How Does God View People With Disabilities? | The Lausanne Global Conversation Archives

Section 4a of Lausanne Occasional Paper No. 35 B

Hidden and Forgotten People: Ministry Among People With Disabilities

Prepared by Issue Group No. 6 B on Ministry Among People with Disabilities

Principal writers Joni Eareckson Tada and Jack S. Oppenhuizen

Pastors and their congregations often do not know how to “theologically” view disabled people. A solid theological framework is needed to understand disabilities and God’s sovereignty over suffering. Christian leaders are often confused as to the extent of God’s sovereign control over accidents and illnesses.

The Bible makes sweeping statements about God’s sovereignty over disabilities. For example, Exodus 4:11 states, “Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord?” As it concerns children born with disabilities, Psalm 139:13-14 states, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Psychological and emotional disabilities fall under God’s decree (Deuteronomy 28:65-67; 1 Samuel 16:14; Daniel 4:31,16, 33-34; Psalm 6:3-4). Of course, Satan sometimes causes illness (Job 2:7; Luke 13:16) – but in these references, as everywhere, Satan unwittingly serves God’s ends and purposes.

No trial, no disease or illness, no accident or injury reaches us apart from God’s permission. When catastrophes of nature injure people, we are reminded in Lamentations 3:38, “Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?” The Lord repeats this in Isaiah 45:7, “I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things.” In the New Testament this theme is repeated in 1 Thessalonians 3:3 where Paul writes, “You know quite well that we were destined for [trials]”. However, Ephesians 1:11 exclaims God’s upper hand by declaring, “[God] works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.”

God may not initiate all our trials, including diseases, birth deformities and injuries, but by the time they reach us, they are His will for us for whatever time and purpose that He determines. When Satan, other people, or accidents bring us sorrow, we can answer like Joseph to his brothers who sold him into slavery, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.”

While it is true that God is sovereign, it is also true that he takes no pleasure in our suffering. Lamentations 3:32-33 assures us that, “Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men.” Comfort and the spiritual strength to overcome grief, affliction and loss is found that God weeps with us and that He is absolutely present in our darkest hour of need. As our Great Shepherd, He walks us through the valley of the shadow of death every time (Psalm 23). Yet, God permits what he hates to accomplish that which he loves.[1]

This view of God’s sovereignty is not only a great comfort to disabled people and their families; it can serve as a holistic, God-centred philosophical basis for a church’s active outreach to disabled people and their families. One might ask, what is the wisdom of God in the way that He uses broken vessels, discarded lives, humiliation and pain? Why would a God so grand an architect of creation, who in fact did not create evil, pain, loss, disappointment and sin, chose then to adopt a pattern of turning human history on the hinges of human humility and human weakness? The journey to discover God’s hand in a disabling condition leads to the discovery of God’s consistent nature and the truth of His word.

There are many references which explain just a few of the benefits of affliction.

A person’s disability can increase our awareness of the sustaining power of God to whom we owe our sustenance. “Praise be to the Lord, to God our Saviour, who daily bears our burdens.”(Psalm 68:19)
God uses suffering to refine, perfect, strengthen, and keep us from falling. “Praise our God… he has preserved our lives and kept our feet from slipping.” (Psalm 66:8-9) “…it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering.” (Hebrews 2:10)
A disability allows the life of Christ to be manifested to others through the flesh. God builds strength, virtue, compassion, faith and sacrificial love into His children “to become conformed to the image of His son.” (Romans 8:29) The church begins to radiate the beauty of the Bridegroom as she engages in selfless acts of compassion, soaking prayer for the hurting, reaching out to the needy and equipping all saints (including those with disabilities) for the work of the ministry (including cross cultural missions). “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.”(2 Corinthians 4:7-10)
A disability bankrupts us, making us radically dependent on God. We abandon ourselves to Him as the source of our purpose, joy, power, and celebration of life. In Him we are not afraid of our weakness because it is there that we discover the sufficiency of His grace. “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” (2 Corinthians 12:9) “But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.” (2 Corinthians 1:9)
A disability teaches us that God is more concerned with the character He is building in us, yet He comforts us in His arms on the journey to His destiny for us. What a wonderful promise we have in Isaiah’s words: “The Lord will come with might, with His arm ruling for Him…In His arm He will gather His lambs and carry them in His bosom.” (Isaiah 40: 10-11). Paul underlines this: “Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” (Romans 5:3-4)
A disability teaches us that the greatest good of the Christian life is not absence of pain, but Christ-likeness. “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.” (Romans 8:28-29)
A disability identifies us with Christ, making us co-labourers in redemption, in releasing creation from its bondage into the glory of the Father. Winston Churchill has said, “Great doors often swing on small hinges.” When disabled people are encouraged to embrace Jesus’ will for their lives, they enter into a deep experience of identification with Him, realizing what it means to be a co-heir with Him. Conversely, as a congregation embraces those with disabilities, the church redeems the value placed on all those whom God loves, as well as displays God’s glory to society.
A disability creates an intimate identification between a person and his Saviour, empowering him to minister out of weakness and brokenness, as did Christ. In outreach and missions, God often uses vulnerability or weakness as a point of identification to initiate his work. Philippians 2:6-8 says of Jesus, that “being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men…he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on the cross.” Jesus calls us to minister through our weakness to a world of broken cultures, failed economies and collapsed political systems. Identification is the model Jesus chooses to establish his Kingdom.

It is not only the compassion in outreach that will fulfill the Great Commission. We must “put on the mind of Christ” and in humility learn it is “more blessed to give then to receive”. Everyone has life-defining limitations and as we serve the needy we identify with those we serve and recognize our own dependency upon God in our weaknesses. The church becomes a loving and an empowering community when people care for those who are suffering. God’s plan for what society should look like is entrusted to the church.

When people with disabilities trust God, it gives him glory. He is shown to be a God of supreme and massive worth when people with disabilities think He is important enough to love and obey despite suffering. Sufferings bond Christians to the Man of Sorrows like nothing else. People who suffer have something eternally precious in common with Christ and that is their affliction. A Christian’s scars and anguish, rejection and pain give the believer a small taste of what the Saviour endured to purchase the Christian’s redemption.

[1] Steve Estes and Joni Eareckson Tada, When God Weeps (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1998).

To find out more about disability ministry or to get involved, visit the Joni and Friends website.

The Christian Institute on Disability at Joni and Friends aggressively promotes life, human dignity and the value of all individuals – despite their disabling condition–from a biblical perspective through the Beyond Suffering course.