Tag: illness

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Christel Church Home & Health Spiritual Growth Suffering & Trials

Advice for Struggling Church Members

Many dear friends have difficulties in their lives that don’t make for good small talk. They feel about as useful to the church as a clock without batteries. And the fact that they make it out to church at all is God’s grace.

It’s tempting to retreat from people in these times, but we must keep coming back because God warns us against quitting fellowship (Heb. 10:25). The opposite of our instinct is what we really need most, and when it comes down to it, our trials are not always about us. Sometimes we go through them for the sake of others.

The Importance of Struggling Church Members

The Apostle Paul describes the church as a living body whose head is Christ. Each individual is an essential part. Some parts of the body appear weaker or less visible and we are tempted to view them as less important. But Paul confronts this misconception in 1 Cor. 12:20-22:

…THERE ARE MANY PARTS, YET ONE BODY. THE EYE CANNOT SAY TO THE HAND, “I HAVE NO NEED OF YOU,” NOR AGAIN THE HEAD TO THE FEET, “I HAVE NO NEED OF YOU.” ON THE CONTRARY, THE PARTS OF THE BODY THAT SEEM TO BE WEAKER ARE INDISPENSABLE…

Against all logic, the weaker ones are “indispensable” to the church. When circumstances cripple you, your ministry may be smaller and less obvious to others, but your worth is not diminished.  The church needs your weakness as much as you need its strength.

5 Practical Tips For Struggling Hearts

Even the most resilient church members have bad days. Some days our hearts feel so fragile that we can’t bear the thought of rubbing up against the opinions of others. Three godly women advised me of what I might do in my circumstance. Here are their suggestions:

  1. Instead of going into all the details of your life, ask people to pray for you in specific things. For example, “Please pray that I could find contentment this week. I’m struggling to wait on God’s timing.” Or whatever is relevant to your circumstances. God works through the prayers of his people and most are happy to pray for you if you ask.
  2. Don’t take responsibility for making others feel okay about your circumstances. People in the church will grieve with you when you grieve. It’s okay. You don’t have to comfort them on your behalf.
  3. If you are having a particularly bad day, avoid small talk. Retreat to a quieter corner and have one or two slower, more focused conversations.
  4. Try not to be hard on people if they are insensitive. They may be feeling guilty that they haven’t asked you about your troubles for a long time, not knowing that you just hashed through it with five other people and you are weary.
  5. It’s okay to divert the conversation. A vague answer followed by a question can put the attention on someone else. And sometimes the best thing we can do is get out of our own head and encourage another person. Because perhaps you—in your messy, unstable life—will speak into someone else’s life the exact insight that they need to hear. God’s strength is made perfect in weakness and sometimes Christ’s power works through us when we feel our most inadequate (2 Cor. 12.9).

This advice has helped me to be part of church life even on days when I’m struggling. In my experience, the times that I wanted to fellowship the least I often benefited the most or had a surprising opportunity to speak into someone’s life. What God is teaching me in my struggles is often the exact thing that someone else needs to hear.

But it is also important to admit our limitations. Pride makes us hate to admit neediness of any kind, but the truth is, we need each other and ultimately, we need Christ. And sometimes our weakness offers the perfect vantage point to encourage those around us in the Lord.

An earlier version of this article was published at CBMW, Why the Church Needs Struggling Members.

unsplash-logoSam Moqadam

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Christel Gospel Home & Health Spiritual Growth Suffering & Trials

Your Chronic Disease Leads to Something Better

disease
shadowlands of chronic disease

I’m never sure how to answer when someone asks how I’m doing health-wise. I’d like to say, “I’m okay for now,” or “I’m not sure,” but those replies seem to make people uncomfortable. There is an ongoingness to my autoimmune disease that’s hard to explain. It’s like the wind. Sometimes it blows hard, and other times it stands still . . . and you never know when the next gust will come.

One author wrote this about her autoimmune disease: “A spinal cord injury can paralyze you in a moment, but the paralysis of my disease is a long story. Worse, then better, then worse, then better. For years.”

When I was first diagnosed with lupus, fear of death hit me hard. Not so much because I fear being dead, but more because of what it would do to my young family. Sometimes fear still creeps up on me.

But I’ve come to see that the corruption of my body does not undermine the fact that I am still living. Nor is it at odds with God making all things new (Rev. 21:5). Everyone is dying, but sometimes it takes a diagnosis to remember what our purpose is in the meantime.

Shadowlands

Although it’s trendy to “live in the moment,” it’s hard to make sense of our difficulties without reference to the future.

