By Marcia Hornok and Leah Gingery
In November 2023, we sat around the dinner table with our adult children and spouses and reviewed our “Praise Notebooks” for the year. Holding our youngest daughter’s hand, her husband said somewhat drolly, “Highlight for January—my wife didn’t die. Highlight for February—Leah still didn’t die. March—Leah is still alive.” Each of us had listed the same praises to God for Leah’s survival during those months.
Paramedics had carried Leah unconscious out of her bedroom the day after Christmas. During 38 days in the hospital, she fought meningitis and sepsis, brain abscesses, and blood clots throughout her body. Since her spleen1 had been removed at age five due to chronic anemia, her medical team was challenged by this special case.
Friends and Christian organizations across the country were praying for her. Ken Yates’ book Elisabeth,2 about his daughter’s life and death, comforted and instructed me. Especially his chapter about the “if-onlys.” If only we had realized Leah had more than the flu, which was going through our family at the time. If only the ER her husband had taken her to initially had become alarmed by her high white cell count instead of sending her home. Ken’s book assured me we could trust God’s wisdom and love even when the outcome is not what we desire.
THE OTHER THREAT
In Leah’s case, something else besides her life was threatened. Not only could a Lt. Colonel in the Air Force lose his beloved wife of 11 years, not only could his three children, ages 8 months, 4, and 6 become motherless, but the Christian book Leah was writing could terminate 60 pages short of completion.
Leah has a Master’s Degree in Biblical Exegesis and was writing a Bible study for women about the book of Leviticus.3 During her marriage, she had suffered four miscarriages, which drove her to an intense consideration of what the Bible says about conception, childbirth, and bodily discharges, including miscarriages. She became convinced God made provisions for those things, and other women would benefit by discovering for themselves how Leviticus addressed them. She crafted what she learned into questions, permeated by her Free Grace perspective, to make Leviticus practical and meaningful for women.
Now Leah’s book was in jeopardy. Her doctors talked about “brain damage due to multiple abscesses.” Would she lose the intelligence and insights needed to finish this ministry? Was she in a battle with the powers of darkness who opposed her book?
In the hospital, she suffered muscle and bone pain, but her cognition began its gradual return. She recalled how God gave Israel procedures to handle sin, disease, death and decay, which are not the way things are supposed to be. Leviticus foreshadows how Christ perfectly embodied the offerings and feasts, priesthood, ritual and moral laws, and Day of Atonement. His sacrificial death not only atoned for the sins of the world, but Jesus will one day put an end to the physical destruction plaguing creation since the Fall. Including diseases like meningitis.
THE OUTCOME
In God’s mercy, Leah left the hospital on IV antibiotics in her jugular vein (the only access not occluded by clots). With infusions twice a day for two more months and shots for the blood clots, God eliminated the diseases that threatened her life. When she resumed writing, she realized the last chapter she had finished before getting sick was Leviticus 21, which put restrictions on priests with disabilities. She had written, “Was God mean? Am I even allowed to ask that question? Why are the crippled, blind, and disfigured banned from serving at the altar or behind the veil? Aren’t they the ones who need to be there the most?”
She led her readers to discern that the Tabernacle/Temple was God’s glimpse of heaven on earth— His dwelling. No imperfections were allowed in His presence. “Physical defects represented earthly limitations that are non-existent in heaven. It is a reminder to those who suffer physically that life will not always be this way. One day they will receive a new body in an eternal heavenly home.” Her last question in this lesson was, “Do you suffer from a chronic illness, pain or a physical disability? How does Jesus give you hope? How are you using that struggle to minister to others?”
Now, several months later, her own answer to that question had changed. Meningitis had left her deaf in one ear and taken 70% of her hearing in the other, while leaving her with screaming (not just ringing) in the ears. Sepsis had so weakened her that she doubted she could rehab enough to ever run another marathon.4
However, God’s grace abounded even more. Although she has struggled with fertility, God blessed her with a surprise pregnancy. Anna Lea (meaning grace in weakness) was born near the end of 2023, and shows no ill health due to Leah’s medical treatments and tests.
WHAT’S THE POINT?
God’s truth will always be opposed from many sources. Perhaps no organization knows this better than the Grace Evangelical Society. We are not large and famous like organizations that distribute false doctrines around the world, but God will preserve the solid teaching of His Word. The Free Grace perspective has waxed and waned throughout Church history, and is often threatened by human frailty, but it will not fail.
Whether or not Satan was interfering with Leah’s book we cannot know, but I suspect he hates God’s Word examined exegetically and contextually, making the clear distinction between becoming a believer and growing as one. So necessary is this perspective, that when someone is struggling with a problem or sin, we shouldn’t immediately question, “Are you sure you’re saved?” Instead we inquire about their walk with the Lord. Leviticus states seven times that we are to be holy (sanctified) because God is holy. The Bible is more about sanctification than salvation, as those in the Free Grace camp confirm.
While not the most popular view, and despite opposition, we must not grow weary in faithfully teaching these truths. God will keep allowing his Word, clearly taught, to prevail.
____________________
Marcia is Ken’s grateful wife, serving with him in Utah where he pastored for 39 years and they raised six children. Now they enjoy 13 grandkids. Her latest work is a guilt-free Bible study of Proverbs 31.
__________
1 The spleen is one of the body’s few defenses against bacterial infections like meningitis.
2 Elisabeth: Christ’s Medal of Honor Recipient by Ken Yates, available through Grace Evangelical Society and Amazon.
3 Leviticus: The Splendor of Holiness, 290 pages, takes women on a nine-week study through Leviticus, discovering the richness of Christ’s life and death provided for us and our response to fellowship with Him in holy living.
4 Editor’s note: This comment seems out of place to anyone except someone who has completed multiple marathons. (I’ve completed eleven, though I can only racewalk at super slow speed.) Leah’s Dad, Ken Hornok, completed eight marathons before his knee gave out. I don’t know how many Leah has done. But I hope that she’s able to complete some more. Most of all, I hope she finishes the Christian race and hears the Lord Jesus Christ say, “Well done, good servant.”