PATIENCE, ENDURANCE, AND HEALING

Many hyper-Pentecostal (HP) groups insist that we should have it all now—wealth and healing. If we don’t get healed immediately, the sick were often told that there was something the matter with their faith. Now, it is more likely the un-healed are told, “There is something within you that is blocking your healing.” But they are not told:

•    “You might have to wait for your healing,” or
•    “It might not be according to God’s will to heal you. Instead, He might be accomplishing something more important within you like patience, endurance, character, and faithfulness,” or
•    “God’s grace is sufficient” and His strength is made perfect through weakness and infirmity.”

These considerations are left entirely out of the HP equation, although they are central to the Bible and our lives in Christ, even though the concepts of patience, endurance, waiting, and perseverance are mentioned many hundreds of times. Abraham had to wait 25 years for His promised Isaac. Jacob had to wait 7 additional years of labor to receive his beloved Rachel, and Moses had to endure 40 years as a lowly shepherd in the desert before God would appear to Him in a burning bush and instruct him to lead his suffering people to freedom. But meanwhile God was preparing Moses who had become the humblest man on all the earth. And now we await Jesus’ return! Even our Lord waits patiently as He too forbears as sin destroys:

•    Romans 3:25  [Jesus] whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.

Some of our Lord’s goals could only be accomplished through patience:

•    2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

Jesus also had to patiently endure:

•    Luke 12:49–50 “I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled! I have a baptism [the crucifixion] to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished!”

Patiently enduring demonstrates the truth of our Faith:

•    2 Corinthians 6:4 but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities,

If we patiently endure, we shall reap the blessings. There is no promise that we shall receive God’s promises immediately but in “due season”:

•    Hebrews 6:11–12 And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

•    Galatians 6:9 And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.

We inherit the promises of God through patience:

•    Psalm 37:9 For the evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait for the LORD shall inherit the land… 37:34 Wait for the LORD and keep his way, and he will exalt you to inherit the land; you will look on when the wicked are cut off.

We need the patience of the farmer who must await the harvest. There is no secret formula to reap as we sow:

•    James 5:7–8 Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is…

Through patiently enduring, we receive God’s blessings, which we can pass on to others to build the Body of Christ. This also creates love and community:

•    2 Corinthians 1:3–4 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

Enduring suffering is also God’s command. Through this God produces character, humility, hope, and gentleness:

•    Ephesians 4:1–2 therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love,

•    Romans 5:3–4 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,

All these promises are foreign to the HPs who claim that they receive their blessings in the here and now. They are forceful motivational speakers who make bold claims. One such speaker, before tens of thousands promised that no one will leave his crusade unchanged.

Can we honestly make such wild claims? According to the Scriptures, we are an insubstantial mist, a sinful nothing:

•    James 4:13–16 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

After several attempts to inflame the expectations of crowd,  the HP evangelist counted hundreds who had raised their hands claiming that they had been healed. However, James claimed that God’s will prevails, and going beyond His will is a matter of “boast[ing] in your arrogance.” In any event, we need not worry that we are missing out:

Romans 8:26–27 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.