Real Life Radio

David J: Today on Real Life Radio.

Jack Hibbs: Life happens in a broken world. I see this as a great beautiful contradiction because as a believer I see great hope. In this world of evil, in this world of sickness and disease, there is the counterbalance of God's amazing and awesome plan.

David J: This is Real Life. Welcome to Real Life Radio with Pastor Jack Hibbs. I'm David J, thanking you for joining us today as we listen, learn, and are challenged by God's word, the Bible.

Jack Hibbs: My friends, come with me on our Bold Faith Hawaii Cruise, June 12th to the 19th, 2027. Listen, we're going to set sail for seven unforgettable days with myself, Dr. Frank Turek, and special worship with Gia Lucet.

It's going to be a breathtaking trip with destinations like Hilo, Kona, Maui, and the scenic cruises along Kauai's Napali Coast. You'll never forget it. This is more than a vacation; it's a time of rest, renewal, fellowship, and spiritual strength in the word of God, all centered around the Bible. You can reserve your spot by going to jackhibbs.com.

David J: That's the Bold Faith Hawaii Cruise with Pastor Jack Hibbs. As you explore the beauty of the islands of Hawaii, you will grow in your faith and knowledge of how the word of God applies to your daily life. Once again, that's the Bold Faith Hawaii Cruise, June 12th through the 19th, 2027. For more information, go to jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com.

On today's edition of Real Life Radio, Pastor Jack continues his series called Disciplines of Life in a message titled Discipline of Disease. Now, sometimes sickness or disease is something that God can use for our learning and not something just random or meaningless. You see, illness really can have a purpose.

These struggles can draw us closer to God and as we're hurting and asking why, that can push us to depend upon God more deeply and with more sincerity. So today Pastor Jack teaches that in a moment of suffering, our lives can change for the better. Really can. For the Christ-follower, things that feel bad or look bad are just the very thing that we need to turn things around for us. Now in his message called Discipline of Disease, here's pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs.

Jack Hibbs: God has made life enduring. He's made it resilient. In fact, when you think about the entire messianic ministry of Jesus, it was fulfilled in scripture. Isaiah 35 is a tremendous chapter about the messianic ministry of Jesus Christ.

Isaiah 35:4 says, "Say to those with fearful hearts, be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance, that is to defend you, with divine retribution he will come to save you. Then will the eyes of the blind..." Listen, this is the ministry of Jesus. By the way, it's also a reference to the Millennium when he returns.

"Then the eyes of the blind will be opened." Did Jesus open the eyes of the blind? "And the ears of the deaf will be unstopped." Did Jesus open the ears of the deaf people? "Then will the lame leap like a deer." Didn't people get up and go dancing into the temple because he healed them?

"And the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert." That's a reference to the Millennium, that's when Christ returns. But when Jesus came, that's why the scriptures say that if you can handle it, the kingdom of God is here now.

Wherever Jesus is, the kingdom of God is at, and he brings healing. But life is subject to suffering in this world. Without Christianity, without the Bible, without God's word, there'd be no hope in this world. Think about that. I know people don't want to hear this, but a lot of people today are blaming Christians for everything that's wrong in the world. And by the way, that is always true before persecution, historically. You always blame the Jews before the Holocaust breaks open. That's the way it goes. You always blame the Christian before they start killing Christians.

But let me tell you something. Without Christian compassion, love, and care, where would the hospitals be? You wouldn't have Yale, Cornell, Princeton, Harvard. You wouldn't have George Washington University. You'd have none of those things. All founded, they were Christian seminaries for the raising up of pastors. Did you know that?

And go all around the world, even in pagan countries, and the greatest care and treatment that you'll get is that old missionary outpost with the cross on top of the building. And everybody will pick up their family that's sick or whatever and walk to that missionary outpost all around the world today. Why is it?

Isn't it interesting that King Hussein, King Abdullah's dad, King Hussein, when he had cancer, where did he go? Did he go to the hospital in Cairo? No. Did he go to the hospital in Syria? No. He didn't even go to the hospital in his own country of Jordan. Where did he go? He got on his private plane and flew straight to Newport Beach and went to Hoag Hospital for treatment. Hoag Hospital, a Christian hospital, Bible in every room.

