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Pain Enhancers

PAIN ENHANCERS
Mike Cunningham
November 30, 2014

I still remember the morning when I bent over in the shower and, whammo, I thought I must have pulled a muscle in my lower back. The pain was pretty bad and so I took some Advil. I continued my normal routine of serving as the pastor of a small congregation in South Burlington, Vermont and being out in the community. The bending down and twisting around while getting in and out of my little Honda Civic was very painful.

As the pain intensified I purchased a cane for support. Finally, after six weeks the pain became so severe that I went to see my doctor. After his examination he ordered a series of x-rays that showed I was suffering from a spinal disc fracture and osteoporosis as well as being riddled with severe arthritis. Needless to say, my doctor put me on some painkillers. Although they provided relief from the pain, he advised me to only use the meds when it was absolutely necessary so that I wouldn’t get “hooked.” I’m happy to say that I continue to take his advice.

I’ve also distanced myself from the folks who are among the “name-it-and-claim-it crowd”, ever since the Lord had brought a number of people into my life who had enhanced their pain greatly by being influenced by them. Allow me to explain what they experienced with the following examples.

In her classic best seller, “A Pathway Through Pain,” Jane Grayshon a registered nurse tells about the excruciating pain she was experiencing for more that 10 years and over twenty operations. She says, I remembered, with some measure of shame, an occasion when Mike had got in touch with me. He did not know me at all well, but he had heard of my illness at his church. Having prayed for me, he wanted to do something tangible to help. He decided to visit me at home.

I found the time with him very tense. None of his helpful suggestions were new to me, though he was clearly enthusiastic about each one. Unfortunately-and this was where I felt somewhat ashamed as I recalled the scene-I did not have the mental energy to be more than blunt in my replies.

“You should pray in Jesus’ name.”

“I always do.”

“Why don’t you call together the elders of the church for laying on of hands, as in James 5?”

“I have. Lots of times.”

“You need to find out if there’s something in your past which is preventing you from being healed.”

“I went with my husband Matthew to see a friend who is a Christian psychiatrist, in order to pursue that one. After a couple of sessions, she asked me to stop because she felt I was too normal to have any major causing problems.”

“You ought to go to such-and-such a man. He has a healing ministry.”

“I went last year.”

Mike’s mind was fixed on physical healing. I was trying to force him to realize that there was an alternative to the way in which he was talking. I wanted to make him see that no one formula “worked.” I had done all the things he was suggesting, and was still left in pain.

Finally, he sighed, exhausted. “Then you must have been healed. You should thank God.”

At that point in the conversation my hands were clutching a hot water bottle under the quilt, as I tried to find something to sooth the pain searing through me. There had been a time, years before, when I would have wondered if it were just my imagination that I was still in great pain when someone was telling me I had been healed. But not this time!

Mike was so quick with one suggestion after another that I found myself responding defensively. I wanted to shut him up, which I knew was less than gracious of me. I felt so strongly that he was barging in on a delicate subject, that I did not want to give him my time. Yet in the end God’s graciousness prevailed and I tried to explain a little.

“My first reaction to this pain continuing on and off was like yours now,” I told him, trying not to sound too patronizing. “I thought praying for healing was something I must do correctly in order to get what I wanted. Healing seemed right. I found that when I was clearly ‘failing’-or apparently failing-I began to think in a completely different way about prayer.”

Mike looked at me suspiciously. I prayed silently to the Lord to give me patience and honesty.

“When I pray now, I concentrate very much less on what I am actually asking for. I am sure He wants me to seek more of who He is. Once I have that in perspective, He can reveal to me the specific things He wants me to pray about.”

Mike’s face furrowed. I was risking a lot by trying to explain myself. I was laying myself open to accusations or criticism about my own pilgrimage with the Lord. Could he understand me, I wondered. I knew that my prayer life was a personal matter and I should not mind what anyone else thought about it, but even so I did not want Mike to be scornful of my attitude toward it.

I tried to explain myself more clearly. “One of the nuns at a convent I once visited put it much better than I can. She said, “Prayer is not an easy way of getting God to do things for you, but a different way of allowing Him to do things in you.”

“Isn’t that just playing with words?” asked Mike. “What’s the difference?”

”The difference is in the answer we seek. The ‘answer’ to prayer is not in receiving a gift, but in meeting the Giver.”

I realized I was trying to condense into one conversation all that God had been teaching me over many years. Healing was an enormous subject, of which prayer was only one part. I tried to put very simply what was uppermost in my mind.

