How Saints Deal with Sickness
What Lazarus teaches us when heaven seems silent
When I was eight years old, my little sister got the measles. She was six. Her fever climbed to nearly 108 and stayed there for days. She went into a coma for ten days.
Before that, Felicia was a normal, healthy little girl, running around like any kid. When she came out of the coma, she looked at my mother and asked, “Why are you wearing my mother’s dress?” She had to be potty trained again. She had to learn to read and write again. I taught her myself.
I was a boy, and I was embarrassed having to drag my sister everywhere, the girl everybody stared at. And I asked the question every suffering person asks. Why does sickness happen? Why does it happen to good people?
John 11 gives us an answer. Not a complete one. But a true one.
Lazarus gets sick. And if anybody ought to get Jesus to come running, it is Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. They send word:
“Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick.”
Read that carefully. They didn't say, “he who loves you.” They said, “he whom thou lovest.” The guy You love is sick.
I want you to understand this clearly, because here is what we think. We think if somebody is sick, He must not love us. If things are going wrong, if the business is failing, if the prayers aren't getting answered, maybe He doesn't love me.
But the Bible says the man Jesus loved got sick. Sickness is not proof that God stopped loving you.
Some preachers will tell you otherwise. They will tell you that if you had enough faith, you would not be sick. They will say sickness means you sinned or you are not spiritual enough. Friend, that simply is not true. Lazarus was not sick because of sin or a lack of favor. Jesus was not upset with him. Jesus loved him.
When Jesus heard the news, He said,
“This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.”
There was a greater purpose. Something far bigger than Lazarus and his sisters could see from where they stood.
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That is hard for us to hear. We want God to exist to meet our needs and make us happy. But the Bible says the opposite.
“Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created” (Rev. 4:11).
I was made for Him. Not the other way around.
I know. That stings a little. I have prayed like a child in a grocery store, demanding what I want and threatening to quit on God if He does not deliver. Most of us have. But He is God, and His thoughts are not our thoughts.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa. 55:9).
Here is something else. It did not surprise Him.
When Jesus heard Lazarus was sick, He did not panic. He did not say, “What? Lazarus is sick?” He said, “Don’t worry. This is going to bring glory to God.” An old country preacher once said,
“Did it ever dawn on you that nothing ever dawned on Him?”
Do you think He is up in heaven right now, shocked by your problem? He knows exactly what is going on. It did not catch Him off guard.
And then He waited. Two days. He did not even pack His bag. By the time He arrived, Lazarus had been dead four days.
What looks like God not answering is often God working His purpose. Martha and Mary must have been thinking, “What in the world?” But Jesus knew what He was doing all along.
I watched my son Chris and his wife Andria cry for eight or nine years because they could not have children. They begged God. Andrea would ask, “How come other people get pregnant living unholy lives, and we’re living for God, and He won’t give us a child?”
All that time, God knew about a little boy named Jacob and a little girl named Hannah. He knew their mother would die three weeks after Hannah was born. He knew they would need a godly home. And one day Chris and Andria got a phone call: “We don’t have one child. We have two. A brother and sister. Would you take them?”
They said yes. Today I thank God for those eight or nine years of waiting.
So how do saints deal with sickness? They give glory to the Father. They trust Jesus, even when He seems late.
He may be two days late in your book. Four days late. It may seem like He is not answering, like it is over and nothing could ever change. But God is at work.
Lazarus is famous for one reason. Jesus showed up late, but He was right on time.
Originally published at https://waustingardner.com on October 17, 2026.
