In December, 2017, I was a guest on the Weekly Skinny with Jesus podcast. This is the recording and a transcript of that episode. (Also available on SoundCloud.)
Healing in the Sending – A Thorn for God’s Glory
The Weekly Skinny Podcast: December 19, 2017
Transcript:
Bevin: You are listening to your Weekly Skinny with Jesus. Today is December 19, 2017, and my name is Bevin Caramello and I am so very glad to have you on this call with me today. We are wrapping up a series we’ve been in for a few weeks now called Healing in the Sending. I’ve just got to say, guys this has just been one of my favorite series so far. God has just been showing me so much about how He works and what He wants from us. So often, it’s really simple – He’s after our hearts. He wants our obedience. He wants our surrender.
So today’s all, you guys, it’s such a great message. I am so very excited to have a special guest with us on this call today: my very good friend, Amy Ickes, is going to be leading us. Amy has worked at several churches across the country and we met serving together in Women’s Ministry in San Antonio. She is truly wise beyond her years and she has such a love for the people God has her serving. So I’m really, really excited that she’s going to be leading us and teaching us today. So, with that, I would like to introduce to you the one and only, Amy Ickes.
Amy: Ok, hi guys. I’m so happy to be here with you.
Last week, Bevin had us in Acts 26, and we talked about how Paul’s spiritual healing came when he was sent to the Jews and the Gentiles to defend the cause of the cross. She finished by challenging us with the truth that sometimes when we do what we’ve been called to do, it might not look the way we think it should. And so this week, we’re going to take that a step further and see that sometimes, our healing doesn’t always look the way we think it should either.
So we’re going to look at two passages today that might be pretty familiar to you, but together, they tell a really interesting story. The first passage we’re going to look at it Acts 9:1-16, so if you are somewhere you can pull that up on your phone or grab your Bible, we’ll give you a minute to go there. It’s Acts 9:1-16. And it says this:
Now Saul was still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. He went to the high priest 2 and requested letters from him to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any men or women who belonged to the Way, he might bring them as prisoners to Jerusalem. 3 As he traveled and was nearing Damascus, a light from heaven suddenly flashed around him. 4 Falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”
5 “Who are you, Lord?” Saul said.
“I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting,” he replied. 6 “But get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”
7 The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the sound but seeing no one. 8 Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing. So they took him by the hand and led him into Damascus. 9 He was unable to see for three days and did not eat or drink.
10 There was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias, and the Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.”
“Here I am, Lord,” he replied.
11 “Get up and go to the street called Straight,” the Lord said to him, “to the house of Judas, and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, since he is praying there. 12 In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias coming in and placing his hands on him so that he may regain his sight.”
13 “Lord,” Ananias answered, “I have heard from many people about this man, how much harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem. 14 And he has authority here from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.”
15 But the Lord said to him, “Go, for this man is my chosen instrument to take my name to Gentiles, kings, and Israelites. 16 I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.”
And now we’re going to turn over to 2 Corinthians 12, and we’re going to start at the second half of verse 7. This is Paul writing to the church at Corinth, and he says:
Therefore, so that I would not exalt myself, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to torment me so that I would not exalt myself. 8 Concerning this, I pleaded with the Lord three times that it would leave me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.”
Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me. 10 So I take pleasure in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and in difficulties, for the sake of Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Many scholars agree that Paul’s “thorn” would probably have something to do with his eyesight, and they base this on the fact that Paul’s letters were mostly dictated, especially the ones that he wrote later in his ministry. This theory about Paul’s thorn and his eyesight makes a lot of sense, especially with what we just read in Acts about Paul’s dramatic encounter with Jesus.
But regardless of what the actual issue was, the point is this: Paul had been begging God for physical healing, but what God gave him instead was a deeper spiritual healing – grace upon grace. Paul wanted his thorn gone. God wanted to use his thorn for His glory.
So often when we talk about healing, the expectation is that the healing we seek will happen here on Earth in the way we expect it will. We expect that on the next visit to the doctor, we’ll find out that the cancer’s just gone. We expect that we’ll wake up the morning after a bout with depression with a completely new outlook on life and not have to deal with that anymore. But more often than not, the cancer still shows up on the scan, and we still need medication to function and even for you, maybe just to get out of bed.
