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Overview
Physical sickness affects more than just our bodies; it takes a toll on our emotional and spiritual health as well. In this honest book, best-selling author John Piper shares ten lessons he learned while in the hospital. Written to help those in the hospital focus their attention on God, his grace, and his plan—when such focus can be especially hard—this volume blends together personal narrative with biblical reflections to help readers rely on the God who stands ready to comfort and support his people. Whether it's cultivating a sense of gratitude, resisting the temptation to watch television 24/7, or looking for ways to serve those around them, this book encourages those who are sick to fight for faith in the midst of their illness.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781433550461 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Crossway |
| Publication date: | 02/12/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 80 |
| Sales rank: | 909,936 |
| File size: | 652 KB |
About the Author
John Piper is founder and lead teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. He served for thirty-three years as a pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and is the author of more than fifty books, including Desiring God; Don't Waste Your Life; and Providence.
John Piper is founder and lead teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. He served for thirty-three years as a pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and is the author of more than fifty books, including Desiring God; Don’t Waste Your Life; and Providence.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Bible is the Word of God and should be trusted.
John Piper's opinion about your suffering has no authority. God's Word does. If you ask me, "But how do you know the Bible is the Word of God?" my short answer would be, "There is a glory that shines through it, which fits perfectly with the God-shaped template in your heart." When your mind is clearest, you know the voice of God. As Jesus says, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me" (John 10:27).
Deep down you know God. That's what the Bible says: "What can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them" (Rom. 1:19). Just as God's world makes clear that he is its Maker (Ps. 19:1), so God's Word makes clear that he is its Author.
It's similar to the way you know that honey is honey. Scientists may say this jar contains honey because of chemical experiments. But you know it's honey because you tasted it. Similarly, there is a divine sweetness in God's Word. It touches a part of you that you know was put there by God. Thus the psalmist exclaims, "How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!" (Ps. 119:103).
So when Jesus says, "Scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35), and when Saint Paul says, "All Scripture is breathed out by God" (2 Tim. 3:16), and when Saint Peter says, the authors of Scripture "were carried along by the Holy Spirit" (2 Pet. 1:21), your heart says, yes.
You have tasted. You have seen. And there is a sweet, deep assurance that these words are true. Your whole soul resonates with statements like these: "The sum of your word is truth" (Ps. 119:160); "Forever, O Lord, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens" (Ps. 119:89); "Every word of God proves true" (Prov. 30:5).
When this happens, the whole truth of God washes over you in the hospital with incomparable comfort: "When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul" (Ps. 94:19); "The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all" (Ps. 34:18–19).
No man can comfort your soul the way God can. His comfort is unshakable. It comes from his Word, the Bible. That is my first belief. And all the others are based on this one.
CHAPTER 2God is good.
The Bible tells us, "The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him" (Nah. 1:7). "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5). "For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations" (Ps. 100:5).
But in the hospital, we are surrounded by suffering. There is no place quite like it. In the outside world, pain seems to dissolve in the water of ordinary life. But in the hospital, it's as if the water has been boiled away, leaving only the concentrated sediment of suffering. You can see it and smell it and hear it.
You may be tempted to ask, Is God good? There is so much suffering in the world that he made! Let George Mueller give God's answer from the Bible. Mueller is famous for building orphanages for destitute children in England in the nineteenth century. In 1870, when he was sixty-five, his wife of forty years died. He loved her deeply. He spoke at her funeral and chose Psalm 119:68 as his text: "You are good and do good." He recalled in the sermon how he held on to this truth:
All will be according to His own blessed character. Nothing but that, which is good, like Himself, can proceed from Him. If he pleases to take my dearest wife, it will be good, like Himself. What I have to do, as His child, is to be satisfied with what my Father does, that I may glorify Him. After this my soul not only aimed, but this, my soul, by God's grace, attained to. I was satisfied with God.
Even when we are surrounded by suffering in the hospital, God is still good.
CHAPTER 3God is wise and knows everything.
