Common Sense and the Great Physician

Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: and the prayer of faith shall save the sick. JAMES 5:14–15

In the late nineteenth century a movement for divine healing grew up among holiness Christians, and many of Amanda Smith’s friends were part of it. Some of its leaders taught that Christ’s atonement provides for the healing of the body as surely as for the pardon of sin, and that the use of medicine or doctors shows a lack of faith. For a time she practised it more strictly than many of its advocates. What she concluded, after long experience, is one of the wisest things in her book.

A year and eight months

It began with a child’s physiology book fished out of an ash-box. Reading it one Monday morning in the autumn of 1868, soon after her sanctification, she marvelled at how fearfully and wonderfully the body is made, and reasoned that the God who made it could reach its troubles directly, without medicine going all the way round. Alone in the room, she promised the Lord she would never take another bit of medicine without His telling her to, and threw out the few simple remedies she had. For a year and eight months she used nothing.

I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works. PSALM 139:14

Then she took a severe cold that grew worse for three days and nights, with fever and a racking cough. She prayed as before, and grew worse. On the fourth morning she knelt by a chair and asked the Lord what she had done. The answer came three times, gently, in the form of a question: if you knew it was God’s will for you to take medicine, would you be willing? Three times she said no. It took an hour, she says, before her will went down. When it did, she was willing to go and swallow the whole drug store if He told her to. What He told her was to use a simple remedy she had used a thousand times before, and in twenty-four hours she was well.

Her conclusion was startling: “God showed me. I was worshiping my will.”

Will-worship in the name of faith

She came to see the same thing in others. She had no controversy with anyone, she said, but she saw in many of those who professed divine healing the same spirit of will-worship she had had, and did not think they knew it. What troubled her most was the teaching that all Christians should trust God to heal them without means, even when their common sense told them to use means, and must “close their eyes, ignore all symptoms, and by the force of will, which they must call ‘faith,’ ride over everything.” That, she said, was where the tug of war came in.

Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. EPHESIANS 5:17

And she put her finger on its cruelty. My neighbour prays and is healed; I pray and am not; someone tells me it is a lack of faith, or something wrong in my consecration. “Now comes the question: ‘How do you know that? Who told you so?’” Either I must stand judged, or I must judge, and where is the authority for either? She would not consign a poor, weak child of God to perdition for not being healed.

Means are God’s gift

Her positive teaching is balanced and simple. The days of miracles are not past; God has healed without means of any kind, as well as with them. But she wrote: “I do not believe in calling the doctor for every little thing, or making a drug store of one’s self; but I believe it right when you need medicine or doctor, to use both, prayerfully, and with common-sense.” And she gave common sense its proper dignity: it is, she said, “as much God’s gift to us as any other blessing.”

A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones. PROVERBS 17:22

She illustrated it with a story. A good minister had been going deaf in one ear for a year, praying and believing all the while and growing worse. His wife gently insisted he see a doctor. He went, and came back two hours later clear as a bell: the doctor had found the wax very dry and taken out about a thimbleful. Amanda’s comment was dry too: “Some people would have teased the Lord to have Him clean out their ears, when they might do it themselves, or get someone to do it to whom God had given the sense and ability.”

Tested again

The lesson was tested again, twenty years later, when she landed in Liverpool from Africa, broken in health. Dear friends in England were convinced of healing without means and pressed it on her with great love. She tried honestly to see it as they did. Two ladies anointed her with oil and prayed; she held on by faith for ten days, longing for an assurance of healing like the assurance she had received for her conversion and sanctification, and it never came. On Christmas Day her friends told her the pain was only a temptation, and she endured Christmas dinner in agony and then walked the floor of her room, finding that in spite of her will and faith the pain “would not be ignored a bit!”

Meanwhile, when she cried out in the night, she heard a quiet word telling her to put cotton wadding on her aching arm, and on another night to drink beetroot tea for her cough. She did both, and was helped. Her friends thought she should have ignored such means. She concluded that God was teaching her not to ignore the use of means, and that He is honoured as much when He tells her to do something and she obeys as when He tells her not to and she obeys. She had prayed sincerely for light, she said, and believed God had saved her from bondage on these points.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights. JAMES 1:17

Weighing it

Her position will satisfy neither those who teach that healing is guaranteed in the atonement nor those who doubt that God heals today. It is, for that reason, close to the balance of Scripture. The same apostle who saw miracles told Timothy to take a little wine for his stomach, left Trophimus sick at Miletum, and called Luke the beloved physician. James tells the sick to call for the elders and pray; he does not tell them to throw away their medicine. Amanda Smith prayed for healing, was anointed, and believed God had often healed her without means; she also used simple remedies and doctors when she needed them, and thanked God for both.

Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas, greet you. COLOSSIANS 4:14

The deepest thing she saw was not about medicine at all. It was about the will. Faith that is really self-will dressed in religious language is not faith, and it can hurt people terribly. True faith bows to God’s way, whatever it is, and is not ashamed of a thimbleful of wax.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Is there an area of your life where you have been, in her phrase, worshipping your will and calling it faith? Ask God to show you.

2. If you are ill, pray for healing, and also use the means God has given — doctors, medicine, rest — prayerfully and with common sense.

3. Have you ever implied that someone was not healed because of weak faith? If so, confess it, and resolve never to lay that burden on a suffering believer.

4. Thank God specifically this week for a doctor, nurse or medicine that has helped you or someone you love.

5. Read James 5:13–16 and pray for someone who is sick, by name, asking God to heal them in His way.

A PRAYER

Lord, You made me fearfully and wonderfully, and You are my Physician. I bring You my body and all its weakness.

Deliver me from worshipping my own will, even when it calls itself faith. Bow my will to Yours, whether You heal by a word or by a remedy.

Thank You for common sense, and for the doctors and medicines You have given. Teach me to use them prayerfully.

And keep me from ever judging a sick brother or sister whom You have not yet healed. Amen.