I was inspired today as I was reading my friend Jenny-Joy’s blog entry on being sick with malaria for the 4th time in 5 months. She is a missionary with Iris Ministries in the country of Sudan in Africa. The following is quoted from her blog as she struggled with her situation:
Ok. Ambiguity. Nothing is black and white, for goodness sake!!! Or is it?{Sickness. Malaria. Death. Suffering. War. Destruction. Hatred.} = EVIL. Works of the enemy. Boo to him.
{Life. Health. Joy. Peace. Love. Encouragement.} = Good gifts- which come from the Father of heavenly lights- right? RIGHT.
BUT… what do we do with these cute little equations when we bring in the Romans 8:28 factor? (you remember, “All things work for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose.”)
[sickness] + [Rom8:28] = Good gift from God?
Oh heavens! God doesn’t bring death and destruction- that’s the Hindu goddess Kali! Our God brings life abundantly… HELLO!
As I was reading, Holy Spirit started revealing these mysteries & explaining them mathematically. (He he!) It is arguably a scriptural concept, as Revelation 13:18 starts out with “This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate…” Consider the following equation and allow me to explain:
√(–Health) = –Life(i), +Life(i)
The square root of negative health is a consequence of living life on our fallen world. Sometimes you fall into sickness because of the sin in your life being multiplied, hence –Life. Sometimes you fall into sickness because you’re just alive living in a fallen world, hence +Life. When you take the square root of the negative here, you always have to use i, an imaginary number, which accounts for the multiplication of life coming out to a negative result. This makes total sense because the devil prowls around LIKE a roaring lion (1 Peter 5:8), but Christ has already won the victory (1 Cor. 15:57). It also makes sense because two wrongs don’t make a right, and if you didn’t account for i here, multiplying sin upon sin would come out to be a positive thing, which is obviously not right.
I figure at this point there are two things that can take place. You can call the enemy’s power (i) for what it is — imaginary — and rebuke it in the name of Jesus, and believe in faith that +Life will be multiplied without i, resulting in positive health (John 10:10). Or when you don’t see the prayer immediately being answered, you can wait patiently on the Lord because as Deuteronomy 23:5 says, God turns the curses into blessings because He loves you. Mathematically speaking, it fits with the equation, for as you continue to multiply i on to the 4th power, all of that junk of the enemy comes out positive. (i2 = –1, but i4 = +1)
Other equations to consider…
Evil = Evil
Evil ≠ God’s Will
However:
(Evil + Child of God) * [Romans 8:28] = Bad Situation + Good Results
I realize that some of you may be agreeing with 1 Corinthians 14:10 right now, which states: “For anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God. Indeed, no one understands him; he utters mysteries with his spirit.”
If this is the case, I invite you as disciples of Jesus to rely upon the Holy Spirit, whose job description in the Word is to teach you all things (John 14:26) and take things of Christ and make them known to you (John 16:15). As Jesus said in Luke 8:10, “The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that, ” ‘though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand.'” All these goodies from God are yours for the taking! Ask and you shall receive :-).