When an old friend visited me in my home—a man who had been a noted writer, teacher, and radio broadcaster—I was shocked at his physical state. It had been some years since I’d last seen him, and in the meantime he’d had a number of strokes. He walked with much difficulty, and could hardly speak.

After he left, someone else who had also been visiting at the time remarked, “What do you suppose he did, for God to let such a thing happen to him?” The question struck me as rather harsh and judgmental, and as I thought about it later, I realized that this is actually a fairly common reaction. When someone suffers from a debilitating sickness or accident, others often wonder what sin the person committed to bring such a punishment upon them.

But is that necessarily the case? I believe that in many cases a better explanation can be found in the Bible’s book of John, chapter 9: “As Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, saying, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him’” (John 9:1–3).

God knows the way that I take; when He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold

We also seem to forget that many of the greatest examples of faith down through the ages have been those of people who, like Job, had their faith purified in the furnace of affliction. Job said, “God knows the way that I take; when He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold” (Job 23:10). God sometimes uses sickness or some other hardship to draw us closer to Him or get us back on track if we’ve gone astray, but when He does we have this promise: “Afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:11).

It’s the “afterward” that God is interested in. Afterward, many times there is a great deliverance. It may not always come in the form we have prayed for or expected—it may not come in the form of physical healing—but if we let God accomplish His purpose through it, we’ll come out better for it. “In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us” (Romans 8:37). “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28).

People often think of God in terms of judgment, retribution, and punishment, whereas the Bible tells us that “God is love” (1 John 4:8). He deals differently with each of us and very often His ways are past finding out (Romans 11:33), but we always have the assurance that whatever He does, He does in love. n