One of the greatest universities in the world, Loma Linda University. Who's the chief physician? If you've ever been there, it says right there, it's Jesus. Think about that. It's an amazing thing to think about. In the midst of all the suffering of the world, life continues on. And listen, we are pro-life. God's pro-life. When I say pro-life, I want you to live.

You say, "I don't even believe like you believe." It doesn't matter, I want you to live. I want your life blessed. "I don't believe in God." I want your life blessed. God is for life. Matthew chapter 4, verse 23. I love this.

Matthew 4:23, "And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people. Then his fame went throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all sick people who were afflicted with various diseases and torments, and those who were demon-possessed..." What a great doctor to have, huh? "Epileptics and paralytics, and he healed them." That's my doctor. What an awesome thing. Jesus Christ wants to alleviate the pain of human suffering.

He didn't deny that there's suffering in this world, but life, God blesses it and it continues. Matthew 8:14, "Now when Jesus had come to Peter's house, he saw Peter's mother-in-law lying sick with fever. So he touched her, and the fever left her. And she arose and served them. Then when evening had come, they brought to him many who were demon-possessed, and he cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of by Isaiah the prophet, saying, 'He himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses.'"

You see, Jack, this is fantastic, but I'm sick tonight. I've got a problem now. Well, just hang on. Understand this, that life is always bigger, listen, life is always bigger than the issue at hand. We lose sight of that. Life happens in a broken world, yes. But listen to this, church. Life, God has given you life.

Remember, and I don't want to get sidetracked on this, but do you remember when Jesus tells the parable about the man who is going to go away for a long time and he handed out talents? Not like, can you play the piano? Investments. He gave to each man the ability to use his life for his master.

And one guy had five opportunities, one guy had ten, and one guy had thirty, and they were all told to go and do with their life. And remember, one guy took what was given to him and he buried it in the ground for fear.

That parable is not about you listening to your mom and playing violin all the way through to your life. It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with your life being invested for God's glory. It's you taking your life that God has given you to be a manager over, so that when he comes, you will have lived a full life for his glory.

That life lived for his glory also includes suffering. And if God calls you or I to suffer in this life, it's for his glory. And this is a hard pill to swallow, and yet there's no other pill to swallow. It's it. You and I, for example, if you're diagnosed with a certain disease and you're going to waste away for thirty years. Nobody wants to sign up for that.

We all understand that. And yes, the temptation is to question God and wonder. When all of that stuff runs its course like a fever and it gets out of your system, then there's that deep settling in of, "God, what would you have me to do?"

And the sooner we come to that, if you're suffering tonight, if there's this thing that is plaguing your life, the greatest thing that you can do is surrender your will to God's authority in this area. It's better to do it now than later. Get it over with. It's the only pill to take is to take his will and to embrace rather than kick against. Because why?

He loves you and I absolutely. And we don't understand things that are going on often at all. Why this? The greatest challenge to your faith would be going down to Children's Hospital in Orange County and walking through those wards, through those halls.

And you see the suffering of children. And immediately you'll either say, "How can God allow this?" or you can say, "Jesus said in the Bible, Satan has come to rob, and to kill, and destroy, but the Lord has come that he might give life." And we need to understand that.

Our immature, emotionally based theology would say, "I am not going to believe in God unless he does it my way." And there's a way that is beyond our human logic. And that's where trust comes in. Life is always bigger than the issue.

Hebrews 4:13 says, "And there is no creature hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we must give an account." He sees everything. This is the omniscience of God. He knows everything. Do you guys know that? He knows everything. What can we teach him? We try to teach him, but it doesn't work. He knows everything.

And this challenges us. I'm going to give you a couple of verses right now, and you know them so well, and I know them so well. But do we believe them? And it's a scary thing to know something and not believe it. In the midst of suffering and going through a life-challenging issue, listen to this, Romans 8:37, "Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am persuaded..."

Think about how that happens. How is a man persuaded? How is a woman persuaded that neither death nor life..." Verse 39 goes on, "shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus."

Think about that. How are we persuaded? I'll tell you right now, there's only one way to be persuaded that nothing will separate you from the love of God, and that is difficulty in life. And that is the battle of sickness, and disease, and suffering.

