A Place of Healing Read online

  And quite frankly, he despises that.

  He hates knowing that my trust in God resounds to the Father’s glory. He detests thinking of my increased eternal capacity for worship and joy in heaven as a reward for my perseverance these forty-plus years in my wheelchair. He loathes the way my fellowship with Christ in His sufferings turns up the wattage on the Savior’s glory. He considers it odious that I have yielded to the Hebrews 12–type discipline of the Lord in years past, and he sneers as he watches me “walk” deeper into that fellowship of suffering with Jesus.

  It makes him sick.

  Hence his full-on attack on my body, mind, and spirit, and on my friends who love me and help me. It’s war—and like all war, it isn’t pretty.

  But there’s something earthy about my response to God that further sickens Satan. I believe he views disabilities as his last great stronghold to defame the good character of God. Suffering is that last frontier he exploits to smear God’s trustworthiness. The Devil relishes inciting people to complain, “How could a good God allow my child to be born with this horrible defect?” and asking, “How can I trust a God who would permit cancer to take my husband of only six months?” or wondering, “Why would I believe in a God who includes Alzheimer’s and autism in His plans for people?”

  My adversary knows that the Lord has used my personal testimony many times, in many ways, in many nations to push back dark thinking like that. He’s certainly cognizant that the ministry of Joni and Friends has been used of God to promote His grace and goodness among the suffering in some of the darkest corners of our world. He knows I’m well aware that we wrestle not against the flesh and blood of disease and disability, but against powers and principalities that rub their hands in glee as they crush the hopes of disabled people, pushing them deeper into despair and discouragement (Eph. 6:12).

  Little wonder I’ve got such a large target on my quadratus lumborum.

  Battlefield Jesus

  Does this chapter surprise you a little? Did you flip back and check the title page to see if you had the right author?

  Do you find yourself objecting, perhaps, to the battlefield imagery I’ve employed to describe my life as is? Could it be you’ve never quite pictured your walk with Jesus in such terms?

  Here at our ministry we refuse to present a picture of “gentle Jesus, meek and mild,” a portrait that tugs at your sentiments or pulls at your heartstrings. That’s because we deal with so many people who suffer, and when you’re hurting hard, you’re neither helped nor inspired by a syrupy picture of the Lord, like those sugary, sentimental images many of us grew up with. You know what I mean? Jesus with His hair parted down the middle, surrounded by cherubic children and bluebirds.

  Come on. Admit it: When your heart is being wrung out like a sponge, when you feel like Morton’s salt is being poured into your wounded soul, you don’t want a thin, pale, emotional Jesus who relates only to lambs and birds and babies.

  You want a warrior Jesus.

  You want a battlefield Jesus. You want His rigorous and robust gospel to command your sensibilities to stand at attention.

  To be honest, many of the sentimental hymns and gospel songs of our heritage don’t do much to hone that image. One of the favorite words of hymn writers in days gone by was sweet. It’s a term that doesn’t have the edge on it that it once did. When you’re in a dark place, when lions surround you, when you need strong help to rescue you from impossibility, you don’t want “sweet.” You don’t want faded pastels and honeyed softness.

  You want mighty. You want the strong arm and unshakable grip of God who will not let you go—no matter what.

  For instance, I absolutely love that beautiful old hymn (a great favorite of my parents) “I Come to the Garden Alone.” Remember the verse that says, “He speaks and the sound of His voice is so sweet, the birds hush their singing”? It’s a nice sentiment, and I’m aware that a thought like that can provide comfort. But it’s really just a reinforcement of a romanticized nineteenth-century image. We have gilded the real Jesus with so much “dew on the roses” that many people have lost touch with Him—or simply turned away.

  Why do some people gravitate to a sentimental picture? Well, think about it: A sugar-coated Christ requires nothing from us—neither conviction nor commitment. Why? Because it’s an image that lacks truth and power.

  We have to try to change that picture.

  And the only way to do it is to think about the resurrection.

  Sure, romanticists try to color the resurrection with lilies and songbirds, but lay aside the emotions and think of the facts for a moment: A man, stone-cold dead—a cadaver of gray, cold flesh, really—rose up from His slab and walked out of His grave.

  Friend, that’s almost frightening. There’s nothing sugar-coated about it. And the powerful thing is that it accurately describes what Jesus did. That reality has power; it’s truth that grips you. Some people believe Jesus came to do sweet, pleasant things, like turning bad people into nice people. Not so. As someone once said, our Lord and Savior came to turn dead people into living ones—and there’s nothing sentimental about that.

  At different times in my life I’ve enjoyed the old pictures of Jesus cradling cute lambs or walking around with blow-dried hair, clad in a white robe looking like it just arrived from the dry cleaner. But these days, these warfare days, those old images just don’t cut it for me. I need a battlefield Jesus at my side down here in the dangerous, often messy trenches of daily life. I need Jesus the rescuer, ready to wade through pain, death, and hell itself to find me, grasp my hand, and bring me safely through.

