Objection: You Can Have Greater Peace by Accepting Your Illness Than by Struggling to Get Healed
Not biblically. By a worldly definition of peace, you can have greater “peace” by resigning yourself to your sickness. It’s less work. You don’t have to apply faith. In fact, you don’t have to do anything that any old sinner couldn’t do, because you’re going to stay sick just like any old sinner would.
If peace is defined as the absence of struggle, you can have greater peace by disobeying the Great Commission, too. No one will make fun of you for preaching the gospel. No one will argue with you about whether or not Jesus is really the only way to heaven. Ah, such peace. Really, this is just avoidance of conflict, not peace. It is taking the path of least resistance, not peace. It is being lulled to sleep. It is apathy. It is not biblical peace at all.
Biblical peace (the kind Jesus died to give you) is denoted by the Hebrew word shalom, which indicates overall well-being. You can experience God’s peace while you are in the middle of a major trial. The more you walk in faith, the more you will walk in the real kind of peace, even though your earthly problems may multiply.
The Bible does not teach achieving peace by avoiding conflict. As a Christian, you are in conflict daily. Paul protested to the Corinthians who were taking it easy, “I die daily!” (1 Corinthians 15:31). He was talking about mortifying the flesh. This takes effort on your part. Peace is not the avoidance of work. Paul said, “Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain.” (1 Corinthians 9:24). Paul knew peace, but Paul knew how to “press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (see Philippians 3:13-14). No one said it would be easy all the time. You have to apply effort to grow in God. It doesn’t just happen. Champions for God get that way because they resolve in their hearts to become champions for God. Just remember that your efforts consist of building yourself up in the Word and acting on it, not struggling in your own strength to do better. You’re called to be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might (Ephesians 6:10), not to be strong in yourself and your own willpower.
You can have fewer “struggles” by accepting your illness and just staying sick. In fact, anyone has the right to do so, and none of us who believes in healing can force you to do otherwise. You have the right not to believe God’s promises and the right not to receive healing. You don’t have to apply yourself in the Word of Truth and meditate on its promises. But the catch is, you won’t get healed. If that’s the outcome what you want, you might as well stop reading this book.
This being said, if believing God is a struggle for you, you need to hear more of His Word on a regular basis. You will find that faith comes automatically when you meditate on God’s Word a lot. At that point, faith ceases to be a struggle and it becomes natural. It takes effort to get to that place. But when you get there, you will find that you have peace while you are still believing for a healing that you have not seen yet. You won’t be struggling. The problem with the person making this objection is that he has obviously never been to this place in God and probably doesn’t realize that there is such a place.
Finally, having “greater peace” by accepting your illness could well be temporary. What if the sickness that you’ve accepted worsens and you find yourself taking painful gasps for every breath, or clutching your chest all the time as the pains get worse and worse? Ultimately you could find yourself with far LESS peace in the long run as things deteriorate. Struggling to just survive could be far less peaceful than “struggling” to get healed today.