One thing is certain: if we are healed through trusting in God, the spiritual benefit we derive from such healing can definitely not be obtained by healing that comes from a medicinal cure. For many people, sickness seems to be more advantageous than cure. When they are in bed, they repent for the life they lived in the past. But after they become well, they are further away from the Lord than before. If they are healed through trusting in God, they will not end up this way. They will confess their sins, deny their self, believe in God's love, and trust in His power. They will accept God's life and holiness and have an inseparable, new relationship with God.

The lesson for us is that God's goal in all illness is to have us cease from our own activities and depend on Him utterly. While we often fervently seek after healing, our hearts are simply inspired by our self-love. Because we love ourselves, we single-mindedly seek after healing and forget about God and the lesson He wants to teach us. If God's children are free from self-love, how can they seek after healing in such a fervent way? If they have stopped their own activities, how can they still turn to the world for medicinal assistance? They will surely judge themselves quietly before the Lord and first try to understand the reason that God has given them sickness, before they seek for healing from Him through the Father's love. Here we see the difference between trusting in medicinal assistance and trusting in God's power. In the former case, the believer anxiously seeks a cure; in the latter case, the believer quietly seeks God's will. A believer seeks for medicine in his sickness because he has a strong inclination and because he is filled with self-love and tries to exercise his own strength. If he is seeking God's power instead, he will not behave this way. If a believer wants to trust in God for his healing, he has to genuinely confess and deal with his sins, and he must be willing to consecrate himself fully to God.

There are many sick believers today. However, the Lord has His purpose in all of them. Anytime the "self" loses its authority, the Lord will carry out His healing. If a believer is not willing to bow down his head and accept his sickness, and if he cannot acknowledge that God has given him the best, seeking instead for healing outside of God and rebelling against the way He deals with him, He has no choice but to let him become sick again. If the believer is not willing to give up his self-love, and if he continues fastidiously to care, nurture, pity, and consider himself, not abandoning himself in God, God will give him more things that will make him pity himself even more. If the believer is not willing to cease his own ways and activities, and if he continues to seek for healing outside the salvation of the Lord Jesus, God will show him that earthly medicine will not offer him a lasting cure. God wants His children to know that a strong, healthy body is not for one's own happiness, nor is it for the purpose of carrying out one's own will; it is entirely for Him. The Spirit of healing is the Spirit of holiness. We are not short of healing, but holiness. The first thing we need to be delivered from is not sickness, but our self.

After a believer stops using earthly ways or medicine and trusts in God wholeheartedly, his own faith will become much stronger than before. This will afford him a new relationship with God, and he will begin to have a life of trust and belief that he never had before. He will commit not only his "soul" but also his body to the hand of God. He will see that God's will is to manifest the power of the Lord Jesus and the love of the Father; He wants us to be exercised and established in our faith. He wants to prove to us that the Lord not only redeems our "soul," but our body as well. Therefore, we need not "be anxious...for your body" (Matt. 6:25). If we have committed ourselves to the Lord, He will surely take care of us. If we see deliverance immediately, we should praise the Lord. But if the sickness becomes more serious, we must not doubt. Instead, we must fix our eyes only on God's promise and not allow "self-love" to rise up again. God is trying to wring out every drop of self-love from us. If we care for our body, we will have doubts. If we fix our gaze on the promise, we will draw near to God, our faith will be enhanced, and we will receive the healing.

However, we also have to be careful lest we drift into extremes. It is true that God wants us to trust in Him completely. But after we have truly repudiated our own action and have fully trusted in Him, He is also happy to see us using some natural media to help our body. We can see this in the case of Timothy's wine. Timothy's appetite was not good. He was often sick. Paul did not accuse him of a lack of faith or of not receiving God's direct healing. On the contrary, he encouraged him to use a little wine because wine was good for him. It is interesting to note that the apostle would encourage him to use something like wine, which is on the borderline between good and evil.

We can learn a lesson from this case. We must believe in God and trust in Him. (This is what Timothy did.) However, at the same time, we must not rush into extremes. If our body has some weakness, we need to take in, according to the Lord's leading, the things that are nourishing and beneficial to our body. If we follow the Lord's guidance and take in things that are nutritious to the body, they will increase our body's strength. Before the redemption of our body, we are still humans with a body, and it is still necessary to pay proper attention to the natural aspect of things.

Nutritious food can go together with faith; they do not have to contradict one another. However, the believers must not be conscious of the need for nutritious food while failing to believe in God.