First, we remember that God is healing people all the time. Second, we realize that the question isn’t actually whether God will heal our children but when. And third, we see that praying is about asking God to do now what he will certainly do then: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). It’s about staring into the furnace, like the three men in Daniel 3, and saying, “Our God is able to rescue us, O king, and he will. But even if he doesn’t, we’re still going to trust him” (Daniel 3:17–18).

Theological Reflection
At some point or other, every Christian with a disability is going to have to figure out how to think about physical healing. In our case, theological reflection on healing has been essential: we help lead a large charismatic church that sees dozens of people physically healed each year; I have talked about God’s healing power in at least three of my books; we both speak at conferences and churches where people get physically healed in response to prayer; and yet we also have two children with special needs who have not been healed, as well as many friends for whom that is also true. All this, in a very good way, has forced us to think carefully about the subject.
When it comes to physical healing, the extremes are relatively easy to see. We have the loony prosperity gospel preachers and their shallow messages of permanent health and wealth for everyone who follows Jesus. Then we have the starchy cynics who think that everyone who claims to have experienced divine healing is either lying or delusional. The first group acts as if God always heals today because the kingdom of God is entirely now; the second group acts as if God never heals today because the kingdom of God is entirely not yet. The biblical picture (to summarize a huge amount of theology in one sentence!) is that it is both now and not yet. We should expect both miracles and disappointments, physical healing and physical death, to form part of our experience until Jesus returns.
So far, so good. But even when people agree on those things, there can still be confusion. We have Tigger types, who bounce around insisting that God will always heal us if we just have enough certainty that he will, and we have Eeyore types, who mope around mumbling that disabilities are just part of the way things are and that asking God to heal us is a waste of time. Being a Winnie-the-Pooh type in the middle, believing that God wants to heal but trusting him when he doesn’t, can be exhausting. The Tigger types make you feel guilty; the Eeyore types make you feel grumpy. And you’re still the one with the disabled child.
So it has helped us to realize that, although we often talk as if there is only one type of divine healing, there are actually four, as far as we can tell. Most people instinctively prefer some to others, but they’re all there.
Type 1
A virus enters my body, and my white blood cells are launched into action like a rabid dog, hunting down the perpetrator to kill it. I cut my hand, and immediately a combination of clotting blood cells and replacement skin cells begin the patch-up job. Every second, as my heart beats, tiny bits of mineral and organic material are sent to parts of the body that need it, performing ongoing repairs that will never finish, like painting the Golden Gate bridge hour after hour, year after year.
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Each day, we must proclaim the gospel to ourselves and others. We must defend the faith against those who assault it. We must commit ourselves to Christ and, by his grace, keep striving towards maturity and Christ-likeness in him. Most importantly, we mustn’t permit ourselves to stagnate or wallow in laziness. Like Paul, we “press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

