Objection: Sometimes God Wants You to Be Afflicted So That You Can Empathize, Not Just Sympathize, with Others Who Are Afflicted

Jesus, who is the same yesterday, today and forever, never refused to heal anyone.  He never told anyone that God wanted him to be afflicted so that he could empathize with other afflicted people.  If He would not do it then, He would not do it today.  So this objection flunks The SAME Test.

If you have overcome an affliction, God can use you to encourage others who have that same affliction that there is hope and healing in the Lord.  This is an example of a bad situation being used for good, sort of like witnessing to someone else at the hospital if you’re a patient.  God can bring good out of the situation, but when He does, that is certainly not proof that He authored the situation.  Good gifts some from God (James 1:17), while afflictions, which steal, kill and destroy, come from Satan (John 10:10).

You can allow the Lord to move you with compassion, and you can minister successfully to people afflicted by illness even if you’ve never been sick a day in your life and you have no experience of what it even feels like to be sick!  There is absolutely no need for empathy when it comes to ministering to the sick!  I can prove that easily.  JESUS was never sick a day in His life until He had our sicknesses laid on Him when He was cursed for our sins.  Until He atoned for our sins, He had no personal experience of what it even felt like to be sick.  Yet He was moved with compassion and He ministered successfully to sick people without any empathy whatsoever.

Do you have to be an alcoholic before you can minister life to an alcoholic?  Of course not.  If you used to be an alcoholic, sharing your testimony can be helpful.  Does that mean that it was the will of God for you to be an alcoholic for a season so that you could relate to other alcoholics?  Impossible – God’s will never is and never was for you to be “drunk with wine” because He commands you not to be (Ephesians 5:18)!  Do you have to be a prostitute before you can witness to a prostitute so that you can “empathize” with her?  NO!  Do you have to be a wife-beater before you can witness to a wife-beater so that you can “empathize” with him?  NO!  You do not need to be afflicted to share the good news with the afflicted, either.

The most important thing for a sick person is not that you “know how he feels;” it’s that Jesus bore that person’s sicknesses as punishment for his sin so that he can receive healing.