"God is using this sickness to teach me something I need to learn."
How it sounds in your head: My pastor said God's ways are higher than mine. My mom said maybe God is getting my attention. My grandmother said God won't waste this pain. If I get healed 'too soon,' maybe I'll miss the lesson. Maybe I need to figure out what God is trying to teach me FIRST, and then He'll heal me. Maybe rushing to healing is spiritually immature, and accepting the process is what mature faith looks like.
"How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him."
-- Acts 10:38Source: Religious teaching that makes God the author of sickness instead of the healer, requiring people to find 'meaning' in what Jesus died to destroy.
She's heard dozens of sermons about 'valleys' and 'wilderness seasons' and 'God's refining fire.' People keep telling her their own stories of what they 'learned through suffering.' It feels irreverent to want OUT of something God might be using for her good. She's afraid if she fights it, she's fighting HIM.
A woman had a spirit of infirmity for EIGHTEEN YEARS, bent over and unable to straighten up. Jesus called her forward and said, 'Woman, you are LOOSED from your infirmity,' and laid hands on her, and IMMEDIATELY she was made straight and glorified God. When religious leaders criticized Him for healing on the Sabbath, Jesus said, 'Should not this woman, a DAUGHTER OF ABRAHAM, whom Satan has BOUND for eighteen years, be loosed?' He called her Abraham's daughter and identified SATAN as the source of her sickness. Eighteen years of bondage, broken in one moment.
I REFUSE the lie that my sickness is God's teaching tool, as if the Father who sent His Son to heal ALL who were oppressed by the devil suddenly changed His mind with me. IT IS WRITTEN that Jesus healed ALL—not some, not the ones who'd learned enough, ALL. The woman bent over for 18 years didn't need to learn a lesson; she needed to be LOOSED, and Jesus called her a daughter of Abraham whom SATAN had bound. IT IS WRITTEN in James 1:17 that every GOOD and PERFECT gift comes from the Father, and there is NO variation or shadow of turning in Him. Sickness isn't His teaching method; healing is His NATURE. I am a daughter of Abraham, and what Satan meant to bind me, Jesus came to LOOSE.
The Father isn't authoring her sickness or withholding healing until she's learned some hidden lesson. He's running toward her, furious at the enemy who bound His daughter, ready to LOOSE her immediately—not because she's figured anything out, but because He's a Father who can't stand watching the devil torment His kid.