October 18 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"Lord, he whom you love is sick" (John 11:33).

Devotional

Dear afflicted reader, this is the truth upon which the Lord would pillow and sustain your soul—that you are the sick one whom he loves.

Doubtless the enemy—ever on the watch to distress the saints of God, eager to avail himself of every circumstance in their history favorable to the accomplishment of his malignant designs—has taken advantage of your illness to suggest hard and distrustful thoughts of the Lord's love to you. "Does he love you? Can he love you, and afflict you thus? What? This hectic fever, these night-sweats, these faintings and swoonings, these insufferable tortures, this long wasting, this low insidious disease—and yet loved by God! Impossible!" Such has been the lies of Satan. And such the echo of unbelief.

But Lazarus was loved of Jesus, and so are you! That darkened room and curtained bed contains one for whom the Son of God came down to earth—to live, to labor, and to die! That room is often radiant with his presence, and that bed is often made with his hands. Jesus is never absent from that spot! The affectionate husband, the tender wife, the fond parent, the devoted sister, the faithful nurse, are not in more constant attendance at that solemn post of observation than is Jesus. They must be absent; he never is—not even for one moment—away from that couch. Sleep must overcome them; but he who guards that suffering patient "will neither slumber nor sleep" (Ps. 121:4). Long-continued watching must exhaust and prostrate them; but he, the Divine watcher, "does not faint or grow weary" (Isa. 40:28).

Yes, Jesus loves you. Nor does he love you the less. No, but he loves you the more now that you are prostrate upon that bed of languishing, a weak one hanging upon him.

Again I repeat, this is the only truth that will now soothe and sustain your soul. Not the thought of your love to Jesus, but rather of Jesus' love to you, is the truth upon which your agitated mind is to rest. In the multitude of your thoughts within you, this is the comfort that will delight your soul—"Jesus loves me."

Your love to Christ now affords you no plea, no encouragement, no hope. You can get no sweetness from the thought of your affection to the Savior. It has been so feeble and fluctuating a feeling. It has been an emotion so irregular and fickle in its expression. The spark has so often been obscured, and to appearance lost, that the recollection and the review of it now only tends to perplex and depress you.

But oh, the thought of the Lord's love for you! To fix the mind upon his eternal, unpurchased, and deathless affection to you; to be enabled to resolve this painful illness, this protracted suffering, this "pining sickness," into love—divine, tender, unwearied, inextinguishable love—will renew the inward self, even while the outward is decaying day by day (2 Cor. 4:16). It will strengthen your soul in its heavenly soarings, even while its tenement of dust is crumbling and falling from around it.

All is love in the heart of God towards you. This sickness may indeed be a correction—and correction always supposes sin—but it is a loving correction, and it is designed to "increase your greatness" (Ps. 71:21). Not one thought dwells in the mind of God, nor one feeling throbs in his heart, but is love. And your sickness is sent to testify that God is love, and that you—afflicted though you are—are one of its favored objects. The depression of sickness may throw a shade of obscurity over this truth, but that very eclipse may result in your good, and unfold God's love, by bringing you to a more simple reliance of faith.

Oh, trace your present sickness, dear afflicted reader, to his love who himself "has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows" (Isa. 53:4). If he could have accomplished the important end for which it is sent by exempting you from its infliction, then you would not have known one sleepless hour, nor a solitary day. Not a drop of sweat would have moistened your brow, nor a moment's fever had flushed your cheek.

He, your loving Savior, your tender Friend, the redeeming God, himself has borne it all for you, even as he bore its tremendous curse—your curse and sin in his own body on the tree. Yield your depressed heart to the soothing, healing influence of this precious truth, and it will light up the pallid hue of sickness with a radiance and a glow—the reflection of the soul's health—heavenly and divine. "Lord, he whom you love is sick."

Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so;
little ones to him belong,
they are weak but he is strong.
Yes, Jesus loves me!
The Bible tells me so.

(Anna B. Warner, 1859)

Be sure to read the Preface by Octavius Winslow and A Note from the Editor by Larry E. Wilson.

Larry Wilson is an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. In addition to having served as the General Secretary of the Committee on Christian Education of the OPC (2000–2004) and having written a number of articles and booklets (such as God's Words for Worship and Why Does the OPC Baptize Infants) for New Horizons and elsewhere, he has pastored OPC churches in Minnesota, Indiana, and Ohio. We are grateful to him for his editing of Morning Thoughts, the OPC Daily Devotional for 2011.