REASONS WHY
PEOPLE DO NOT GET HEALED
For
some of the material in this chapter, I am indebted to F.F. Bosworth’s classic
text Christ the Healer, and in
particular sermon 13 recorded in that book, “Why some fail to receive healing
from Christ.”[1] Like many people who have ventured into
praying for the sick, when I got involved in this kind of ministry myself, it
was not long before I discovered that not everyone I prayed for actually got
healed. In fact, in the early days, it
seemed to be true that many people I prayed for did not get healed.
However, because I knew that the
Scriptures were true and that our God is indeed a healing God, I did not
allow myself to give up in disappointment and stop praying for people to get
healed. Instead, I allowed these
experiences to be part of my learning curve and growth, and, when I eventually
came across Bosworth’s classic text and read chapter 13, it confirmed some
things of which I had by then become aware, and it opened my eyes to yet other
issues which could prevent people from receiving healing.
In
chapter 13 of his book, Bosworth (an American evangelist who was greatly used
in divine healing ministry around the turn of the twentieth century) lists and
explains twenty-two different reasons or factors which may prevent people from
being healed. His chapter 13 is
evidently the write-up of a sermon which he once preached on this subject and,
probably because of a lack of time to explain even more reasons, he gives only
twenty-two. I am sure he must have been
aware of other reasons as well which he did not have time to go into on that
occasion.
In my own ministry over the years, not
only have I become aware of the truth of what he explains in his chapter 13, I
have also become aware of several more reasons or factors which can prevent
people from receiving healing. In
short, there are many factors which can prevent a person from receiving healing. However, lack of healing should not
discourage us from continuing to pray for people. It should simply spur us on to discover what
might be preventing the answer from coming on any given occasion, and, as
Bosworth himself did, we should teach these reasons and factors to believers,
in order that they might be aware of them and address them in their lives. As a result, their healing will not continue
to be hindered, and hopefully there will also be less confusion and questioning
in cases of apparently unanswered prayer.
Some
common hindrances to receiving healing
So we need to be clear that the
desire and promises of God for us regarding healing do not work
automatically in our lives. There
are many factors that can prevent us from receiving healing. For example, on one occasion the disciples
could not cast a spirit out of a boy and he remained unhealed. So was it the will of God for him not to be
healed? And should they therefore stop
ministering to him? Not at all! Jesus clearly demonstrated what God’s will
for the boy was by healing him. When he
was later asked by his disciples why they could not cast the spirit out, Jesus
told them that it was because they themselves had so little faith. He also suggested to them that preparing
themselves with prayer (and perhaps also fasting) would have helped them in
this case (see Matt. 17:14-21, Mark 9:14-29).
I have outlined and discussed
briefly below several factors which can prevent or hinder healing from being
received.
a. You
have not been taught that God can heal today
Believers who have
never been clearly taught (or simply have not heard) that God still heals today
are understandably often confused when it comes to this subject. The Bible says that faith comes by hearing
(Rom. 10:17). Just as a person does not
get saved without someone telling them that Jesus can save them (Rom.
10:14-15), it is the same with healing.
For believers to understand that God heals today, and for them to
understand that it is his will that they be healed, they need to hear this, and
they need it to be taught and explained clearly and simply to them.
Healing is a
demonstration of the power and dominion of God’s kingdom over sickness. Jesus took up our sicknesses and carried them
away (Isa. 53:4, Matt. 8:17). His
ministry left people in no doubt that it was God’s will for them to be
healed. He sent his disciples out to
proclaim the coming of God’s kingdom and to heal the sick, just as he himself
was doing (Luke 9:2, 10:9). Furthermore,
the early believers were commissioned to lay hands on the sick that they might
recover (Mark 16:18). If believers are
sick, then the elders of the church are expected to pray over them in order
that they be made well (Jas 5:14-16).
In order that faith
might arise in their hearts, believers need to hear faith-filled messages about
this subject and to open their hearts to embrace what they hear. Doubt-filled or confused debates about
healing never get anyone healed. A lack
of knowledge of God’s purpose to heal prevents healing being received. Indeed, the Lord said through Hosea that ‘my people are destroyed from lack of
knowledge’ (Hosea 4:6). Believers
get healed when the message of healing is clearly proclaimed and when the Holy
Spirit is honoured and free to work. Christ’s power to heal needs to be openly
taught and proclaimed. So believers
need to act in faith and tell people that they can be healed and to pray for
them for this to happen (cf. Mark 16:18,20; Acts 4:31; Jas. 5:14-16). A climate of faith and expectancy can be
created in people’s hearts through the clear and simple proclamation and
teaching of God’s will to heal.
