A Daily Encounter reader asks, “I am presently suffering from the advanced stages of Muscular Dystrophy. I’ve prayed to God for healing my incurable family disease for many years–all to no avail. My family has lost hope for a cure. I’ve been on a feeding tube for four years. Why doesn’t God heal neurologic genetic familial diseases and give hope to suffering people like me?

Hello, Rex (name changed), I confess I don’t know why God doesn’t heal many illnesses. Sometimes God does heal these ills and sometimes he doesn’t. Speaking personally, there is mental illness in my family and a sister, son and a nephew all suffer and have never been healed. The harsh reality is that we live in a very broken and sin-sick world . . . a world that has been broken by the disease of sin and there will be no deliverance from so much evil, sickness and sorrow until the Lord Jesus comes back and takes all his true followers to be with him forever in heaven where, thanks to God, there will be no more sadness, sickness, sorrow and suffering.

My personal desire is that God would hasten the day of Christ’s return to put an end to all the evil and suffering in the world. But God always does things in his timing—never mine, and that is unquestionably a good thing.

In the meantime we struggle on. I suggest that every day for the rest of your life you commit and trust your life and way to the Lord. Tell God that you are available with all your problems and sickness and ask him to help you in some way to be “as Jesus” to every life you touch. And may God use you to be a channel of his love in some way—no matter how small—to every life you touch. It is amazing what God can do in and through people regardless of their circumstances when their life is totally committed to him.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, there are so many things in life that we don’t understand. So in the words of the serenity prayer, ‘grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.’ And regardless of my circumstances please use me to be a channel of your love in some way to every life I touch. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Revelation 21:4 (NJKV).