Now, there’s a hidden danger in this conversation about healing I want to stop and talk about for a moment. There have been times when I’ve been dealing with a physical or mental illness, and I’ve done exactly what I’m supposed to do: I’ve brought it to God and asked for His healing. But here’s the pattern that I’ve observed as I’ve looked back: After a few weeks of asking, I start to beg for His healing. And a few weeks after that, I start to quote His own words back to Him to remind Him that He’s my healer. And before I know it, my healing is the only thing I ever pray about anymore. There’s been this shift in me, and now my healing is all I care about. In short, my healing has become an idol, because I’m seeking that healing, instead of seeking God.
I just want to pull that out for just a second as a caution, because it’s something that God put on my heart pretty recently, so I figured in this conversation, we should probably just be aware of it, so that it’s not a trap that we fall into.
Ok, so back to Paul’s story. Paul says that when he begged God for healing, God said “no”, and told him that His grace was all Paul really needed. What God was saying was that His grace, His love, His care, His purposes and plans were all Paul really needed, in spite of what Paul thought he needed. No one can deny that God used Paul powerfully, but we do have to wonder if Paul’s ministry would have been as effective and world-changing if God had, in fact, healed him, and if he hadn’t had to rely on others to help him do the work that God had called him to do. That reliance on others is what led him to some of the cities where he planted churches, and those churches are the reason we even know about Jesus today.
Paul’s story isn’t so much different from my own. Just so you understand my background a little bit, I’ve fought with depression for almost as long as I can remember, and with anxiety for about the last ten or so years. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked God to take those away. But I still fight suicidal thoughts when things go badly, and I still deal with anxious thoughts and fears that keep me from doing things I want to do, and even some days, from doing things I need to do.
We’ve been talking about how there’s healing in the sending, and that’s my story too. I’m originally from New Jersey, but about two years ago, God uprooted me and moved me to Texas. When I moved to Texas, I brought some furniture, and I brought my kitchen supplies, and I brought clothes, and I also brought my mental illness.
One of the consequences of my particular brand of depression and anxiety is that I could, when I was not doing well, be hard to be around, to put it lightly. Some of you may be able to relate to that. But my mental illness combined with my sin nature made for a pretty toxic combination sometimes. But when God moved me 2,000 miles away from everything and everyone I knew, He finally got me alone and He brought me to a place where I had a choice to make. Was I going to give in, or was I going to surrender?
So over the course of almost a year, God chipped away at my pride, and my anger, and my bitterness, at my doubts and fears, and at my lack of faith. He allowed me to get to one of the lowest places in my life, and when I finally turned to Him and decided I wanted Him more than anything else at all – even healing – He lifted me up and He did heal me.
Now that healing doesn’t look the way I might want it to. I still take an antidepressant and an antianxiety pill everyday. I still have moments when I have to stop unhealthy, destructive thoughts and make them obedient to Christ. But that’s the thing: for the first time in my life, I can and do stop them. And for the first time in my life, they’re no longer a weapon in my enemy’s hands, either against me or against the people around me.
But the most significant thing that God has done for me in this incomplete healing is that His grace, mercy, and kindness brought me to a place of repentance, and He showed me that my life could look drastically different if I would just trust Him. I don’t need to control everyone and everything around me. He’s got it. He knows way more about me and the situations and circumstances He’s allowed to touch my life than I possibly could, and He knows way better than I do what He can and will do through them and through me if I just trust Him.
So about a month ago, I lost my job, but even in this, God has shown me that I can trust Him. He is going to provide. He is going to direct. He has a plan, and that job simply wasn’t a part of it anymore. There’s something else for me to do now. So even as I wait to see fully what that is, I’m able to trust Him with every aspect of my story.
My physical, mental, and emotional healing will probably remain incomplete while I remain here on Earth, but in sending me into a new chapter of my story – this story that He’s writing in my life – God is saying to me what He said to Paul: “My grace is all you need, and in your weakness, I will show off My strength through you”.
He’s saying the same thing to you today too. Whatever your situation, whatever healing you’ve been seeking, would you be willing to take the risk of trusting God to do what He knows would be good for you and will be for His glory, instead of asking Him to do things that make sense to you?
It’s hard to do that – I know! – It took about 30 years of suffering for me to finally trust Him enough to stop begging, stop fighting, stop telling Him what to do in my life. And while I wouldn’t change the outcome for anything, I do have to wonder what God could have done in and through me if I’d just given everything to Him the first time He asked me to.
So let’s make this really practical for us. If you’ve been chasing after healing and just not seeing God work the way you wish He would, I want to encourage you to do a few things.