However, such
communication of the truth of healing and the practice of prayer for those in
need, should always to be handled with wisdom, sensitivity and compassion. Sick people are suffering and, in order to
open up and receive ministry, they have to make themselves vulnerable. Over the years, I have occasionally come
across believers who have been put off from seeking healing by wrong, unwise,
extreme or overzealous and insensitive practices or teaching in connection with
healing. Indeed, some had been so put
off that they did not want any longer to seek for healing, but rather had
distanced themselves from healing ministry, simply accepting to endure their
suffering by God’s grace.
Several years ago,
an old friend of mine was suffering increasingly with a problem in his spine,
enduring pain on a daily basis. When I
asked him if we could pray about it, he told me that he had at one time been
encouraged to seek prayer for healing in a meeting of strongly charismatic
believers. By contrast, he had been
saved and brought up as a believer in a staunchly conservative brand of
evangelicalism which did not really teach or practise prayer for physical
healing. He said that he had found this
charismatic group of believers to be so insensitive towards him that he was put
off from seeking healing anymore. So he
decided that he would simply trust God for ongoing grace with his
condition. However, it never got any
better, of course, it only got worse.
As my wife and I continued to
discuss this with him, I asked him if he believed that God could heal him. He replied that he didn’t actually believe
it. So I then asked him what he thought
he could trust God to do for him in relation to his spinal
condition. He said he was about to go on
a long journey by car on difficult roads, and he believed that God could
undertake for him in such a way that the pain would not be quite as bad as it
normally was after such a journey. He
was willing to pray for that. So we laid
hands on him gently, and simply prayed and believed together with him that this
would be so. We did not meet up with him
again in any significant way after that evening, but this experience left me
feeling sad that he had been put off by the insensitivity of a group of
otherwise well-meaning believers.
However, it also left me encouraged that, because he had been willing to
open up and had agreed to take one small step of faith, then one day he might
become willing to take an even greater step of faith and really believe God’s
promises for a total healing of his spinal condition.
b.
Wrong theological
beliefs
It is sometimes believed that if a person is
prayed for (perhaps several times) and does not seem to get healed, then this
means that it is somehow not God’s will for them to be healed. As a consequence, other people then may eventually
stop praying for them to be healed and just accept the condition. However, this is like saying that it must not
be God’s will for people to be saved, simply because no-one got saved in a
series of meetings in which the message of salvation was preached. Lack of healing (even after much prayer)
is no more a proof of God’s will than a lack of people getting saved is a proof
of God’s will. The gospel has not
lost its power to either save or heal.
Understanding this point many years ago was one of the factors that
freed me up and released me from the fear of failure, and encouraged me to step
out in faith and persevere in praying for the sick to be healed. It is
God’s will for the sick to be healed, just as it is his will for people to be
saved.
Lack of faith in the area of healing is often
linked to wrong theological beliefs.
There are many erroneous beliefs that may hinder and prevent believers
from seeking healing when they are sick.
These would include the following as perhaps the more common among them:
that we can somehow glorify God more by enduring sickness patiently, rather
than by being healed with the resulting God-glorifying testimony; that sickness
is the will of God for us, or that he sent it in the first place, or that it is
not his will to heal us; that sickness will somehow keep us close to God; that
the gifts of the Holy Spirit passed away at the closing of the apostolic age (a
belief called ‘cessationism’) and that we therefore cannot expect God to heal
miraculously today; or that modern science and medicine have in the providence
of God replaced divine healing. It is
interesting that believers who think that it is not God’s will to heal today
(and therefore do not pray for this to happen) at the same time always seem to
seek out medical help to relieve their condition when they (or their loved
ones) are sick. They seek for cures and
healing with more zeal from human sources, than they do from the arm of the
LORD which is mighty to save!
