Objection: A Famous Faith Preacher Struggled with Kidney Stones

Perhaps you’ve heard the story of a British preacher who saw amazing miracles, but still suffered a lot of agony himself from kidney stones for a time.  It’s often told as if to prove that God withholds healing for mysterious reasons.  After all, if such a great man of faith didn’t get healed, how can we ever be sure we can be healed?  The issue is sometimes erroneously referred to as his “thorn in the flesh.”

However, this preacher DID get healed.  Different biographies set the time of his suffering anywhere from a few months to a few years, but I haven’t seen any that said that he had that problem the rest of his life.  I imagine that some people have assumed that in error.  One faith-critical website says that his condition was gallstones and that it lasted 3 years.  But even they have to admit that he did not keep the problem for the rest of his life.

Also, this particular man made a choice that no doctor or knife would ever touch his body.  While that faith stand is admirable, one could suggest that if he’d been a little more lenient and been willing to take something or get other help for the issue, he might not have suffered as much or as long.

However, his story doesn’t prove anything.  Experience never proves doctrine.  Only the Word proves doctrine!  If you get your doctrine from people’s experiences, you will fall short many times.

You can focus on this man’s testimony, but you can also focus on mine.  Kidney stones run in my family, and I got one when I was thirty or so.  I was in horrible shape, but I believed that I received my healing – and then went to the emergency room.  That’s not a contradiction.  I took my Bible and F. F. Bosworth’s book “Christ the Healer” with me, and I read them most of the time when I was awake.  They thought that I was weird.  I think that people who DON’T do things like that are weird.  I had better things to do than to sit in an expensive hospital room watching non-faith-building TV shows.  I guess it’s up to you if you want to just lie there and watch couples on TV pretend to agonize over which of EXACTLY three houses they want to buy when their real decision was made before they (or in at least one case, their more photogenic stand-ins) recorded the made-for-TV scenes.  (Would YOU and your spouse make the actual life-changing decision with cameras recording that conversation?)  I was there for only about a day and a half, at which point they said there wasn’t much they could do for me other than give me painkillers (which never took all the pain away anyway because the pain was just too intense) and that I would probably suffer a lot for a few weeks based on the X-rays.  I told them that I could hurt at home a lot less expensively, and if they couldn’t do anything for me, I should go home.  So they sent me home.  That night, in awful pain, I was claiming God’s promises of being able to sleep, which I couldn’t do with that pain.  All of a sudden, a sheet of power hit me and all pain left instantly.  I fell asleep almost immediately.  The next morning, when the stone came out, I didn’t even know it was coming out until I heard a “clunk.”  That was the end of it.  The doctors told me I’d have to avoid chocolate, broccoli, dairy products and most other things that I like for the rest of my life.  I decided that I would not be bound by such a regimen.  I claimed my healing and I’ve eaten whatever I wanted since then.

I’ve had only one incident a quarter of a century later, but I’d had more time to build my faith and this time I didn’t go to the hospital.  I did scream (literally) in the car when coming back from preaching a healing service (of all things!), “I’m HEALED!  I’m HEALED!  I’m HEALED!”  (My wife was driving and she had to put up with that.  It was no fun for either of us.)  Probably most people would have checked into the emergency room, but I remember how little they had helped last time and I didn’t want to go through that time and expense again.  Also, though I was in pain, I wasn’t in as bad shape as the first time.  The problem stopped, and interestingly, I don’t even recall sensing anything leave my body.  Whether something did leave or it just disappeared, I don’t know, but I DO know that the Word works mightily in me.  Both cases were very short and I never suffered for years as the British preacher did.  I don’t know why it took years for him, though apparently, he himself explained that his faith just needed to be developed more.

Rather than emphasizing the experience of someone who didn’t get healed (for a while, at least), why not take encouragement from the testimony of someone who DID get healed?

A friend of mine and I went into a hospital room to pray for someone else who had a kidney stone and they discharged him a couple hours later, completely healed.  We are just as redeemed from kidney stones as we are from all other ailments.