, or you are dancing on the mountaintop, or you are just having to remind yourself of truth, the ultimate Healer is near.
Christian, remember that the traumas, the illnesses, the hurts, are all healed in Jesus. Even if the bandages don’t come off until eternity.
Sitting in this glorious truth with you,
