How can a Christian cope while suffering with a degenerative disease?

Your case is painfully interesting. We are persuaded that if there be simple faith in waiting upon God, He will heal and restore. He is the Hearer and Answerer of prayer. We recommend you to retire from all creature confidences and cast yourself simply upon the Living God. You have been looking to human cisterns. We also judge you have been over-anxious to get well. Seek grace to lie passive in your Father's hands and know no will but His. When once your heart can say, “Thy will be done,” the great moral end of the discipline is reached. We pray that you may reap a rich harvest of blessing from all the painful exercise through which you are now passing. May God comfort you, dear friend.

Psalm 103 brings before us the effect of the Lord's presence on the earth, "Who heals all thy diseases" as well as "forgives all thine iniquities." This is not so now, as it will be in the coming day, when healing and forgiveness will go together. True He does heal now at times, but still He allows sickness to affect His people. Then the healing will not only be wholly, but connected also with forgiveness. Some people think the grand thing is to have faith in God's power. He has only to speak, and the worst disease can be healed easily; but He is training us. Sometimes sickness is sent as a preventive, sometimes as a corrective; we ought to have faith in His love as well as in His power, and in His wisdom too. Have faith in God, not simply in His power. Here Job shines. Perhaps we have not thought adequately of his sufferings — "though he slay me yet will I trust in him."

I do not want, however, to dismiss the subject without adding a word as to what remains for us in these days. For this, we must first of all distinguish between cases which Mr. S. necessarily mixes up in confusion. Elihu, in the book of Job, shows us the chastening of a soul under God's hand, for which his flesh is consumed until he dies, or else humbles himself and confesses his sin and finds mercy. The apostle speaks in this way of a sin unto death, for which he does not say that any one should pray. In James, this case of chastening is supposed, though not exclusively. Here, the remedy is clearly not in doctors, and it is of the very greatest importance to remember it. Here still the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and "confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed" abides ever as the resource. The prayer of faith surely remains to

All sickness does not come under the head of chastening, though discipline we may find in it, and find it needful, therefore, to that end. The apostle's thorn in the flesh had this character, and was not removed, nor could be; God taught him to acquiesce in and to profit by it. For Timothy's weak "stomach's sake and often infirmities" he prescribes, not the prayer of faith, but "a little wine." Trophimus he leaves at Miletum sick; Epaphroditus too is sick, nigh unto death, right under the apostle's eye; but God has mercy on him, and on Paul too thus, and raises him up. Even in apostles' days, and with such as he, the gifts of healing were used, not indiscriminately, or for the personal ease of Christians, but for the glory of God as with Lazarus' resurrection, or that healing of the sick of the palsy, "that ye may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins."

Like Paul of old, when the “stake” was driven home, we may cry to God, even thrice, as he: Take away this thorn, this terrible hindrance to the work of Christ, this feebleness of the vessel, this sapping of energy, this hindrance to service, this cruel “stake” from which the soul struggles in vain to be free. But no; there it remains, until we find, in the acceptance of its bitterness, the occasion of a strength which is not of man, but the emptying us of fancied human power. We learn our powerlessness, we feel that struggling is but in vain. Yet here the secret of strength is found: but not of man, not our own. The Lord comes in. He finds the vessel bereft of strength; prepared for that power with which He can wield it. He finds that condition which it is His to use. “ And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee; for power is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather boast in my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest [“tabernacle over”] upon me.” “The surpassingness of the power is of God, and not from us.”

Of course, believers often have requests that are not (or not yet) heard because God has a different plan for us. So it was even with Paul, who pleaded three times with the Lord to deliver him from the "thorn for the flesh" (2 Cor. 12:7, 8). The thorn was not taken away from him; he received grace in return, which enabled him to endure this pain and the limitations that came with it and to continue his ministry in the power of God.

I trust your dear child may again gain strength. But it is a world where sorrow and death is come; but the Lord is come in after it, and that is our comfort, and has suffered all needed - "crucified in weakness," but is out of it in power. The Lord sustain you both in looking to Him.

God and the Spirit thus occupied with the feeble groaning saint! Again we have to say, by nothing short of Divine revelation could we have known this. The saint may feel that he does not know what to ask, as he suffers with Christ, and groans whilst awaiting the redemption of his body. He may at times feel himself alone on earth, in isolation of spirit from those immediately around him. But is he alone, who has the other Comforter taking such an active part on his behalf, and entering so deeply into his sorrows? Is he alone, who has such an intercessor interceding for him according to God? Do we not at times perhaps forget this? Yet, thank God, the other Comforter does not forget us: He, the Spirit of God, intercedes with God. That intercession must then be in perfect harmony with the mind of God. How this speaks of unabated concern on the part of our God in all that His people are passing through. God is not indifferent to their groanings. Nor are they, it is evident, to be stoics, or by some imaginative feeling to affect superiority to circumstances. No. We are feeble men and women. God knows it. And He has provided the other Comforter for us in our need. To sit down in despair would be to forget that the Spirit intercedes. To affect to be above feeling the sorrows would be really to despise this provision in ministry for us, which our God has so graciously revealed.

Ought not I to be exercised as to what my body is witnessing to? I do not think the saints are exercised enough as to this. Just as an illustration, before I pass on, I would mention what may be seen — a poor, weak, feeble creature, tossing to and fro on a bed of pain; and such an one saying, "What use am I? a trial to myself, a tax to others, no good to anybody." Why, that poor sufferer, with a body full of pain, with everything that would go to make him just the contrary of this by nature, may, by the power of Christ, be so in communion with Him, that his body, instead of being full of murmurings and discontent, displays how the soul is filled with joy and peace, controlled by His presence, and satisfied with Himself. And as you look at this you do not say, What a wonderful creature is there; but, What a Christ is that which can be shown out in such a poor, weak house of clay as this is!

In addition to His support you have One who can enter into your pressure. "In all their affliction He was afflicted." You know He feels with you, but He is out of it, and He so soothes you by His company that you N are more occupied with your gain in Him than with your bereavement. With Him you are borne above it, and you can come boldly to the throne of grace to obtain mercy and find grace. Paul and Silas are a good example. They were in suffering, but they were most wonderfully supported above it. They were borne above it first, then mercy was vouchsafed. There was a great earthquake, and every one's bands were loosed.

While visiting an afflicted Christian some time ago we were given a word of counsel, which was this: "In sending out the magazine, do not forget the needs of the invalids who are deprived of the help of Christian fellowship and public ministry." Our friend told us that such are often greatly tried and needed much comfort, and this we can well believe.