“I believe God wants the best for us, always.”

“Right.”

“My idea of the best is healing.”

“Right.”

“But God has withheld that, despite my asking in the right way. But I know I have asked in every way I can, and not alone but with the support of many faithful Christians.”

“Yes.” Mike was not quite sure he could trust me. Again, I uttered a silent prayer to ask the Lord to help me be true to Him and not concerned about what Mike thought of me.

“Or I could blame God, saying either that He has not heard me or that He is mean, withholding something good. But I cannot do either of those things, because deep down I trust Him. I just know that He does not delight in making His children suffer.”

I had to show Mike that I was genuine. I had sounded so negative when he had first arrived that he might have thought I was dismissive of God. He would have been so wrong. I know God always wants to do more for me and in me than I can ever imagine.

“So it must be something else.” I paused. I did not want to say what was so important to me if Mike was not listening properly.

“What?” he asked, interested. It had never occurred to him that, unlike us’ God Himself might actually have wanted other than physical healing for me at that point. I can only conclude that He has not healed me because He has something better for me. As I said before, my idea of the best is healing. But for the moment anyway, it seems it’s not God’s idea of the best. He does say, “My ways are not your ways.” Although this dreadful pain is not my way, or the way I would choose, it’s obviously His.”

“That’s very harsh, isn’t it?” At least Mike was thinking about what I had said.

“No. It seems harsh and it feels harsh, but I stake everything on my faith that God is not harsh. And I have been encouraged in many ways.” (1)

I remember a guy I saw in a restaurant a few days after Becki underwent surgery. He was sitting at a table, and as I walked by he reached out and grabbed my coat. He said, “Jim, I think God has allowed this to happen because it has brought a revival in our church.”

I said, “So what is God going to do to bring another revival when this one passes, chop off Becki’s other leg? Then her arm and her other arm? There isn’t enough of Becki to keep any church spiritually alive, if that is what it takes.”

When you start reaching for puny answers like that, it dehumanizers those who suffer, and it insults our magnificent God, a God who loves and cares for the oppressed. I couldn’t explain why Becki had to loose her leg, but I knew the answers being given were not right.

Probably the most important thing I learned in this entire process is this: I have become deeply aware that there were only two choices that I could make. One was to continue in my anger at God and follow the path of despair I was on. The other choice was to let God be God, and somehow say, “I don’t know how all this fits together. I don’t understand the reasons for it. I am not even going to ask for the explanation. I’ve chosen to accept the fact that you are God and I’m the servant, instead of the other way around.” And there I left it.

It was in that choice that I came to cope with my situation. I frankly admit that after all these years, I still struggle when I see my daughter hoping on one leg. But I have come to recognize that God has a higher purpose. I am prepared to wait until eternity to receive answers to my questions, if necessary. Like Job, I am now able to say, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him’ (Job 13:15, KJV). It’s either despair, or it’s acceptance of his sovereignty. Those are the alternatives.

Let me say it again. It’s either despair, or it’s God. There’s nothing in between. Our family has chosen to hold on to God. (2)

I heard a radio minister say on a recent broadcast, “If you have a need, it will be met the moment you ask for help from the Lord. Even as you begin to pray, it is already accomplished. God will solve the problem, whether it is sickness, unemployment, the need for money-whatever. If you have faith, there’s no question that God will solve it for you.”

It’s true that the Lord often does intervene dramatically in the lives of those in difficulty. Scripture could not be clearer about that fact. But he will be the determiner of how he responds. No one has the right to make that decision for him!

After hearing the radio minister make his sweeping assertion, I went directly to my office at Focus on the Family to attend a staff devotional. I shared what I had heard on the air, to which one of my colleagues said, “It’s too bad my dad doesn’t know that.” His elderly father has suffered a debilitating stroke and now sits partly paralyzed in a wheelchair. This good man, a retired minister who gave his life to Christian service, is going through a tough time. He spends much of his day looking out the window at a golf course on which he will never again walk. It is unconscionable to tell such hurting people that they simply lack faith to be as good as new.

I witnessed another example of this distortion one time when I visited the United Kingdom. I had gone there to write the early chapters of this book and was deeply enmeshed in the difficult issues we are discussing. Almost on cue, I learned that an American “faith healer” was coming to conduct a highly publicized crusade in London. The media gave this man much wider coverage than he would have received at home, calling him “one of the most popular televangelists in the States.” (Actually, he is not very well known here). Clearly, the British press was convinced that a phony was coming to rip off the gullible in the name of the Lord. That is, indeed, the way it looked.

