When Beholding Will Be Healing: Faith Reflections from a Cancer Oven (#19)

[A note from our Managing Editor: Tim Shorey, pastor and author, is one of our Gospel-Centered Discipleship staff writers. Tim is also currently battling stage 4 prostate cancer. On Facebook and CaringBridge, he’s writing about his journey. We’re including some of his posts in a series on our website called “The Potter’s Clay: Faith Reflections from a Cancer Oven.” To preserve the feel of a daily journal rather than a published work, we have chosen not to submit these reflections to a rigorous editing process.]

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When Beholding Will Be Healing

March 11, 2024

Dear Journal,

I mentioned the other day that when we attended a worship-filled performance of “The Messiah,” I was able to sit comfortably for two and a half hours on seats that were less than fully comfortable. For most of the evening I was not even conscious of pain. It felt like I was pain-free. I don’t know if I actually was pain-free, but the beauty of the Christ-exalting music and worship was so powerful that I lost consciousness of pain.

After I posted about this, a friend commented, “Our daughter has been battling health issues, and last night she attended a worship service near here, and for a time when she was worshiping, she felt absolutely no symptoms. Yes, we were made for worship,” she added. “Worship on!”

Her daughter and I were so caught up in glory and worship that our hurts and pains disappeared. I wonder: is that a hint of what is to come? Of course I know it was not yet an actual healing of our diseases—for I am again in pain this morning. But was it a hint of healing, a foretaste of what will happen when the skies are opened, the trumpet sounds, the majestic angels shout, the blood-bought saints let loose in song, and we behold the face of God? Is this how healing is going to happen?

I tend to believe that the beatific vision—the happy, joy-filled sighting of the face of God that will fill us with worship and wonder—will instantaneously glorify us in body and spirit, making us completely whole, healthy, and happy forever. Seeing will be transforming. Worshiping him face to face will make us new and whole.

Even now we are changed inwardly by seeing God by faith in the face of Christ. This is what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:3–6, “[In contrast to those who are blinded by the god of this world, we are those who are] seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. . . . For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

And what does seeing God’s glory in the face of Jesus do to us? Paul writes that “we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3:17–18). Seeing God’s glory by faith now gradually glorifies us in spirit and body. We are being changed.

This all is happening gradually and in part now, but the day is approaching when it will be instantaneous and complete. When we see him face to face, so that when we behold him as he is, and are lost in worship and wonder, we shall be glorified forever. John writes, “Beloved we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2–3). 

We shall be like him. Why? Because we shall see him as he is. It is in seeing him and being lost in wonder, love, and praise that we will be changed. When he appears to take us Homeward, we shall be changed in the twinkling of any eye, and when we see him face to face, all ignorance, illness, mourning, and sorrow will pass, and we will know him as he knows us (1 Cor. 15:51–52; 1 Cor. 13:12).

And as for the other evening, I think my freedom from pain and fullness of joy while being lost in wonder and worship was a gift from God, a foretaste of heaven, a crumb from off the eternal Table. I’m hungry for the full meal.

* You can read all the posts in this series here.