Wheelchair Glory

My first husband was a diehard faith man. That meant a lot of things, one of which was that he only went to a doctor when he had an issue with which he really, really, really needed help. I've gotta give it to him--he really, really, really knew how to stand on God's word for healing. I had the privilege of seeing what can only be labeled as miracles in his body twice. Then again, the last big illness he had, though he did all the standing and believing as he had before (and with more strength and perspicacity than ever before, what with all his experience in that area) guess what. He died. Isn't that something? Bottom line: for all their "sound good" prescriptions, books and teachings that itemize steps to take for healing are fallible. Yes, there are things we can do to grab on to our healing. But over all is God. It is He who determines when that healing will come--here, on this earth, or in heaven.

Steve's death threw me into a spiritual maelstrom. How could he die when his faith was so strong? He had believed God for our two boys to have their dislocated digits fixed without surgery and without the insertion of pins--and it happened. He believed God for the stolen truck of a congregant to be found, tools and all--and it happened. This man had what it took insofar as faith was concerned. He knew how to stand on God's word, and as his wife I can testify that he didn't have any "hidden sins" that would hinder his prayers--yet he died.

I remember broaching with him the subject of a well-known Christian quadriplegic. After seeking healing and not accessing it, she accepted her disabled state and went on to minister, marry, and be an advocate for the disabled. Oh, boy. You would have thought I'd lit a match under the man. He got so mad he was almost trembling and throwing things around instead of placing them gently in their place.

"People like her are a shame to what God wants to do. Healing is a part of the New Testament Covenant. People who embrace their disability and turn it into a holier-than-thou experience are nothing but a blight in the body of Christ, confusing people and turning them away from seeking God for the healing that is theirs."

Obviously my words weren't pleasing to him, so (miraculously) I sealed my lips--but it didn't keep me from wondering if his anger might be a little misdirected. His zeal for the Lord was laudable, but was it correctly placed? Twenty years down the line, when he himself died from cancer, I thought, "Hmm, maybe he was a little wrong."

There are many, many scriptures to point to the fact that healing is a part of our covenant with Christ. But somehow it is so hard to straddle that line between faith and trusting that even if we don't see it with our eyes, even if God chooses to heal on the other side of heaven, God is faithful to His promises.

I recently had the privilege of attending a simulcast conference for women in which Jennifer Rothschlid was a speaker. Guess what. She began loosing her sight in middle school and is blind. Yet she has gone on to marry, have children, and minister. She has not let her blindness come between her and her faith in the goodness and faithfulness of God. Could it be that such counterintuitive faith is a kind of glory?

At that same conference I met a beautiful and bubbly woman whose husband has been struggling with a degenerative disease and is now in a wheelchair. Yet he has not let the disease or the wheelchair define him. There are times when he has to spend a few days at a facility, and guess what. He preaches there. He has led some twenty people to the Lord, if not more. Would he have gone to minister at that facility if he had not had need of it? Could it be that God has used his physical weakness to bring lost ones into the Kingdom?

If you need healing, by all means seek God. Stand on His word, believe to receive it. But don't put God in a box. Don't get discouraged if the healing tarries. Who knows if, as you walk through the valley of sickness, you will be a light to draw lost ones to Him who would otherwise have not been reached.

No matter when the healing comes, may you hold on to God's grace. May you seek to glorify God in whatever state you find yourself. Like the guy in the wheelchair, you can take the thorn in the flesh by the horns and make it a sentence for life. Eternal life for you--and the others to whom you minister.

" ... by whose stripes ye were healed" (1 Peter 2:24).

"Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God" ( I Corinthians 10:31).