Beloved,
Since the beginning of 2025, sickness has been making its rounds through our church in a peculiarly potent way. In light of that, I thought I would share what the Lord has been teaching me through my prolonged respiratory illness.
At different times in my life, God has led me to a book that proves to be profoundly timely and formative. A few weeks ago, I felt strangely drawn to pick up a slim volume titled On the Christian Life by John Calvin. This work is actually a section of Book Three of his Institutes. Though I’ve spent a lot of time in Institutes in the past, reading this fresh translation of Calvin’s work left me feeling like I was encountering it for the first time. Calvin’s pastoral reflections on suffering and self-denial spoke to my circumstances and my soul with remarkable precision. Though long deceased, the Genevan reformer has been a most helpful companion and guide in this admittedly small trial I’ve been undergoing.
Here is some of what Calvin says: “We easily overestimate our own strength unless our weakness is practically flaunted before our eyes because we are too prone by nature to credit everything to our flesh. And we have no doubt that, whatever happens, our strength will remain unbroken and undefeated. Thus, we are carried away into a stupid and foolish confidence in the flesh. Relying on this confidence, we then become defiantly proud toward God himself, as if our own abilities were enough for us apart from his grace. The best way that God can quell this arrogance is by proving to us by experience how much we suffer not only from weakness but also fragility. This is why he afflicts us with disgrace, poverty, bereavement, sickness, and other adversities. Because we are vastly incapable of enduring these difficulties, as far as it depends on us, we soon collapse under them. Humbled in this way, we learn to call on his strength, which alone causes us to stand firm under the weight of suffering. Further, even the most holy persons, no matter how much they may realize they stand fast not by their own strength but by God’s grace, are still excessively confident in their own strength and resilience unless God leads them to a deeper knowledge of themselves through the trial of the cross.”
If you skipped over that quote, please go back and prayerfully read it. Calvin is spot on! We often need our weakness to be “flaunted before our eyes” because we are so prone to being “excessively confident in [our] own strength and resilience.”
In January, I met with a family suffering from a respiratory illness. I remember thinking to myself, “I’ve got a strong immune system and take plenty of supplements. No need to worry!” But a few days later, I started getting that dreaded tickle in the back of my throat, and it was all downhill from there. I was warned that this particular illness tends to linger for weeks, but I thought, “Maybe for others, but not for me! A few rounds of echinacea, zinc, goldenseal, oil of oregano, elderberry syrup, raw garlic, and vitamins C and D, and I’ll have this thing beaten in no time.”
Two weeks later, I was still sick and felt like the life had been sucked out of me. When I finally started to improve, I pushed myself as if I were fully recovered, only to experience a significant relapse. In the past, I’ve often just pushed through sickness, exerting my soul and body to do what needs to be done. But after seven or eight attempts at doing just that—each one resulting in the illness returning or worsening—I finally realized I needed to stop.
That realization fully sank in this past weekend after driving myself into the ground at winter camp and then again on Wednesday and Thursday. That is why I left immediately after the morning service on Sunday. I could have pushed myself, but only in defiance of the clear message my body (and my wife) had been sending me for weeks: “You are weaker than you realize, and if you cling to the illusion that it is otherwise, you will face the consequences.” Each setback over these weeks has been, in my mind, God’s way of saying, “Nick, you’re really not getting it. You are a fragile creature of the dust.”
Finally bowing the knee to that reality on Sunday was nothing short of liberating. For not only am I prone to the illusion of my own strength, but I’m also prone to the illusion that Christ needs me to accomplish His work at Cornerstone. Walking out of our church immediately after the service was an act of faith. As I did it, I was saying, “Jesus, You are the Builder of this church. You are the chief Shepherd of this flock. You may choose to use me in caring for these precious people, but you certainly don’t need me. Cornerstone will be just fine in my absence.”
Had you spoken to me at the beginning of this year, I could have articulated my human frailty and the truth that Christ doesn’t need me. But through these weeks, as my weakness has been flaunted before my eyes, these truths have been driven deeper into my heart. Calvin’s words have proven true: “The cross drives away our destructive confidence in the flesh by undermining that opinion that we erroneously adopt regarding our own strength and by exposing the hypocrisy that toys with us. By humbling us in this way, the cross teaches us to rest in God alone, with the result that we are neither overwhelmed nor defeated.”
In God’s providence, we’ll be exploring similar truths in Psalm 25 this coming Sunday—hearing them preached in the morning and praying them back to God in the evening. May He drive these truths deep into our hearts so that we might be delivered from our vain self-confidence and grow in humble dependence upon Him in all things.
Yours in Christ,
Pastor Nick
