I hear a request for ease from bodily pain, and I groan inwardly. You ask for healing, and that is a natural thing to do. Yet consider what is truly happening. The knife of the surgeon causes pain, but it is a pain that cuts away decay. God often permits these afflictions of the flesh, a rebellious stomach, aching joints, precisely because they are a most bitter and effective cure for the soul. Nothing is so delightful as a discourse on hell, because it keeps us from falling into it. In the same way, this pain you endure is a grace that braces up the soul, makes us more reverent, and casts out the desires that so mischievously beset us. It becomes a cure.
You cry out to the Lord Jesus for help, and rightly so. But do not seek only to have the pain removed. Seek to understand what it is removing from you. For what is more worthless than a man who passes all his time in idleness and luxury? The man untried is unapproved. Idleness is a useless thing, and in luxury itself nothing is so unsuited to the end proposed as the leading of a luxurious life, for it palls with satiety and all runs to waste. This pain, which hinders your movement and spoils your appetite for rich foods, may be the very medicine Christ is using to break the grip of a dissolute and enervated life. Tribulation works endurance.
I could wish to speak only of the green pastures and the still waters, where sorrow and sighing flee away. But we are in sins, the more part of us, and I must give pain to your understanding, not willingly, but by compulsion, that your punishment may not be greater for hearing these things with indifference. Do not say, “Why does God not take my part?” The publican’s feast was set with the proceeds of injustice, yet Christ partook of it, not for the pleasure, but for the healing of souls. He endures the corruption of the sick to free them from their infirmity. So He comes to you now, not just to your table, but to your very body, which is groaning under its own corruptions. He is making you more vigorous, stronger, more intrepid.
Therefore, pierce your own heart with this truth. Let your prayer be this: that you may bear this pain for Christ, not even as far as death, but as far as this discomfort. Let this affliction teach you that gentleness, meekness, and freedom from extravagance are what truly please the Master. He is not a cruel tyrant, but a physician who comes again after a little while. Your separation from health is only for a little while, and then you shall see His delivering hand, and your endurance will be the brighter. Offer this pain to Him as a sacrifice of a sober mind, and let it drive you not to despair, but to cling to the one thing needful.