There's no other way. You can't get it in a book. You can't get it in prosperity. You can't get it in everything just going nice. That kind of stuff only comes deep. It only comes through the pain, and the sorrow, and the suffering. But for the believer, there's great benefit to all of that.

How do we know this? As a believer, when these times come, you'll either cling to God. In fact, watch this, the believer will cling to God. The world, because they don't know, they will get the pink slip from the doctor or the notice from whatever and whoever, and where do they go?

They go right down to the bar, and they'll just start pounding down the drinks to deal with the pressure of it all. And in the morning when he wakes up, he still has the problem. And yet maybe perhaps all night long, the Christian was at the feet of Jesus and their life is changed in that moment of suffering. There's no other way.

Also this, life is never wasted. Life happens in a broken world. Life never is wasted with God, ever. Think about that. In 2 Corinthians 7:4, the Bible says, "Great is my boldness," listen to Paul, he's amazing, "Great is my boldness of speech toward you. Great is my boasting on your behalf. I am filled with comfort."

The word means all comfort. Paul says, "I am filled with all comfort." What's the last verse statement? "I am exceedingly joyful in all our tribulation." Isn't that amazing? How can this be true? You've got all this joy, all this comfort, you are rejoicing and you have boldness, and it's all come about in the midst of tribulation, difficulty.

When you're given the bad news as a Christian, it's not bad news. So Jack, are you kidding me? I have to back up when bad news comes to me and say, "Lord, this really feels bad, it looks bad, and let's be honest, Lord, I don't see a way out of this. But I'm not God, you are.

I didn't know anything about heaven. You taught it to me. Lord, I had no hope in this world, and you came and you spoke to me. I had no promise of eternal life. I didn't even know it existed. But Jesus came. We will not live forever. We will not live for long.

But God's eternal. And it's an awesome thing to think about that God never wastes life." Some of you need to hear that. January is, I think, Sanctity of Life Month, is it not? And you think about in America how many children have been aborted. I've got news for you.

Those kids are in heaven. I don't know how old they are in heaven, I don't know what they look like in heaven. That's in the wisdom of God. But if there's an aborted child that's on your heart and mine as a Christian, you're going to see that child someday. I don't know how that's going to work. It's going to be amazing, though. It's part of heaven.

Think about that. Since 1973, what are we looking at in America, 50 million kids? More than any war that America has ever fought? They're in heaven. And maybe tonight you're thinking how there can be nothing that can bring back or somehow redeem that thing you decided as a young girl or whatever it was and, hey, listen, you're going to see that child by the grace of God. You're going to see. And I can't imagine how that day's going to be.

God never wastes a life. It's a gift. It's amazing. That's why you love it so much. God put it within us to want to fight for life. Hey, did anybody watch this? I'm going to go off a rabbit trail right now. Some, I forget what it's called, it was on the Military Channel about training Navy SEALs and special ops people. Have you seen that? They were, nobody saw that? What's wrong with you people?

They took US Army Rangers who wanted to be trained for underwater operations. And part of the whole deal of training these guys, first of all, they have to all be combat soldiers to qualify. Then the first step is, they put them in a pool, they tie their feet together and their hands together behind their back, and they had to swim 50 yards underwater with one breath. That's what I said, wow.

And then as they progress through, their instructors would take them underwater. They had their mask all painted black and the instructors underwater would tie weights to them so they couldn't go to the surface, they would cut their air lines and start beating them up underwater.

And then at one point to graduate, you had to, every guy had to go through this process of drowning. You were with your partner and your partner's in front of you underwater and then an assailant comes behind you, but you're looking at your partner. And the assailant, the enemy comes and starts fighting with you as you're looking at your partner, your partner's right there, and the guy winds up holding you down until you drown.

Then they quickly pull the guy out of the water and they revive him and the first face that the guy sees when he comes back is his partner. And they said there's a bond that's made that's never separated. That they believe no matter what they do in the world, if it's just the two of them, they can take on an army and it's a supernatural almost kind of bonding and it was like, wow.

And I'm thinking, man, if they do that stuff in the physical realm, why aren't we doing that in the Christian realm? That my face and your face is the first face we see in the moment of difficulty and it's the first face we see when we're being revived. And it creates a bond that can't be separated.