  There will be a time very soon, I hope, when I will once again enjoy the casual stroll through the garden with Him, admiring the dew drops on the roses. But for right now, if I am to “endure hardship … like a good soldier” as 2 Timothy 2:3 mandates, I need a comrade in arms, a strong commander to take charge of my private war.

  And that is exactly who He is, and what He has done.

  Battle Zone

  The book of James says: “Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord” (James 5:14).

  Of course I had read that passage scores of times, and although I wasn’t “sick,” I wanted to do anything—everything I was supposed to do in this fierce battle—to obey Scripture. And so not long ago, after Sunday services on a bright sunny afternoon when I was still in bed in pain, Pastor Bob and our small group of elders entered my bedroom. They looked so large and out of place! Little did they know they had entered a war zone. (It happens every time you want to obey Scripture.)

  As they opened their Bibles, I could feel dark spirits retreating—spirits of discouragement and doubt that had harassed and haunted me over the past few days. But with these Christian men—my husband, Ken, included—I felt safe for the first time. They read Scriptures, prayed, and then pulled out a small vial of oil.

  When Pastor Bob approached the bed, I asked if he would give me a blessing at the close of his prayer for my healing—the sign of the cross on my forehead. Growing up as a Reformed Episcopalian, I knew this to be an outward physical symbol of, well … a seal, a kind of amen. So be it. Let it be as the Lord wills.

  Bob prayed: “Lord God, You can, with a thought, simply take this pain of Joni’s away, and so we pray that in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit that You would heal Joni of this long and tiring ailment.” And at that he touched my forehead with oil and sealed his prayer.

  That’s right. It would only take a thought toward me, Lord. Just a thought from You.

  The whole idea of the ease and simplicity with which God could touch me and release me from pain comforted me greatly. A fresh peace settled over the bedroom—a peace I had not sensed in days. Dark spirits of disappointment with God had vanished and my confidence in Him had been refresh
ed.

  At that point Elder Dave kneeled by my bed and began singing a song that addressed one of the fears I had struggled with over the past day or so:

  He who began a good work in you

  He who began a good work in you

  Will be faithful to complete it

  He’ll be faithful to complete it

  He who started a work

  Will be faithful to complete it in you1

  I chimed in on harmony and we sang out the old Steve Green chorus for all it was worth.

  Because who can live without purpose? Who can survive without a reason to live? If you are God’s servant—and you are—you have been given a command. Many commands. And if He asks you to do something (and He has), you’ve just been given a reason for living every morning when you wake up. God who began a good work in me will complete it! Pastor Bob flipped his Bible open to Psalm 57:2–3 and read it as though it were a benediction: “I cry out to God Most High, to God, who fulfills [His purpose] for me. He sends from heaven and saves me, rebuking those who hotly pursue me.”

  I had been hotly pursued long enough by those dark spirits. And by the time my pastor and elders left, Ken and I were determined to look for God’s redemption in my pain. For pain is a bruising of a blessing; but it is a blessing nevertheless. It’s a strange, dark companion, but a companion—if only because it has passed through God’s inspecting hand. It’s an unwelcome guest, but still a guest. I know that it drives me to a nearer, more intimate place of fellowship with Jesus, and so I take pain as though I were taking the left hand of God. (Better the left hand than no hand at all.)

  Perhaps the simple realization of something so redemptive is healing enough.

  I don’t know when this season of pain will be over. Maybe, in God’s grace and wisdom, He’ll say, “Enough!” and banish the pain within the hour. Or maybe He’ll say, “Enough!” allowing me to step out of this long-disabled, deteriorating temporary housing into my “building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands” (2 Cor. 5:1).

  In the meantime, these afflictions of mine—this very season of multiplied pain—is the background against which God has commanded me to show forth His praise. It’s also that thing that I am to reckon as “good and acceptable and perfect,” according to Romans 12. God bids me that I not only seek to accept it, but to embrace it, knowing full well that somewhere way down deep—in a secret place I have yet to see—lies my highest good.

  Yes, I pray that my pain might be removed, that it might cease; but more so, I pray for the strength to bear it, the grace to benefit from it, and the devotion to offer it up to God as a sacrifice of praise. My strength in prayer these days is scant—I’ll confess that. So for all the concentration I can muster in prayer, I must not dissipate it in seeking physical blessings only. Rather, I must spend a good portion of it seeking spiritual growth and praying for Christ’s kingdom to go forth into this dark world. For such prayers are a way for me to know God and to know Him deeper, higher, richer, wider, and fuller—much fuller than if I comfortably cruised through life in my wheelchair.

  To this point, as I pen this chapter, He has chosen not to heal me, but to hold me.

  The more intense the pain, the closer His embrace.

  That’s one of the truths I’d like to speak to, God helping me, in the following pages.

  Two

  God and Healing: What’s the Real Question?

  There is a war going on. All talk of a Christian’s right to live luxuriously “as a child of the King” in this atmosphere sounds hollow—especially since the King himself is stripped for battle.

