You cry out for healing, protection, money, and the removal of evil, and these are urgent needs. Yet consider the nature of the healing you seek. You ask for your eyesight, but there is a light more necessary than this worldly sun. Darkness seems more suitable to those diseased in their bodily eyes, but a soul’s vision requires the bright, searching light of spiritual wisdom. If Christ rose, born of a Virgin, with Jonah as a sign and barren women bearing children as a testimony, then fix the eyes of your heart on these proofs. That inward sight, once cleansed, sees that no single virtue stands alone. It is not enough to be freed from poverty’s ache if you remain soft and unmanly, nor is it enough to wish evil removed if you are remiss and careless in hearing the word. There is required a careful hearing, a continual recollection, fortitude, and deliverance from all worldly things for your salvation.
You ask for money and safe travel, but know the devil’s craft. The lawgivers of the Gentiles, the oracles of God, the reasonings of nature, and the common opinion of all men oppose the doctrines of fate that make men slumber. Let us travel along the narrow way, both confident and in fear: in fear because of the precipices on either side, confident because Jesus is our guide. If for a little while one slumbers, he is swept away quickly. This is the medicine we must apply. Perhaps you have heard these things ten times and remained insensible, yet afterwards you may show abundant fruit. As a tree receiving many strokes is brought down at last by a single blow, so the many discourses prepare the root, even if you do not see the change above ground. I am fully persuaded that such eager desire in prayer will not fail of its effect.
You plead for permanent removal of evil and for blessing. Here is the true object of Christ’s Incarnation: deliverance from the curse and promotion to sonship. You wish to receive what is due, for the promise was made of old. You have become a son, having put on Christ and received the Spirit of adoption. Therefore, do not measure God’s blessing merely by present safety or the arrival of money. Where is the matchless beauty of love in your request? The Apostle shows that if faith, knowledge, prophecy, even a perfect life and martyrdom have love absent, they are no great advantage. Seek this above all.
You beg for safety and deliverance. But consider those who were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. When it was open to them to live, they did not choose it, looking for a better life. The Lord does not always promise deliverance from death or danger, but permits them, granting a far greater thing: persuading men to despise death. He sets His own above dangers, fixing in their minds the doctrines of the soul’s immortality. This is the comfort. I would not have you ignorant that we were weighed down exceedingly, beyond our power, yet the manner of His deliverance teaches us endurance. Do not seek first the removal of every affliction, but the strength to be set above it, that whether in health or sickness, in safety or peril, you may obtain the everlasting blessings through Jesus Christ our guide.