Objection: God Uses Sickness to Stop Saints from Being in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time

“Joe felt sick, so he didn’t go to work.  That day, a terrorist attack at his workplace would have killed him.”

“A missionary was going to a tribe that planned to kill him on his planned day of arrival.  God made him gravely ill so that he had to wait a day, and that extra day spared his life.”

You may wonder, is God really in the sickness-sending business when His master plan is to keep a saint out of trouble?  If He is, does He have to make someone gravely ill to stop him instead of just sending a mild stomach bug to keep him near a toilet instead of going on his way?

We are on thin ice when we claim that God did something that He did not do anywhere in Scripture.  You cannot find a single case in Scripture where God “sent” (or “allowed”) sickness to stop someone from being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

One wonders about the other Christians who died in the terrorist attack.  Why didn’t God make them ALL sick so that none of them were there?  Can we really prove that this was GOD’s doing and not the DEVIL’s doing that just happened to work out well for the Christians involved?

Such a drastic measure certainly wouldn’t be God’s first choice if He ever chose it to begin with.  God gave us the Holy Spirit to lead us, not sickness!

Many years ago, I had finished work for the day at a client’s site and just before I headed out the door, I sensed the Holy Spirit say, “Wait!  Don’t leave yet!”  I had no reason to stay there, but I knew His voice so I just stayed put.  Only about 30 seconds later, I sensed that He was telling me that it was now all right to leave.  So I did, though I was puzzled why He would have me wait those 30 seconds.  On the way home, I was in the high-speed lane on an expressway, and about half a minute in front of me, a car started spinning wildly and there was a crash – but I wasn’t in it!

On another occasion, I just felt like I needed to take a different route home from a golf course.  There was a big accident on the road that I usually took around the time that I would have been there.

My wife and I were heading out for our weekly date night, and we planned to go to our favorite restaurant at the time, which was about an hour away.  But just before we left, she said, “I just don’t want to go there tonight.  Let’s go to another one.”  The one we went to was in a different direction.  At the time we would have arrived at a certain spot going to the first restaurant, there was a fatal crash that shut down the road.  We would have been there.

In none of these cases did I get sick so that I would not be involved in an accident that could have killed me.  In the New Testament, God leads us by the Holy Spirit, not by sickness.

Claiming that God would use sickness to keep you out of trouble is speculative at best, and it can lead to horrible results if you believe that.  After reading the stories at the top of this article, say that one day you feel sick to your stomach.  So you reason that maybe something awful will happen at work, so you make no effort to get healed.  Maybe the terrorists are coming!  God might be doing you a favor!  Don’t try to get healed and go in!

You might say, “No, the HOLY SPIRIT would show me if the sickness was sent to keep me away or if it was just an attack of the devil.”  REALLY?  If you can hear from the Holy Spirit that clearly, why would He need to make you sick when He could just tell you to stay home and you could stay healthy while you’re there?

Should you pray to see if God is trying to spare you tragedy before trying to receive your healing from whatever is bothering you some morning?  Do you see how ridiculous that is?  How many times have you stayed home sick and NOTHING happened at work?

I never took a sick day even though it would have been paid time off when I worked for a certain corporation for years.  I just took God at His Word and received healing.  On one occasion I felt sick and looked awful and my boss sent me home mid-morning.  I went home, received my healing, and went back to work in the early afternoon and worked as usual, even though my boss said that I could have the rest of the day off.  I told him that well people should be working.  It would be dishonest to stay home being paid for sick time when I wasn’t sick.  He was so impressed by the drastic change, it led to another opportunity to share Jesus with him.

(A brother in a certain department at the same company took a “sick day” to hand out tracts – and got caught!  That definitely did NOT glorify God.   You are a THIEF if you take a sick day when you’re not really sick just to get extra paid time off!)

I will not turn my account above into a rancid testimony that God made me sick so that He could heal me in front of my boss and give me a witnessing opportunity.  I don’t believe that for a minute!  The devil wanted me sick, and his plan was thwarted.

We have to learn that just because God USES a situation for good does not mean that He AUTHORED the situation.

I do not have a single testimony of sickness keeping me out of a dire situation.  I’m led by the Holy Spirit, and all Christians should be led by the Holy Spirit, not by sickness.

I have heard testimonies of people who were led by the Holy Spirit to not be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it spared them an early grave due to a terrorist attack.  They didn’t have to be made sick.

There are plenty of missionary testimonies where God did signs and wonders in front of people who wanted to kill the missionaries and spared their lives.  No one had to get sick for that to happen.

I don’t want to be so spiritually deaf that it would take a sickness to lead me.

If sickness attacks me, I am going to run it off in the name of Jesus, which I have the right to do.

I remember a time that I was supposed to be at a service to help an evangelist, and I got food poisoning before the service – things were coming out both ends 5 minutes before the start of the service.  Not good!  But I believed the Word and received my healing, and I went out to the service and wasn’t sick anymore.  I have friends with similar testimonies.  What if we had thought that maybe God was keeping us out because a terrorist was going to come in?  My take would be that with all the Spirit-filled Christians that were there, at least someone would have heard from God about a terrorist situation.  If God didn’t want us there, He would have told us so plainly.  A sickness would be at best an indefinite indicator – is it God or the devil?  I don’t ask; I just take authority over sickness in Jesus’ name, and so should you, believing that if God didn’t want you somewhere, the Holy Spirit would let you know that without having to use devil’s weapons of affliction.