Sickness — Blog — Canyon Hills

Article by Kathryn Butler

Over a year ago, my kids and I visited our friend in the hospital during one of his many emphysema flares. He’d suffered a long, complicated course, bouncing back and forth for months between a rehabilitation center and a hospital, without stabilizing long enough to ever return home. Before long, an oxygen tank was his constant companion, and he could no longer sing the hymns that had once uplifted him in times of trouble.

My kids were accustomed to such visits, and clambered next to our friend to scribble in coloring books while we talked. As they snuggled up beside him, he didn’t chuckle or embrace them as usual. When I asked him his thoughts, his eyes stirred with unease.

“I don’t understand what God is doing,” he finally answered, referring to his worsening illness. Then, in a quavering voice, he said, “I’m scared.”

Epicenter of Fear

My friend’s experience wasn’t unusual. Fear preys upon the minds and hearts of all who walk through the sliding doors of a hospital. Some of us careen in on stretchers, fearing for our lives as clinicians flock around us to stem a gush of blood or a haywire heartbeat. Others struggle to quiet our pounding hearts as we await a surgery or a biopsy result. Still more wring our hands in waiting rooms, where we fear the loss of a life interwoven with our own.

Whatever the circumstances, illness can stir up fears we never knew we harbored. Although medication can dull our pain, and therapies can slow cancer in its march, no pat answers can sponge away such fears. The wounds course too deep, and the nightmares linger too long after we’ve awoken from anesthesia.

And yet, we have hope, even in the hospital.

“God remains sovereign over all the needles and the pathology reports, the bad prognoses and the statistics.”Tweet Share on Facebook

God remains sovereign over all the needles and the pathology reports, the bad prognoses and the statistics. His love and faithfulness are everlasting, unchanging, and wholly independent of the conditions listed in our medical charts. Christ, “the founder and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2), gave his life to save us from the darkest of fears. How do we cling to this truth when anxiety seizes us in the hospital? As one who has walked alongside the sick both as a clinician and as a friend, here are three truths to consider.

Peace for Every Moment

First, we can give our fears to God. Turmoil that flutters in the pit of the stomach can prompt us to turn to God in prayer. The Bible doesn’t promise us freedom from tribulation, but it does promise that the Lord will hear when we pray to him (Luke 11:11–13). David sings, “I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears” (Psalm 34:4). Paul guides us to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:16–18), and Peter encourages us to cast our anxieties on God, because he cares for us (1 Peter 5:6–7).

Praying without ceasing doesn’t mean God will give us what we want. His ways are higher than ours (Isaiah 55:8–9), and God works all things for our good, even in the face of suffering (Genesis 50:20; Romans 8:28; 2 Corinthians 12:8–9). And yet, when we prayerfully turn our fears over to the Lord, he gilds us in the peace of Christ. As Paul elegantly reminds us in his letter to the Philippians,

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6–7)

When you shudder at the blip of a hospital monitor, and wrestle with worries in the sterile night, give your fears to God. In Christ, he will cover you with peace to endure.

With Us in the Shadow

Second, we can remember that God is with us. The Psalms beautifully express how God, “abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6), delivers us from our fears:

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. (Psalm 23:4)
The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? (Psalm 27:1)
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling. (Psalm 46:1–3)

During the exodus, God led his people through the wilderness day and night, never departing from them (Exodus 13:22). So also does God remain with us, through the Holy Spirit who sanctifies us. Jesus — our light, our salvation, our stronghold — promises to be with us, not only during the biopsies, and not only in our pain, but “always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

Blood That Abolishes Fear

Finally, we can meditate on all that God promised us. Jesus advised his disciples against anxiety, pointing out that life consists of more than earthly details, that the Father will provide for his own, and that those who follow Christ are heirs to incomparable riches in the kingdom. “If God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith!’” he taught during the Sermon on the Mount (Luke 12:28). “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32).

“Our Father abolishes our fears through the redeeming blood of his Son.”Tweet Share on Facebook

The Father gives us the kingdom, and thus abolishes our fears, through the redeeming blood of the Son. He embraces us as his own children, drawing us near when nightmares jolt us from repose: “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are” (1 John 3:1). Our hope is in the Lord (Psalm 121:1–2) and, in Christ, nothing can wrench us from his love (Romans 8:38–39).