God knows absolutely everything about your body and its disease. Compared to his knowledge of the universe, all the scientists and all the libraries in the world are like children and first-grade readers. There is nothing he does not know and understand perfectly:
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! (Rom. 11:33)
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
... his understanding is unsearchable. (Isa. 40:28)
And with this infinite knowledge, he is infinitely wise. He uses his infinite knowledge to accomplish all his wise purposes:
With God are wisdom and might;
he has counsel and understanding. (Job 12:13)
O Lord, how manifold are your works!
In wisdom have you made them all. (Ps. 104:24)
Blessed be the name of God forever and ever,
to whom belong wisdom and might. (Dan. 2:20)
God means for this to comfort us in our trouble. We know this because he tells us to pray for our needs but not to use a lot of words, as if he were reluctant: "Do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do ... for your Father knows what you need before you ask him" (Matt. 6:7–8). He knows what you need. Don't be anxious about your daily needs; "your heavenly Father knows that you need them all" (Matt. 6:32). He knows.
And in his wisdom, every need will be met: "My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 4:19). And so we proclaim, "To the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen" (Rom. 16:27).
CHAPTER 4God is totally in control.
Some find this comforting. Some find it incredible. Some find it blasphemous. Some find it cruel. I am in that first group. It is a great comfort to me that whatever happens to me, and to those I love, is not in the control of meaningless chance or malevolent demons. God is good, and God is wise; so it is good news that God is in control.
God says, "My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose" (Isa. 46:10), and, "I am the Lord. ... Is anything too hard for me?" (Jer. 32:27). And we respond with Job, "I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted" (Job 42:2). And with Christ we say, "With God all things are possible" (Matt. 19:26).
Why is it good news to say, with Jesus, that not a single sparrow falls to the ground apart from the will of our Father? Jesus tells us why: "You are of more value than many sparrows" (Matt. 10:31).
When we are sick or dying, we may not see the kindness of God as easily as when we were well. But that is why we need God's Word. Experience is not a reliable guide. God is.
When sickness and Satan and maybe even other people threaten our lives, we need to hear God say to us what he said to Joseph's brothers. They had sold Joseph into slavery (Gen. 37:28), and now he was their master in Egypt. But here is what he said: "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good" (Gen. 50:20).
Not just "God used it for good" but "God meant it for good." They had an evil purpose. God had a good one. This is the key to all comfort in suffering. However evil Satan's aims are in our lives, God's aims are good. This is a huge comfort when everything else looks bleak.
CHAPTER 5Sin is the ugly origin of ugly disease.
I don't mean your sickness is a specific punishment for your sin. I mean all sickness is owing to the sin of the first man and woman, Adam and Eve. Sickness and suffering come to the most godly people in the world. All our trials are God's merciful refining of our faith as gold (1 Pet. 1:6–7). But there is no simple correlation between specific sins and specific sufferings.
When our first parents rebelled against God and took matters into their own hands, God turned the whole world into a painful parable of the ugliness of that act. The Bible says that God "subjected [creation] to futility" and gave it over to the "bondage [of] corruption" (Rom. 8:20–21). As we lie in the hospital and listen to the sound of pain, what we should be hearing is, Sin is ugly.
CHAPTER 6Jesus Christ died and rose to save sinners.
The most comforting news we can possibly hear in the hospital, or anywhere, is that God shows his love for those who have rebelled against him. He has sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to bear the punishment that sinners deserve.
It is a horrible thing to lie in a hospital bed and wonder if we are dying and yet have no peace with God. But it is a wonderful thing to be able to lie there and know that even if we die, we will not be condemned but have eternal life.
God made that kind of peace possible. The link between our guilty souls and God's love is faith in Christ. What did he do?
• "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree" (1 Pet. 2:24).
• "Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God" (1 Pet. 3:18).
• God "made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Cor. 5:21).
• "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8).
• "God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).
When we trust in this amazing work of Christ, we can rest in the promise of Romans 8:1: "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Is anything sweeter than to fall asleep, even in a hospital bed, knowing that whether we live or die, God is for us?
When I was given my cancer diagnosis, this is what the Lord gave me: Live or die, you are mine.
For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. (1 Thess. 5:9–10)
CHAPTER 7Sickness is not God's first design or final plan for this world.