  —John Piper

  In the first and second decades of my paralysis, there were seasons during which my yearning for complete healing and a return to life-as-it-was gripped my heart. It’s not that those desires have gone away in this, my fifth decade in a wheelchair; it has more to do with a change in my perspective.

  In the first place, any concept of “normal” is now something so long ago and far away that it seems more like a distant dream. A pleasant dream, yes, but one that has gradually, gently faded through the years, like a well-loved snapshot in an old photo album. After forty-plus years of quadriplegia, it’s hard to say what a normal life for me would be.

  For another thing, as I have mentioned, I find myself in a whole new phase of the battle. It’s not so much the wistful disappointments or occasional frustrations I’m dealing with now, it’s the seemingly ceaseless attacks—wave after wave after wave of throbbing in my lower back and hip. Now when I think of “healing,” it’s more in the form of asking my Father for relief from the intensity of the suffering rather than the ability to pick a flower, ride a horse, or dance across a field of clover.

  Relief from chronic pain—even though I remain paralyzed—would be blissfully, peacefully, joyously “normal” for me these days … and all I could ask for. I don’t remember where I saw the following Mary Jane Iron quote, but it comes pretty close to my take on “normal”:

  Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are.… Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in my pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return.

  That’s my take on normal.

  Come to think of it, I’m not even a “normal” quad. I have now exceeded the expected lifespan of a person with my level of injury and paralysis. The bare, unadorned fact is this: Many people in my condition simply don’t live as long as I have lived. So my thoughts haven’t been so much on picking up the old life on my feet I left behind in 1967, as much as stepping into the new life and body that await me.

  Longings? Yes, my heart is as filled with longing as it was when I was in my twenties, yearning for the simple pleasures of a body that works the way it was intended. But now I am much closer to my new body of the Joni-that-will-be than I am to the healthy young woman’s body of the Joni-that-was, injured in that diving accident.

  Oh … and what will be is far, far better than what was.

  My desires have settled in on heaven and the immediate presence of my Lord Jesus. And why not? The Bible says I’m already a citizen of heaven; I don’t need to update my passport or fill out any forms or change of address cards. The Bible says I’m already raised with Christ, seated with Him in heaven; I won’t have to “find my place” when I get there because my place has already been reserved. It’s “an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for [me].” Hooray for 1 Peter 1:4!

  The Bible says that Jesus has, in His Father’s house, prepared a room for me where I can see Him every day. I won’t need MapQuest directions to find some lonely, heavenly mansion on a back street of some distant planet.

  As with those men and women in the book of Hebrews who were trying to deal with persecution and the loss of so many precious earthly things, I am “longing for a better country—a heavenly one” (Heb. 11:16). And I have the firm assurance (you have no idea how firm, and how assuring) that God “has prepared a city for [me].”

  What a city it will be! If you take the description of New Jerusalem in the book of Revelation quite literally rather than symbolically (I do, but suit yourself), it will be like a huge, radiant, translucent, impossibly beautiful cube floating over New Earth, measuring fifteen hundred miles in each direction and flashing like a great diamond in an ocean of light. And I can say with confidence that there won’t be one wheelchair ramp or set of instructions in Braille or handicapped parking space in the whole city! In fact, if there’s a fifteen-hundred-mile spiral staircase from the lowest level to the top, I’m going to run it every morning—before breakfast! (Can you even imagine? Around and around, never tiring, racing with the angels, bathed in colors beyond the spectrum, climbing from glory to glory!)

  S
o when I think of physical healing for myself, it isn’t in the same way I once considered it and longed for it.

  Nevertheless, I’ve had to deal with those questions all of my life. We at Joni and Friends answer countless phone calls and letters and emails and spend many hours counseling with people for whom physical healing is very, very much something uppermost in their minds.

  In the few pages of this brief chapter I’d like to land on what I consider to be the central question about miraculous healing. The way I see it, the question has never really been “Can God heal?”

  Of course He can.

  Everyone who believes in God will acknowledge that. This is the mighty One, the all-powerful Creator and sustainer of the universe, whose arm “is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear” (Isa. 59:1). And our Lord Jesus, who solemnly pledged never to leave us or forsake us, didn’t lose any of His love or compassion or healing power when He left earth to ascend to His Father. Yes, our great and magnificent God can heal anyone, anywhere, at any time, of any affliction.

  Period.

  End of sentence.

  Nor is the question, “Does God heal today, in the twenty-first century?” Absolutely, He does. Every time you bounce back from the flu or heal from a surgery, that’s God performing His Psalm 103:3 thing; no matter what kind of illness or disease we may rise above, it’s His power that’s accomplished it. Besides, how absurd it would be to say that He somehow went out of the miracle business after the last page of the book of Acts. Who can deny the reports of miraculous healing among God’s children from every corner of the globe? What’s more, who would want to? I have a God who certainly intervenes in all sorts of impossible situations in today’s world, doing those things that only He can do to accomplish His purposes. There are far too many in our very midst who have experienced such miraculous healings for us to peremptorily write them off. Many such testimonies come from people who are mature in the faith and blessed with godly wisdom—and many are from the field of medicine itself.