There’s a scene in the movie Shadowlands between C.S. Lewis and his wife, Joy, where she expresses this sentiment well. He is in denial about her cancer diagnosis, and she wants to be able to talk with him about it.

Lewis says, “Now I don’t want to be somewhere else anymore. Not waiting for anything new to happen. Not looking around the next corner, not the next hill. Here now. That’s enough.”

Joy replies, “That’s your kind of happy, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Yes it is.”

“It is not going to last, Jack.”

“We shouldn’t think about that now. Let’s not spoil the time we have together.”

“It doesn’t spoil it. It makes it real. Let me just say it before this rain stops, and we go back.”

“What’s there to say?”

“That I’m going to die, and I want to be with you then, too. The only way I can do that is if I’m able to talk to you about it now.”

“I’ll manage somehow. Don’t worry about me.”

“No, I think it can be better than just managing. What I am trying to say is that the pain then is part of the happiness now. That’s the deal.”

The pain then is part of the happiness now. These words hit me every time I watch this movie. She is saying that the pain of future death intensifies the joy of life today.

For the Christian especially, death causes us to appreciate God’s grace, not only in this life, but especially in the one to come.

In the “shadowlands,” the sun isn’t shining. Clouds of pain and sorrow fill your horizon, and life feels hard. But even here the Christian must acknowledge that victory has swallowed up death (1 Cor. 15:54). Darkness has not won.

The apostle Paul rejoiced “in the hope of the glory of God” (Rom. 5:2), not because his life was easy but because there was glory in his future. And because of that, joy invaded the present.

Hope of Future Glory

God’s blessings in this life are a foretaste of heaven, but without the pain we forget that blessings are merely pointers. We need the pain to remind us there is something better than this world. We wouldn’t long for divine love if human love was perfect. We wouldn’t long for feasting in heaven if there wasn’t starvation, eating disorders, and financial hardships here on earth. We would settle in our sin and take what we could get with no thought of what we are giving up.

The smell of rain, the sound of children laughing, the taste of a fresh blueberry, the pleasure of a friend’s company, and the comfort of a spouse’s arms—these blessings intermingle with pain and uncertainty and make us long for something better.

Ongoing illness is a beast to contend with. So is foster parenting, job insecurity, marriage troubles, persecution, and a host of other unnamed difficulties. But each “affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Cor. 4:17).

Trials are those blessings in disguise that prod us out of our complacency and expose the inadequacy of our favorite worldly comforts.

Jesus invites us to find spiritual rest in Him (Matt. 11:28–29). Unlike its earthly counterparts, the rest Jesus offers transcends the shadowlands and defies our circumstances. As Augustine famously said in his Confessions, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

To my fellow shadowlanders: I feel your pain, but we need the hard places to remind us that we are not home yet. They wean us off of lesser hopes and push us into the arms of True Rest, where we were always meant to be.

Jesus offers you rest today. Will you trust Him with your future?

A previous version of this article was posted at  reviveourhearts.com.

unsplash-logoSimeon Muller

Categories
Christel Home & Health Spiritual Growth

Can You Trust That God Knows You?

I’ve tried to find a cure for what ails me, but I’ve never found the proverbial magic bullet.

Not many of us do.

I think of the young woman I was chatting with at the doctor’s office who was fighting tooth and nail against her illness. “Have you tried BodyTalk?” she asked me.

“No, I don’t know what that is,” I told her.

“It’s kind of hard to explain…the person kind of taps your body in different places. It’s an energy thing.”

I couldn’t quite think of how to respond. But she continued and spared me the need, “My practitioner is very good. She told me how I died in a previous life.”

I will spare you all the gory details about how she died, suffice it to say, it was more than I wanted to know. But her story did make me think. Don’t we all want someone to tell us deep, life-changing secrets about ourselves?

God sees all things clearly, but we see only partially, and sometimes I long to see what God sees. For instance, how and why does autoimmunity happen? There are clues, but no answers. I don’t know. My doctor doesn’t know. The specialists don’t know.

So I look to God’s word and find that Jesus has unlimited knowledge. Not only was he involved in the creation of all things, he now holds all things together.

For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible…And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together…

(Col. 1:16)

He was before disease. He was before human intelligence. He was there at the beginning of the world when everything was good. He created the forests, the oceans and the sun’s warm rays. He created love, and the angels, and every invisible process of life. And God saw that it was good. He created all things and in him they hold together (Col 1:17). Not one antibody in my system rebels outside his sovereign purposes (Rom 8:28).

unsplash-logoLandon Martin

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