Two Teachings and Somebody Ill Upstairs

One stream says it is always His will and that anything less is unbelief dressed as humility.

The other says that view has crushed more people than it has healed, and points at Paul, and at Timothy's stomach, and at a great many faithful people in graves.

Both are taught by people who love God. Both have Scripture. Both have stories, and the stories are not fabricated.

And she is upstairs.

That is the thing neither stream has to hold. You do. You go up at eleven and again at four, and whichever teaching you were reading at ten o'clock is in the room with you when you get there.

If you have been reading the first, you go up carrying a question about whether you are believing correctly, and you find yourself monitoring your own faith while adjusting a pillow.

If you have been reading the second, you go up carrying something flatter and heavier, and you catch yourself praying in a way that has already discounted the answer.

Neither of those is a good way to walk into that room.

You have not been trying to win a doctrinal argument. You have been trying to find out how to pray tonight, and the material has made you worse at it.

What this page will not do

I am not going to arbitrate between them. That question has been argued by better people than me for a very long time and it will not be settled by an article, and anybody who tells you it is simple has not sat on a landing at four in the morning.

I am not going to name either stream or tell you which teachers to leave. This site does not hand out targets and it never will.

I am not going to tell you her recovery depends on how you believe. That is the one thing on this page I will be absolute about. It does not. No verse anywhere prices a person's healing by the quality of a relative's faith, and the teaching that implies it has done enormous damage in houses exactly like yours.

And I am not going to tell you what will happen. I do not know.

What I will do is give you back the hour you actually have.

You are not carrying her outcome. Scripture says the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, Psalm 34:18, and it is nearness offered rather than a duty assigned, and the Holy Spirit is on that landing at four in the morning without one requirement attached to your believing.

The verse asks to be shown, and asks all day

There is a prayer in Psalm 25 that is exactly the size of your night.

Shew me thy ways, O Lord; teach me thy paths. Lead me in thy truth, and teach me: for thou art the God of my salvation; on thee do I wait all the day.Psalm 25:4-5

Look at what he asks for. Not an answer. Shew me. Teach me. Lead me.

Three verbs, all of them requests for guidance rather than for information, and all of them addressed to a person rather than looked up.

And then the line that will hold you tonight: on thee do I wait all the day.

All the day. Not until it resolves. He is describing a posture that is sustained across a whole day in which nothing has been settled, which is precisely what you have in front of you. None of that is mine to declare on my own. Scripture said it first in Psalm 25:4-5, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings it the distance.

The psalm does not treat unresolved as failure. It treats it as the condition in which waiting happens.

And notice what he does not do. He does not ask to be shown which teacher is right. He asks to be led, which is what a person asks when they have to move before the question is answered.

You are not required to resolve it before you can pray. Scripture says lead me in thy truth, and teach me: for thou art the God of my salvation; on thee do I wait all the day, Psalm 25:5, and the leading is asked for by somebody who is going to have to move anyway, and the Holy Spirit is the one who guides a person through a night that no doctrine has settled.

What both streams agree on

This is worth seeing, because you have been standing on the difference and there is a great deal of common ground under your feet. Scripture put that in writing long before you read it here, in Psalm 25:4-5, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes written words land.

Both say pray.

Both say God is able. Neither stream, at its serious end, doubts that for a moment.

Both say go to the doctor, and both say that medicine is not the rival of prayer, whatever the sillier corners of either camp imply.

Both say she is loved by Him tonight.

The disagreement is real and it matters, and it is about what to expect, not about what to do. And what to do is the only question you actually have at four in the morning.

So you can pray tonight without having settled anything, using everything both of them agree on, which is more than enough for a bedside.

You are not stuck until the argument ends. Scripture says is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, James 5:14, and the instruction is an action rather than a position, and the Holy Spirit is at work when somebody prays without having resolved what to expect.

The thing to refuse

There is one sentence you must not let into that room, and it comes from a distortion of the first stream rather than from the stream itself.

If she is not better, somebody here did not believe properly.

Refuse it. Not because it is unkind, though it is, but because it is not in the Bible. The burden of healing is never laid on the sick person or on the family in Scripture. Where Jesus commends faith, He commends it; He never once turns to a family and assigns them blame for an outcome.

And notice what that sentence does in practice. It makes you monitor your own believing instead of praying, which means it takes the very thing it claims to require.

If that sentence has been in the house, say out loud on the landing that it is not from God, and go in and pray like a daughter rather than like somebody being assessed.

You are not being weighed while you pray. Scripture says a bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench, Isaiah 42:3, and it is a description of how God handles the nearly-out rather than how He grades them, and the Holy Spirit has never once put an outcome on a family's account.