Objection: We Should, Like Paul, Learn to Be Content in Every Situation

Agreed.  You can be content while sick, knowing that you believe that you have received your healing.  Then you have no reason to worry, because you know that you will not stay sick.

However, this is usually meant by objectors to mean, “We should just lie down and accept whatever comes and be content with whatever happens to us.”  If that is your idea of contentment, you and the apostle Paul have some very different idea of what contentment is.  If Paul wanted Timothy to be content with his frequent illnesses, he would not have given him advice to try to prevent them.  If Paul were content to just stay in jail, he would not have implored believers to pray for this release so that he could preach the gospel again (Colossians 4:3).  He could be content while in jail, but not content with the idea of staying in jail.  There is a difference.

Paul went around healing people and doing signs and wonders.  He did not tell the sick to be content in their situation; he healed them!  If there was anyone whom God wanted to stay contentedly sick on the island of Melita, Paul got him out of the will of God by healing him!  Paul did not tell the crippled man in Acts 14:7-10 to be content with his lameness; he told him to get up!  Why, when no one in the New Testament was ever told to be content with sickness, do we preach this to people today?  (If you think that Paul was sick, read the objection about his “thorn in the flesh” and learn the truth.)

How ridiculous it is, with the Great Commission still in force, to think that God wants us out of commission and that we should be content with that!  How can you be content being sick, knowing the work that needs to be done on the earth today?  We are needed on this earth to preach the gospel to the lost.  We must be against anything that could hinder us from this divine mandate.  Sickness interferes with our ability to fulfill the Great Commission, so we must not be content to stay sick.  If you’re content to be sick and unable to share the gospel, you’re either a selfish pig or deceived by bad teaching.  (Maybe both.)  People who are headed for hell need you.  You can be content as far as having the peace of God goes while you’re sick, but you must not be content to stay in that condition indefinitely.

Do not think for a moment that your endurance of sickness pleases God.  Faith pleases God – if you don’t exercise faith, you aren’t pleasing God (Hebrews 11:6).  This doesn’t mean that you’re good for nothing if you’re sick; it just means that you would please God more by exercising faith to be healed.  And make no mistake – the faith talked about in Hebrews 11 is faith that changed things and moved people to action, not just some vague worship of God.

You can have joy and peace while sick, because these things come out of your spirit, not your body.  Your spirit is not sick.  Only your body gets diseases.  However, to sit and assume that sickness is the will of God is to ignore practically the entire ministry of Jesus Christ.  Jesus told no one, “Be content with your sickness.”  He is surely not saying that today.  It would help the sick immensely if others would not say things like that to them to rob them of whatever faith they may have had for their healing.