I will not judge the motives of the televangelist because I am not personally acquainted with him. Perhaps he believes he is doing the Lord’s work. But there were aspects of his London crusade that were disturbing. His ad in the tabloids depicted a pair of dark glasses like those worn by the blind. They were cracked. It also featured a white cane, broken in the middle. The caption read, “Some will see miracles for the first time!” Get it! I’m sure thousands of handicapped men, women, and children in London understood the message. Itimplied an end to suffering was available for those attending the “miracle service.”

It’s not that God can’t heal the blind-or any other disease or deformity. He can and he does. But to my knowledge, he never performs those miracles en masse. Let’s put it this way: I have never seen any minister fulfill a promise of universal healing to all comers. Oh, there are some who would have us believe they have a magic touch. But there is reason for skepticism. Furthermore, there’s often a disturbing hysteria or a circus atmosphere in the healing services. Such mass produced miracles affront the sovereignty of God and make a sham of His holy worship.

I’m also convinced that each advocate of universal health and wealth has a little secret deep down in his soul. He has had the experience for a desperately ill family member or a close friend who, nevertheless, did not survive. It has happened to every pastor in every denomination. But this secret is rarely amidst the glitz and exuberance of a “miracle service.” Do you agree that there is something not quite honest about concealing those instances when God replies, “It is not my will?”

Returning to the televangelist who comes to London, the British media was even more skeptical when the crusade ended. They hired physicians to interview and examine blind and sick people coming out of the “miracle service.” The results were very embarrassing to committed Christians in that great city. It effectively alienated some nonbelievers who might otherwise have been open to the message of the gospel.

There is another reason I am concerned about the teaching of universal health and prosperity. It establishes a level of expectations that will eventually wound and weaken unstable Christians. Someone said, “The man who expects nothing will never be disappointed.” By contrast, a person who really believes that all trouble will be swept away for the followers of Christ is left with no logical explanation when God fails to come through. Sooner or later an illness, a business collapse, an accident, or some other misfortune will leave him in dismay.

What is he to believe when he discovers “life as it is” turns out to be very different than “life as it is supposed to be?” He stumbles toward one of several conclusions, all of which are potentially damaging to his faith. (1) God is dead, irrelevant, bored, or uninvolved in the affairs of man; (2) God is angry at me for some sin I’ve committed; (3) God is whimsical, untrustworthy, unfair, or sinister; or (4) God ignored me because I didn’t pray enough or display enough faith.

All four of these alternatives serve to isolate that individual from God at the exact moment when his spiritual need is the greatest. I believe it is a ploy of Satan to undermine the faith of the vulnerable. And it begins with a theological distortion that promises a stress-free life and a God who always does what He is told. (Note: Some unpleasant experiences in life do result from sinful behavior.”

Those who would give glib answers to the awesome question of human suffering have probably not spent much time thinking about it. They certainly have not labored, as I have in a major children’s medical center. There, little kids go through terrifying experiences every day of the week. Some are born in pain and know nothing else. Some have mothers who are cocaine or heroin addicts and come into the world in desperate need of a “fix.” For days, the prenatal ward echoes with their pitiful crying. Older children are brought in who have been humiliated, battered, and burned by their abusive parents.

Others are like the little brown-eyed girl I remember so vividly in the oncology unit of Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. She was a four-year old charmer whose parents had thought she was normal and healthy. But the previous day, her mother noticed a protrusion on her side when she was bathing the child. It turned out to be a large malignant tumor. She had only a few months to live.I left her room with a lump in my throat and a longing to go home and hug my healthy boy and girl. (3)

I hope I have provided you folks with enough reasons why you should distance yourselves from the “name-it-and–claim-it folks.” They are all “Pain Enhancers.”

Lord willing, next week….

(1) A Pathway Through Pain© 1989 by Jane Grayshon, Pgs. 116-119
(2) When God Doesn’t Make Sense by Dr. James Dobson, © 1993, 2012,2013 by Tyndale House Publishers. Dobson is citing Becki Conway Sanders and Jim and Sally Conway from their book Trusting God in a Family Crisis, Pgs. 87-89
(3) Ibid. Pgs. 107-108

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November 30, 2014 Posted by Categories: Uncategorized Tagged with:
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