Recently an acquaintance with a severe back problem was lamenting that God had not healed her. Why? She wondered. Then she named off those in the bible God had healed and a few others she knew first hand. After all, she was a Christian who prayed for others and had beseeched God to take away her pain. Why wasn’t God granting her wish?
I empathized with her situation, but gently pointed out that perhaps God did not exist to take away our pain. Healing is something God performs for his glory not our comfort. This was a totally foreign concept for her so she said, “I’ll have to think about that.”
Indeed God is capable of easing our pain, but he generally doesn’t touch us with a magic wand where it hurts to make it better, like kissing a “boo-boo.” Although he might sprinkle a little fairy dust of stamina, endurance, encouragement, perseverance or peace of mind to help us make it through the hard times, he doesn’t always just take our discomfort away.
We all want God to immediately do his supernatural thing to fix us, things, or circumstances. That isn’t the way God usually works. What he might do is plant a seed in our mind that gets us thinking. It might come from something we read, a phrase, the lyrics to a song we’re listening to, or what someone says off handedly that starts us on the road to healing. Sometimes he gives pieces of solutions, bit by bit. We eventually discover that perhaps God isn’t as concerned about our circumstances as our reaction to them.
God is not some big sugar daddy in the sky just waiting to grant over every request, no matter how heartfelt it may be. When we pray to God we are not presenting some Santa Claus with our a daily Christian wish list so he can get right on it, snap to it, and busily take care of what we think we need.
Unfortunately our idea of needs and wants seem to blur when talking to God. Fortunately for us God can tell the difference. That’s why we trust him. I guess that’s a question we must all ask ourselves: Do we trust God? Do we trust him to give us what we need opposed to what we want?
Although our immediate healing might be a legitimate need in our eyes, it might not be one in God’s eyes. There may be areas connected with our illness that he wants to use for our spiritual growth. And although God may not always quickly take away our discomfort, he will give us what we need to become a better Christian servant for his glory.