There is a quote often wrongly attributed to Winston Churchill, but whose origins appear to be lost, that says, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” There is a great truth to it. It reminds one of the Apostle Paul’s words in Philippians 3:13–14: “Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Past accomplishments should not and cannot dictate our futures. Failures must not determine our ends. Faith, courage, and hope firmly rooted in Christ, ultimately, are what count as we strain towards the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. We who are in Christ must press ever onward, toward the goal ahead of us, that we might finish the course of this life with joy and gladness.
Of course, we ought never forget that our justification by faith alone is the very means of our security in Christ. We are in no danger of losing our salvation. We need not work to stay saved. However, this does not excuse us from actively living out our faith in practical obedience to the Lord; the one who is saved will work as the indication that they have been saved (cf. Eph 2:10; Jas 2:17). This means that our personal development and spiritual growth is essential. We are to never stop growing as Christians. Even elders in the church must strive toward spiritual growth. There’s always more Bible to learn, more habits to improve, more sin to kill, more souls to evangelize, more saints to disciple, and more to be done. If ever we find ourselves thinking that we have made it, or perfected our faith, then we will know that we have missed the mark.
Consider pastoral leadership. A pastor who stops spiritually growing will eventually stop leading. A pastor cannot expect his people to continue to spiritually grow if he himself has stopped growing. After all, if he has stopped growing, one of two things will happen: either his people will stop caring to grow themselves and thus stagnate in the faith, or they will surpass and leave him behind.
Yes, pastors must strive toward spiritual growth. But so too must all other Christians. Stagnation is never a positive thing. If a man is running a marathon and decides that he is comfortable where he is, but only ran half the marathon, then the race will remain incomplete. If a mountain climber says that they’re happy to have climbed only three-quarters of the way up the mountain, and now they’re content to stay where they are, then they will likely freeze to death.
So, too, the Christian cannot be content with their current spiritual growth. While we find perfect joy and contentment in Christ alone, we must simultaneously see the many improvements we must make in our walk with Christ and strive to push ever ahead. What then are we to do to forget what’s behind and reach towards what’s ahead?
Our spiritual Growth Depends on Our Partaking of the Ordinary Means of Grace.
The very first step to take towards spiritual growth is profoundly simple, yet also the most important. In fact, this step ought to be repeated, to various degrees, daily. It holds true for elders, deacons, kitchen cleaners, sound system operators, janitors, children, elderly, and everyone else in between.
Spiritual growth requires the ordinary means of grace. This means that studying the Scriptures, praying without ceasing, attending church, fellowshipping with the saints, and partaking of the Lord’s Supper are all simple, yet highly effective means of grace that God has gifted us with to mature us in Christ.
Many miss these ordinary means of grace, though. Some are so busy seeking the next “big thing” that they miss what is lying right before them. They seek thrills and highs, hoping for miracles and revivals, while ignoring the biblical habits that are necessary to shape us into the image of Christ. They spend so much time seeking spiritual highs that they miss the seemingly ordinary things of this life that are actually quite extraordinary. It may seem a small thing to pick up the Bible and study it, and it may even appear to be impossible that doing so would cause any amount of spiritual growth to transpire. Yet, that is exactly what we’re called to do. “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Tim 2:15). That isn’t a trick, some sort of nasty deception, or a promise contingent upon spiritual elitism. No, the one who puts forth the diligence, effort, and hard work needed to study the Bible will be one who has no need of shame because they can rightly handle the Word. That’s a mark of spiritual maturity.
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Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Wednesday, July 17, 2024
The psalmist tells us to put not our trust in princes…But the awful events of Saturday remind us that this statement is true, not merely because our leaders are limited and flawed but also because, like the grass and the flowers of the field, they can pass in the twinkling of an eye. Only the Lord and the Word of the Lord remain forever.

Last week, whenever anyone asked me where I live, I typically responded, “45 miles north of Pittsburgh.”
By 8 p.m. on Saturday, I found myself a resident of the most famous county in the world. Ten miles from where I am sitting now, a 20-year-old attempted to take the life of Donald Trump at a rally. For the time being, everybody knows where Butler County, Pa., is.
It is odd to be so close to a moment in history, but it is also important to set that moment in context. Political assassinations are as old as politics itself. The histories of Greece, Rome, and, indeed, even the Old Testament kingdom narratives are not exceptional in this regard. And the modern age has produced enough of them. The Kennedy murders of the 1960s still loom large in the American mind. And if Charles de Gaulle died while watching television, it was not because of the lack of effort by his enemies to have him dispatched somewhat earlier and much more violently. Indeed, the last three decades in the West have arguably been the exception for their lack of assassins. Not yet 60, I can recall the deaths of Aldo Moro and Olaf Palme, the shooting of Ronald Reagan, and the Brighton Hotel bombing of the U.K. Conservative Party Conference in 1984. And it seemed at one point in the 1970s that everyone was trying to assassinate Gerald Ford. One early memory is asking my father if “Squeaky Fromme” was a cartoon character. The comparative lack of assassinations over recent decades could well be the result of better security procedures rather than a sea change in the nature of politics itself.
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