This truth — that our light, our stronghold, our refuge and strength dwells with us, and has already saved us — guts the fears that haunt us in the hospital corridors. We have a truth that no prognosis can sully. No pain can dim its light. No disease can diminish its power.

Kathryn Butler is a trauma and critical care surgeon turned writer and homeschooling mom. She is author of Between Life and Death: A Gospel-Centered Guide to End-of-Life Medical Care. She lives north of Boston, and writes at Oceans Rise.

Posted at: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/fearless-even-in-illness

Matt Chandler

All of us will face suffering. We are all only a phone call away from our life changing forever. We will get sick. We will lose loved ones. Trials will come.

And we don’t know when suffering will hit us.

For me, it was Thanksgiving morning 2009. I walked into our living room at home to give my youngest, Norah, her bottle. I burped her. I took her back to her Johnny Jump Up. I turned.

And then I woke up in hospital. I’d had a brain seizure, and I was diagnosed with a primary brain tumor, facing immediate surgery, chemo and radiation—and an estimate of a few years to live.

In that season, I found that my Christian friends tended to fall into one of two camps. The first camp was all about the will of God, and praying for the will of God. The second camp believed that If I had faith and believed that the Lord would heal me, then he would heal.

Those two camps tend not to play too well together. But here’s the thing: I actually believe they can help one another. One tells us how to pray for healing, and the other tells us how to respond when God doesn’t heal. We need both. We see that played out in the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, in Daniel 3.

The Real Story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego

You may well remember the characters of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego from felt-board stories in Sunday School, but this Bible story has direct implications for how we think about healing and how we pray for healing.

To recap Daniel 3, King Nebuchadnezzar made a golden image and demanded that the people of God, who had been exiled to Babylon, worship it. Three of God’s servants who had been put in a place of authority in Babylon—Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego—refused. When the King threatened to throw them in a fiery furnace because of their disobedience, they responded by saying:

Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up. (Daniel 3:17-18)

In other words; our God can save us, we believe that the Lord will save us, and even if He doesn’t, we will still praise the name of the Lord.

This should be our default position, regardless of what we’re walking through, and especially when we’re walking through the valley of suffering:

The Lord Can - God is sovereign. He is the Creator of all things, he is the Sustainer of all things, he has the power to do whatever he wills. Whatever suffering we are facing, we know that God has the power to intervene and to redeem and heal our pain and brokenness. Colossians 1:16-17 says, “For by him [Christ] all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

The Lord Will - God is not only all-powerful, he is also personal. He loves us and cares about us. He bends his ear to the cries of his people. God invites us to pray to him and tells us that he will answer our prayers. Psalm 34:17 says, “When the righteous cry for help, the LORD hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.”

If He Doesn’t - God is good. We can see throughout the Scriptures, as he reveals who he is and what he is about, that God is a loving Father who knows best and wants what is best for his children. We can trust that if he chooses not to bring healing to us that he knows something we don’t know—and that one day he will end suffering and death once and for all. As Jesus pointed out, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:11).

How to Go About Praying

The Bible frees us up to pray boldly and courageously for healing—not to simply pray God’s will—because we know that he can heal, that he will heal, and that his will will be done regardless of the outcome. We’re not setting low bars. We have this crazy high bar. We come to him believing that he will heal, and believing that if he does not, it will be because he has a better plan and a higher aim in mind.

The Bible calls us to pray and plead with the Lord, asking Him to bring healing. I’m going to ask and believe with all my heart that Jesus Christ is going to heal me and heal the people I’m praying for, but then I’m going to open my hands, knowing that the will of God will take place. That’s the example Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego give to us. That’s how we pray in our trials—Lord, I know you can heal, Lord, I believe you will heal, and Lord, if you don’t, would you bring glory to your name and keep me worshiping you.

Joy in the Sorrow is the moving story of Matt Chandler’s battle with a potentially fatal brain tumor. But it's also the stories of members of The Village Church, whose lives were marked by suffering of various kinds. How they taught Matt, and continue to teach him, how to walk with joy in sorrow. Pre-order it here.

Fearless Even in Illness : Lessons for the Hospital