Missions, Illnesses and God

Sleepy, shaky, and sluggish, I glanced over, and the sensor read 54 and an arrow going down. Reaching toward the box of fruit snacks near the bed, I sit up, open two packets and fill my mouth with artificial fruit flavors. I look at the battery powered alarm clock on the table. Four A.M. Low blood sugar has no care for the time of day.

As a type one diabetic, episodes like this one are a part of normal life. It’s a life mixed up with unpredictability, illogical rises and falls, and days of steady levels, easy and simpler. Ever since the time I could remember, I had type one diabetes and I sensed God’s call to serve overseas. For a long time, these two realities seemed to be against one another; one seemed like a barrier for the other.

As disciples of Christ, He calls us into the joyful task of making disciples of all nations. All believers, to some extent, are called to this work. Yet, God also allows us to walk with limitations that seem, to us anyway, to hinder our effectiveness of this work. Illnesses, like type one diabetes, or any other obstacle of a similar kind, do not dampen our ability to obey the Great Commission. In this vein, I want to share with you four realities that shape the way we can joyfully and obediently follow Him in spite of difficulties we live with.

Our Good and His Glory

When living with limitations, big or small, seen or unseen, many or few, questions often come. But in all the attempts to get God to answer my queries about this chronic illness, I have returned to one beautiful certainty: His desire is for His glory to be made known through me. A beautiful facet of this truth is that it is the case in, and for any circumstance, especially as we seek to obey the Great Commission.

Think of Paul when writing to the Corinthians. He tells them that to keep him “from becoming conceited,” God gave him a thorn in the flesh. (1) Paul, three times, implored the Lord to remove it. In hearing Paul’s prayer, Jesus gave him something better – Himself.

We see that Paul did not experience the healing he asked for, but even so, God used his burden to teach Paul humility, the sufficiency of His grace, and ultimately, to make His glory known among those who had yet to know Him. Thankfully, He does the same in diabetes, teaching me the sufficiency of His grace. It is a tool the Father deems right and good to use as He shapes me into a vessel for His glory, and to demonstrate his strength. For when I am weak, He is strong. (2)

When the Father sees fit, He graciously gives each of us “thorns.” After seeking the Lord in faith for a respite and not receiving relief as desired, we keep our gaze turned upward. We have a choice here – either we let the limitation crush us or it can be a place where we learn humility. God calls us to forsake our self-reliance and to thrust ourselves at the foot of the cross for only there can we find the all-sufficient grace, the strength to persevere in the face of ongoing struggle and in faithful obedience. May we look more like Christ as a result. This is for our good and His glory.

Resolving to Trust His Proven Character

There is a quote by the little-known missionary, Harriet Newell, that I continue to come back to. Harriet, and her new husband were a part of the first group of American missionaries sent out. After traveling over three months, the crew arrived in Kolkata, India. There they were promptly turned away by the East India Company. While Adoniram and Ann Judson left for Burma, the Newell’s set sail for Mauritius, hearing that missionaries would be welcomed there. On this second maritime journey, an ill and pregnant Harriet prematurely gave birth, and the baby died shortly after. Once they anchored in their destination she died of tuberculosis. Though her missionary service was cut short by an early death at 19, her life’s witness to the worthiness of Jesus cannot go unnoticed. She says,

“I think I am willing to bear whatever God sees fit to lay upon me. Let my dear Heavenly Father inflict the keenest anguish, I will submit, for He is infinitely excellent and can do nothing wrong.”(3)

Unequivocally, God cannot do wrong. Harriet faced many kinds of adversities, anguishes. These could not completely overwhelm her for her trust was securely set on her Father in heaven. Will we trust what is felt to be true or, like Harriet, will we lean on what God reveals Himself to be?

Learning to hand myself over to God, trusting that He can do no wrong has, at times, been an arduous choice. There are moments when I felt utterly confused, beaten down, and conflicted regarding my defunct pancreas, and sometimes despair threatens to creep in. Yet, in His lovingkindness, His Spirit whispers truths to my heart, “the Lord is righteous in all his ways and faithful in all He does.”(4)

At times it may seem to our perception that God has done wrong, but there is a hope and a guarantee made by His own character. I know that through this suffering He will be further glorified. In this, I find delight. For what God, but our God, can be found marvelous even in light of no healing?

Purpose Over Cure

Though it is not always clear to us, there is a purpose in all that God does. Consider Paul again, who remained in Galatia because of a physical ailment. (5) While he could not travel, he preached the gospel in that city and now he writes to a church in that very place. Would it be so that God, in his wisdom, chooses his own purposes over a cure? The same is true for type one diabetes and any other ailment.

Take, for example, the pervasiveness of the prosperity gospel. Though not exclusive to South Asia, here you can find a version of it where health, wealth, and an untroubled life are preached as promises. Living with a chronic illness in this place is a way God demonstrates to believers and unbelievers alike that He is good, even in the midst of struggle. He displays that He remains good when our sicknesses, earthly or spiritual, remain. Now, there again is hope to be unearthed as we consider the purposes of God, trusting in His promises, looking and pointing toward Him in all our lives.

This World is Not Our Home

Lastly, we rejoice because our difficulties, like diabetes, remind us that this world is not our home. It reminds us that all our labor for the lost to know Him will result in the fulfillment of Revelation 7:9-10. We know these things we wrestle with, a result of sins curse, have ultimately been overcome by the blood of the Lamb. There is this hope, so clear in His Word, that one day, the people of God will live without sickness or death; He will redeem what was lost at the fall and restore Creation, establishing a New City where Jesus is King, and we are His people. Death shall be swallowed up forever and the enemy, death, shall be destroyed! (6)

“He works all things for our good and His glory.” So goes the somewhat stale retelling of Romans 8v28. It’s cliche because it is true. The hardships we walk with, or through, do not disqualify us from radical obedience to God, but are ways in which He is using and equipping us for it. Like Harriet Newell, let us submit our lives to Him, knowing that He is infinitely excellent and can do no wrong.

Let’s consider the truth and the hope that this gives to our lives as we live them today. We can trust in God’s good character, look for the ways in which He is already at work amid our struggle, and stand enthralled at the coming day when all will be made new. We look toward heaven, enraptured by the expectation of what He will bring to completion as we faithfully continue in obedience to His Word.

(1) 2 Corinthians 12v7, ESV

(2) 2 Corinthians 12v10, ESV

(3) Harriet Newell, Delighting in Her Heavenly Bridegroom: The Memoirs of Harriet Newell, Teenage Missionary Wife, ed. Jennifer Adams [Forest, VA: Corner Pillar Press, 2011], 124.

(4) Psalm 145v17, NIV. See also, Psalm 18v30, Deut. 32v4, Romans 8v28, among others.

(5) Galatians 4v13

(6) Isaiah 25v8 and 1 Corinthians 15v26