How does that happen? They made those guys for six weeks suffer like you can't believe. Why? Because those guys, those instructors, loved those dudes enough to get them ready for any battle on the planet. And they drop them off in the middle of the ocean in the middle of the night, 14 miles, naked with underwear and a knife.

And they said, on a moonless night, they find your way home. They left and they've got to read the water and figure out which way shore is by the moving of the water and they swim. And they said, what if you get attacked by a shark? That's why you have a knife. And people die going through the course every year. Sounds like Christianity.

It's amazing. Life's never wasted. Never wasted. Psalm 119:67 says, "Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word." There's something about suffering. God never wastes a moment in your life. God never wastes your life.

How can a person waste their life? Church, family, listen, you have no authority to waste your life. "I'm sick, I can't do anything, I'm just, you know, who am I?" Stop thinking like that. Do you know God? Yes. Does God know you?

Listen, here's the deal. If you're nine feet tall or three feet tall, if you can run a four-flat 100 or if you are bound to a wheelchair, are you a Christian? Yes. Then God wants to use your life. Joni Eareckson Tada. Look at that woman's life.

Nobody likes, I don't like her. I don't like her because I look at her and all my excuses fly out the window. "I can't go tell anybody about Jesus today. I have a sore throat." She has a mouth. That's all she has is a mouth. She's paralyzed from her Adam's apple down, her neck down. And she writes books and preaches and travels the world sharing Jesus with people and I can't even get out of bed.

It's remarkable. God doesn't waste a life. Humans waste life. God doesn't waste a life. I saw something that really bothered me and it's probably going to bother you now, maybe I shouldn't tell you this. God's not into wasting life and I saw a Christian woman not too long ago, she's a long-time smoker and still smokes and she got a note from her doctor, she has lung cancer, she's going to die. You know her comment, you know her statement was? "How could God do this to me?"

That's wasting a life, the temple of God. It's wasting it. It's wasting what God wants to use. We need to value life. And you start by, listen, I'm not talking some self-esteem program here right now. What I'm saying is you need to value your life knowing that God wants to use you dramatically.

Do we believe in Romans 8:28 where it says we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose? I want you to write this down if it blesses you. This is private, in fact, on my notes it says, I wrote here, my personal testimony. So this works for me. It may not work for you.

But I know this sounds silly, but I'm just going to tell you straight up. If I'm getting a sore throat or in 1990 I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease and it took them nine months to figure it out and it was nine months of bad stuff. And they went through all of the stuff.

"Well, we think you have cancer." For four months I thought I had cancer, they're treating me for cancer of the colon and all this stuff, it's like, oh man, they're doing one test after another. It's ridiculous. It's terrible. From a sore throat to that, I want you to think for a second. This is what I learned. I didn't read this in a book. For me, this works. God gave this to me.

I learned this in a time of suffering. Whenever my life is challenged physically or now spiritually, where I can't explain why I feel depressed, I have no reason to, why do I feel dark, and I feel like I'm going to drown, you know? What is that all about? It's a demonic attack.

But watch this. I even wrote it down to make it so crystal clear. That number one, I'll pray this: "Lord, if this illness is from you, then give me the grace to go through it and allow me to hear what you're saying." Why? Because I've learned with sickness that God is always wanting to talk.

David J: Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs here on Real Life Radio with his message called Discipline of Disease. You know, this message is part of Pastor Jack's series called The Disciplines of Life. It's a series that highlights the disciplines of a Christ-follower and the high cost of sharing our faith with others. And we'll continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio.

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Hey, thank you again so much for listening. And if you'd like to hear or see more of what we do here, you can always go to jackhibbs.com for all the latest on what's going on with this ministry. And please, if you're ever in the southern California area, come see us at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills. We'd love to see you there in person. It has been so good to be with you today and I pray you find yourself in the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. See you on the next episode. This program is made possible by the generous contributions of you, our listeners. Visit us at jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com. Until next time, Pastor Jack Hibbs and all of us here at Real Life Radio wish for you solid and steady growth in Christ and in his word. We'll see you next time here on Real Life Radio.