"I should focus on getting my affairs in order instead of hoping for healing."
How it sounds in your head: Be realistic. Update the will, make the funeral arrangements, have the hard conversations with the kids about what I want. Hope is fine, but preparation is wise. I don't want to burden my family with decisions if I'm gone. The lawyer said get the estate settled. I need to be responsible about this.
"God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did."
-- Romans 4:17Enemy disguises fatalistic preparation as responsibility to shift focus from covenant promises to death logistics and cement diagnosis as certain outcome.
Financial advisors, lawyers, even doctors use the phrase 'get your affairs in order' like responsible adulthood. You've seen families torn apart fighting over estates; you don't want that. Planning seems like love for your family, realism, maturity - not negativity or lack of faith.
Four days dead, already decomposing, body rotting in the tomb, mourners having already done the funeral, affairs completely settled, estate presumably divided - Martha said 'by now he stinks.' Jesus called him FORTH anyway, and dead man walked out alive, all that 'realistic preparation' suddenly irrelevant.
I REFUSE the lie that realistic preparation for death honors God more than audacious expectation of life. IT IS WRITTEN that God calls things that don't exist as though they did - I call my healing manifest NOW even while symptoms scream otherwise, because faith is the evidence of things NOT SEEN. Abraham at 100 didn't order a coffin; he believed God who gives life to the dead and became father of nations. IT IS WRITTEN that I shall not die but LIVE and declare the works of the Lord - that's not denial, that's decree. The BARAK blessing made 120-year-old Moses die with undimmed eye and unabated vigor - covenant life, not negotiated surrender to death timelines. I can be wise with practical matters without agreement with death sentence. My affairs are in order when I'm rightly aligned with LIFE.
Your Father isn't sitting with you going over funeral home brochures nodding approvingly at your 'realistic planning' - He's the One who called Lazarus out of the tomb four days PAST any reasonable hope, who specializes in resurrection when everyone else is planning the burial. He's running toward you with LIFE, not a casket.