I Am Terribly Sick, but There Is Still Time to Heal

God has given us the diagnosis of our fallen nature, along with the medicine and the road to recovery. Everything in this world helps ease the pain—but when the symptoms are only masked, precious healing time is wasted.

For that reason, I keep my focus on the disease within me, under close watch, and strive ceaselessly in the battle against evil—praying that by summoning forth the good, I might become an antibody to others, and that God’s love might work through me.

Contrary to my fleshly desire for comfort and honor, I welcome suffering, knowing that pure gold is forged in fire, and that stone only becomes glass under extreme heat. Paradoxically, the brighter I shine, the more I see there is no light in me.

May death meet my pride before my pride brings my death.

Should I look at my healthy body and say my soul is not sick? How often does a hard shell hide rotten fruit? What foolishness it would be to chase seventy years of pleasure when eternity waits.

If I should choose to suffer now, I will be freed forever in the next.

As I die to this world, I begin to see glimpses of the next beneath the veil.

I see now that paradise is here and now—in the healing of the soul.

But to the healed, there is only Hell—for He who heals knows that to be truly healed, one must be dead to this life and alive in Christ.

Let us then choose death now—for life’s sake—and kill the things in us that live for this world, and not the next.

Let us strive to leave this spiritual hospital freed from our disease, never to return. And the condition we find in Heaven will be the one we keep forever.

Lord, give me the strength to persevere, and let this not just be a hospital, but a battlefield against the forces of evil that wage war for our hearts.

Amen.