The first thing I want to encourage you to do is stop asking God to heal you. Jesus told us that God already knows what we need before ask for it. He doesn’t need the reminder, and after a while, chances are pretty good that you are going to fall into the same trap I did and healing is going to turn into an idol for you. So first, just stop asking Him. He already knows.
The second thing is, choose to worship. Whenever you’re tempted to ask God for healing, stop and worship Him for who He is instead. Pull up a list of His attributes or His names on your phone, pick one, and just focus on that for a while. God wants you to be whole and healed, but more than that, He wants your heart. Worship is the fastest way to align our wills and our desires with His, and in our worship, He becomes bigger than anything we deal with here on Earth.
And the third thing is, give God your sickness. There’s this great story in 2 Kings 19 about King Hezekiah receiving a letter from his enemies. Rather than panicking about their threats, he takes the letter to the temple, and he gets down on the floor, and he spreads the letter out before God, and he talks to Him about it. So in giving God your sickness, that might be what it looks like for you. If you need to, you might literally need to spread out your medicine or your medical device, or some symbol of the healing you’ve been seeking before God. Give God your sickness and allow Him to do with it what He knows is best for you and what will bring Him the most glory.
Remember what I said earlier: Paul wanted his thorn gone. God wanted to use that thorn for His glory. And He wants to do the same with yours. Whether that be by taking it away and giving you that testimony of His complete healing here on Earth, or by leaving it in place, will you trust Him with it? Will you trust that He really does know what’s best in every situation? Will you trust that He knows the end of the story that He’s writing in your life and the role that your thorn plays in that story?
Our surrender to God and our faith in God is powerful. It tells our enemy that he has no power over us. It tells the people around us that we serve a God that they can trust too. And it tells our own souls that we are not walking through anything alone.
In Him we have hope. In Him we have a future. In Him we have everything we’ll ever need in this life and in the life to come, when Jesus Himself will wipe away every tear. One day, we will see Jesus face-to face, and the things of this Earth will grow strangely dim.
Let’s pray:
God, we praise You that we can trust You. We praise You that Your Word is steadfast. You do not change. God, we praise You that You are Jehovah Rapha – You are our Healer. But Father, I pray right now for our sisters and our brothers on this call who’ve been seeking healing. God, I pray that they would be willing to surrender their life completely to you – every part of it – not holding anything back. God, I pray that they would turn to You, rather than to what You can do for them. God, that You would be what they reach for, and that Your presence would be enough for them.
Father, I pray that they would be obedient and that they would be faithful in Your sending. We’ve been talking about this idea that there’s healing in the sending, so Father, would You give us all the wisdom and the discernment to know when You’re sending us somewhere new. And God, would we go there in the hope that when we get there, You are there, and You have got everything under control. God, we worship You for who You are. May we live our lives in a way that will always bring You honor and glory. We pray this in the Name of Jesus. Amen.
Bevin: Amen! Wow, amen! So, so good. Thank you so much for being on this call. Thanks for leading us on this call, for teaching us today. This was such a powerful call with so many great take aways. I love the point you made about healing becoming an idol in our lives if we’re not careful. That is so true. Anything that we chase after harder than we’re chasing after God is and idol.
Honestly, I’ve never looked at it from that angle before. I’ve never even considered that our prayers – what it is that we’re seeking, what it is that we’re asking God for – could actually become an idol. But it’s so true when you put it that way. I think we need to stop and ask ourselves, “Am I seeking healing instead of seeking God?”.
I love too, this verse jumped out at my when Amy was reading it: In Acts 9:11, God tells Ananias to ask for a man named Saul who is praying. And that just jumped out at me. I’ve never noticed that before, that in this part, where Ananias is sent to find Saul, Saul was a man who at that time, God says, he’s praying right now, he’s praying. And no doubt, Saul was seeking healing at that point. I have no doubt that that was a time period where Saul was on his knees and he was begging God for healing.
I’m sure he was desperate, but just like Amy said when she pointed us to 2 Corinthians 12, at some point, Paul made the choice to stop asking for more healing. He stopped asking for a better healing. He stopped asking for a different healing. At some point, he just accepted that where he was weak, God was strong. I love the way Amy brought this all together today and pointed that out. I think it’s the first time I’ve ever seen it that way.
And then too, the other take away I hope I don’t soon forget is what you said about choosing to worship instead of asking for a different healing. I just love this because it’s just so simple, but it’s so good. When we choose to worship we are taking our eyes off of ourselves, and choosing instead to focus on God. That’s always the best choice. So, when in doubt, worship.
Amy, really, so great having you on this call today. Thank you so much for being with us.