Objection: God Gets Glory from Our Patient Endurance of Sickness

I partially agree with this statement!  God does get some glory from the fact that you don’t turn into a mean old crab when you’re not feeling well.  Your ability to continue to walk in love and kindness while sick can have a positive influence on unbelievers and be a witness to them of the grace of God.  I think we come down too hard on sick people who don’t believe in healing when we say that God gets no glory from your patience while sick.  It is possible that an unbeliever can see the difference between the way you handle illness and how an unbeliever handles illness and be positively influenced for Christ.  God can get a limited amount of glory from that.  In fact, I know of a case personally where someone DID get saved when he saw a Christian’s handling of a terminal illness.  But imagine the greater impact if the person with the illness had a radical Christian healing testimony!

God would get far more glory if you were healed!  Then the unbelievers could really see the all-sufficient grace of God at work in your life.  That is God’s perfect plan.  He only shows us His best plan (healing) in Scripture, not a second-best plan (bearing fruit while sick).

There is no virtue in patiently enduring something from which Jesus redeemed you.  It is never the will of God for you to demonstrate your patience to the lost while sick instead of getting healed.  It beats being impatient, but it’s not what Jesus paid for you to have.  If you are not in a position yet to receive your healing through divine means, be the best witness you can while sick.  But don’t ever tell anyone that God wanted you to be sick to display you as an example of patience to unbelievers.  That’s never His best for you, and you may turn people away from God because they might not be interested in a God who just leaves people sick as some kind of “witness.”

The Bible cites examples of whole cities being turned to the Lord because people got healed of diseases so that they didn’t have to patiently endure them.  The Bible cites no cases of cities or even one single individual won to the Lord by watching someone else’s patient endurance of sickness.  Even though it’s happened, it isn’t the Bible pattern.  Getting healed influences far more people for Christ than patiently staying sick.

Notice what Matthew 15:30-31 does NOT say: “And great multitudes came to Him, having with them the lame, blind, mute, maimed, and many others.  They cast them down at Jesus’ feet, and Jesus did nothing about their conditions.  But when people saw the mute still patient while mute, the maimed still patient while maimed, the lame still patient while lame, and the blind still patient while blind, they glorified the God of Israel.”  No, God was glorified when the sick were HEALED.   When the paralytic literally went “through the roof” and got healed, the multitudes glorified God “who had given such power unto men.”

Being nice is a good witness.  Being nice and being healed is an even better witness that glorifies God far more!

The main reason that people “patiently endure” sickness is that they haven’t heard and believed that God’s plan for them is better than that.  If all you eat is Ramen noodles, you might not ever hunger for a steak when you don’t even know what a steak tastes like.  But once you’ve had steak, you probably don’t see it as being an equal alternative to Ramen noodles!  Once you know the truth about divine healing, you won’t be satisfied living on a lower level, “enduring” sickness patiently.  You can endure persecution and certain things that could happen to you because you’re a Christian, but you never have to endure things from which Christ redeemed you, including sickness!