Sickness is not the way it was supposed to be. When God created the world, he "saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good" (Gen. 1:31). There was no sickness before sin. And the day is coming when sickness will be no more. God's purpose is to rid the world entirely of sin and unrighteousness and suffering. He will make the whole world new:
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. (Rev. 21:4)
No more hospitals. No more chemotherapy. No more wheelchairs or crutches or braces. No more antibiotics or morphine. No more surgeries or physical therapies. In one all-encompassing healing for his redeemed world, God will put things right. For this we wait eagerly — and even groan: "We ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies" (Rom. 8:23).
CHAPTER 8Satan is real and cruel but not in control.
Satan is God's first and greatest enemy. But he is not God's equal. God could at any moment put him totally out of commission. Evidently, God thinks it best, for now, to let Satan tempt and, at times, torment — and even kill — his people (Rev. 2:10).
This is the story of Job. Satan had to get God's permission to make him sick (Job 2:4–7). Similarly, he had to get God's permission to tempt Peter (Luke 22:31–32). Satan is not free to do anything he pleases. He does, the Bible says, go around like a lion, trying to destroy the faith of God's people — including those in hospital beds (1 Pet. 5:8–9). But he is on a leash. He cannot reach you unless God lets him.
God has given us the shield of faith to quench Satan's fiery darts (Eph. 6:16). And he has promised to deliver us from Satan's jaws: "Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you" (James 4:7).
And what a sweet and strong promise for those of you who are suffering right now:
Resist [the devil], firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen. (1 Pet. 5:9–11)
CHAPTER 9Healing is possible now and certain later.
God still heals. Sometimes he heals miraculously. Sometimes he heals through the medical means put in the hands of doctors. God does not promise to heal all sickness in this age. When the Bible says, "By his wounds you have been healed" (1 Pet. 2:24), it does not specify when.
Paul makes plain that one effect of humanity's fall into sin is that even Christians "groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies" (Rom. 8:23). That means we must wait till the second coming. Until then, Christians will groan because of disease and calamity.
But even though our final inheritance includes the total healing of all God's children (Rev. 21:4), there are early disbursements of the inheritance to be enjoyed now. One way to look at it is to say that the kingdom of God has come — in part.
Jesus said, "If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you" (Luke 11:20). And again, "The kingdom of God is in the midst of you" (Luke 17:21). And the coming of the kingdom includes healing from the king. Jesus sent the apostles out "to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal" (Luke 9:2). So if the kingdom is here in measure, healing is here in measure too.
So James told all the churches of his day, "Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him. ... Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed" (James 5:14, 16). Don't be ashamed to ask for such prayer. And trust the outcome to your Father who knows what is best.
CHAPTER 10Your life and your illness are not meaningless.
You are not the victim of random cell mutations or accidental genetic anomalies or rogue viruses or maverick molecules or chance misfortunes. If that is the kind of world we live in, I would certainly not be writing this short book. There would be no meaning and no hope. You and I would be no more significant than the mattress you lie on — just a more complicated combination of molecules.
Events have meaning when there is someone in charge who means. And there is. God speaks over your life these words: "My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose" (Isa. 46:10). He is busy at this very moment working all things together for your everlasting good (Rom. 8:28). He cannot fail: "The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations" (Ps. 33:11).
Doctors and nurses and family members all have plans for you. But one plan is sure. One plan gives unshakable and eternal meaning to your life. "Many are the plans in the mind of a man," the ancient sage observes, "but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand" (Prov. 19:21).
You need not worry about the slightest slipup. Not a bird falls to the ground apart from your heavenly Father's will (Matt. 10:29). Every throw of the dice in every casino, not to mention every medical procedure, is guided by God for God's purposes: "The lot is cast into the lap [the therapy is chosen], but its every decision is from the Lord" (Prov. 16:33).
For a season, God has made you like a helpless little child. Trust him. He is a good Father. All-wise, all-strong, all-loving. Rest in him. He has much to teach you. This is what I found when my time came. And what I hope I will find again. For there will almost certainly be an "again."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Lessons from a Hospital Bed"
by .
Copyright © 2016 Desiring God Foundation.
Excerpted by permission of Good News Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Foreword: Before You Begin ... by Joni Eareckson Tada,
The Setting,
Part 1 Ten Beliefs I Brought to the Hospital,
Part 2 Ten Lessons from My Hospital Bed,
Concluding Prayer,
Scripture Index,