When Unhealed Illness Brings Shame

From the moment I was diagnosed with a glioblastoma, we began to hear stories. Stories of people who had lived 5, 10, even 14 years with the same kind of tumor. The intention was to encourage us that, even though the doctors warn that I have a short time left to live, people have long outlived those expectations.

As a Christian, as one who sincerely believes that God can and does heal in miraculous ways, I know that the God who worked wonders in the past is still working wonders today. If he wills it, he can heal me (Matt. 8:1–3). Which leads to the question for those who don’t get a miracle: Why does God not will my healing?

This is where shame comes in—if God can heal, then there must be some reason he doesn’t choose to heal me. That’s true. However, it’s the next assumption that gets us in trouble: If there’s a reason God doesn’t will my healing, it’s because of something wrong with me—my faith is insufficient; my obedience isn’t consistent enough; my prayers haven’t been sincere, fervent, or regular enough.

To escape this shame trap, we have to understand what the Bible teaches we can justifiably expect with regard to miracles from God.

We Remember Exceptions

The cynical, overly realistic, jaded side of me knows that for every story of someone living five-plus years with a tumor like mine, there are hundreds or even thousands of stories you don’t usually hear—stories of people who died in the first few months after their diagnosis.

If God can heal, then there must be some reason he doesn’t choose to heal me.

We don’t hear much about those stories, even though they represent the norm of what to expect. Whenever I hear stories of the exceptional, I’m forced to remember that only exceptional cases get made into stories. By definition, the exceptional cases aren’t the norm.

Does faith in a wonder-working God change any of that? I don’t think it does. Though we hear stories of God doing amazing things and though we’re told (by some) to “expect miracles,” our experience more often reflects that of the saints commended for their faith in Hebrews 11:13: “These all died in faith, not having received the things promised.”

Not a Faith Problem

So how does faith in a wonder-working God exist comfortably in a world where his wonders seem conspicuously absent? Should this argue against the God of the Bible? No, certainly not.

Is the answer found in our own lack of faith? That would neatly shift the responsibility for God’s wonders away from God, who is still eager to perform miracles, and identify the problem as being in our unbelief. After all, in Matthew 13:58, we read of Jesus that “he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.”

It’s a false application of such verses to conclude that, if we want a miracle from God, we need to have sufficient faith. We elsewhere see Jesus healing those who don’t even know they’re being healed. For example, the accounts in Luke 7:11–15, 22:49–51, and John 5:5–9 don’t indicate that anyone’s faith played any part in the healings Jesus performed. So the Bible doesn’t make a one-to-one connection between faith and miracles. Miracles, like the sufferings they address, happen according to God’s will for his own purposes. We can’t quantify this into a system.

The principle I stated earlier applies here as well: Only exceptional cases get made into stories. The reason the Bible records so many miracles isn’t that miracles are or were common. It’s the opposite. The Bible is filled with stories of miracles because those are the exceptional, amazing acts of God worth recording.

When you consider the thousands of years covered in biblical history and the many millions of lives that existed during those years, you begin to understand how rare miracles were. They’re almost exclusively clustered around the times of Moses (as the law was introduced), Elijah and Elisha (the beginning of authoritative prophetic teaching), and Jesus and his disciples (the initiation of the new revelation in Christ).

Jesus himself touches on the mystery of the scarcity of miracles in Luke 4:25–27. In response to those who expected him to perform miracles on command, he replies,

I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.

Many needed food, but only one received a miraculous provision. Many needed healing, but only one received it by a miracle from God.

“Ah, but perhaps only Naaman and the widow of Zarephath had enough faith,” someone may reply. But the Bible doesn’t say that. Neither of those characters is described as having exceptional faith that God rewarded. Instead, we know from 1 Kings 19:18 that the Lord had preserved a remnant of 7,000 faithful men and women in those days. There was faith in the land, but miracles were scarce. God alone knows why.

Let’s not forget Paul, who prays earnestly for relief from God and yet doesn’t receive healing (2 Cor. 12:7–9). No, friends, it isn’t faith or boldness or anything on our part that has the power to move God’s hand so that he works wonders on our behalf. Rather, as the old hymn confesses, “God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.”

No Shame

I’m not sharing these thoughts to discourage prayer for healing or to say our faith is irrelevant to God’s hand at work. I’m sharing this to disrupt the shame cycle that traps too many of my brothers and sisters as they look to God to heal them or their loved ones.

A sickness that goes unhealed isn’t a sign of God’s displeasure. He isn’t disappointed in you. He isn’t holding back his hand of healing until you measure up to some unspecified standard. He loves you. He is with you. He has plans for you through your trial that you cannot right now comprehend.

Pray for healing, yes. But don’t make healing the yardstick by which you measure God’s activity in your life. And don’t let the absence or delay of healing hang over your head as a cruel judge, condemning your lack of faith.

Pray for healing, yes. But don’t make healing the yardstick by which you measure God’s activity in your life.

Yet there’s more we need to understand about God’s miracles than just that they’re rare and that they come only from God’s will and not our performance. God’s healing miracles are incomplete. Lazarus dies again. The lepers Jesus healed would one day die. In a sense, Jesus was just delaying the inevitable. So why bother healing at all?

The answer is that it wasn’t primarily about healing bodies.

Coming Kingdom

When Jesus healed the sick and suffering, he was giving a sneak peek at the power of the kingdom that he would soon bring. That kingdom is where our true hope lies, and in showing his power to heal, Jesus was calling people to place their hope of full healing in him. Only when these bodies are exchanged for incorruptible ones and only when death is no more will “healing” have truly taken place (1 Cor. 15:53–55).

My dad was dying of pancreatic cancer in 2007. Whenever anyone asked him if God was going to heal him, he’d answer, “God is going to heal me. Either through the doctors, through a miracle, or by bringing me to be with him in heaven.” I pray that each child of God would hold on to that truth.

God will heal. It’s not up to us to determine how and when he’ll do so. It’s up to us to walk in faith and wait on him. “Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!” (Ps. 27:14).