It is said of the teachers of Jesus’
day that they had replaced the commandments of God with their own human
traditions (Mark 7:9,13). Such erroneous
beliefs as the ones above replace the clear teaching of the word of God that it
is indeed the will of God that we are healed and that we live generally in the
blessing of good health. Jesus lifted
up and carried away all our sicknesses just as he lifted up and carried away
our sins, with the specific intention that we might know healing (Isa.
53:4,11-12; Matt. 8:16-17). Christ’s work is a finished work, in regard
to both sin and sickness. So healing does not have to do so much with the will of God for you, but with receiving what has already been provided for you by Jesus through his work on the cross. This complete work of Jesus for us makes God's will for us abundantly clear: it is for us to be healed. Furthermore, the word of God says that, if we abide in Christ, we can
ask anything in his name, and God has promised that it will be given to
us – and this must therefore include healing (cf. John 15:7,16; 16:24; 1 John
5:14-15). The written promises of God
regarding answered prayer (and healing in particular) are God’s direct word to
us and they reveal to us what the will of God is for us. God
has revealed what his will for believers is in regard to sickness and healing. The leper seemed to doubt whether it was God’s
will to heal him, but Jesus made it clear to him that it was and then healed
him (Matt. 8:2-3). The passage in James
5:14-16 clearly implies that it is not God’s will for believers to remain sick. When believers conveniently tag on to the end
of their prayers the phrase ‘If it be your will…,’ this simply shows that they
do not know what God’s will is, and it reveals a fatalistic attitude towards
getting answers to prayer, rather than an attitude of faith.
Wrong theological
beliefs such as the ones outlined above (and yet others) deny in practice the
fullness of God’s great salvation which is total deliverance for us in Christ (cf. Heb.
2:3-4). Such wrong beliefs reveal that
those who believe them simply have not yet understood the riches and the scope
of the great salvation which Christ has gained for us and in which it is our
privilege to partake.
Over the course of many years in ministry, I
have been disappointed and sometimes shocked at the unwillingness to change
that I have discovered in some otherwise well-meaning believers (including some
ministers) who, in their doubt and confusion, cling to wrong theological
beliefs or to erroneous teachings and traditions which they have been taught
(possibly even when they were being trained in Bible school or seminary), and
who do not seem to be prepared to question these wrong beliefs (regardless of
the way in which they justify them).
Their theological beliefs often remain static and do not develop,
perhaps even over the course of their whole lifetime. When it comes to healing ministry, they find
it more simple and convenient to stay within their comfort zone and to endure
sickness (and to justify this theologically), rather than facing the challenge
of learning to believe God for breakthrough and healing.
I have discovered
in my own life that growth in understanding of the totality of God’s salvation
and therefore of God’s will for us, growth in understanding of how to stand on
the promises of God and how to believe and act in faith, growth in
understanding of how to be open to the Holy Spirit, and so on, have demanded
that I learn to humble myself and to have the courage to question some of the
wrong beliefs or confused teachings which I may have inadvertently picked up
over the years, regardless of what people around me may think. I have learned that I need to consistently
reflect on and dialogue with the truth of God’s word as I read and study it, in
order that it might change me. By
gaining deepening revelation and understanding of God’s word in this way, I
have been led into the kind of inward freedom and faith that has allowed me to
then pray for sick people and to expect God to heal them according to his
promises.
c.
Unbelief
It is recorded that Jesus was unable to do any
mighty miracle in his home-town of Nazareth, because the people there did not
recognise his prophetic ministry. Their
hearts were full of unbelief (Mark 6:4-6).
Unbelief hardens our heart and prevents God from working. The Holy Spirit responds to heart faith, not
to doubt or unbelief. It is faith that
links us to God. In many of the gospel
accounts of healing, it is recorded that Jesus responded to people’s faith in
him (e.g. Matt. 8:10,13; 9:2,22; cf. Acts 14:9). He encouraged people to believe in him simply
on account of the miracles he had done (John 14:11).
When a person’s soul is closed up in unbelief (for
whatever reason), s/he cannot receive healing from God. This person needs to open up to God, to renew
his/her mind on the truth and promises of the word of God, and to embrace these
promises in order to exercise faith and receive. Unbelief will always seek to justify why it
should not believe the promises of the word of God and seek God for their
fulfilment, using any argument it can.
However, in order to receive, we must embrace God’s word simply as it is
– God’s own word to us, his promise of healing. As James said, we have not, because we ask
not (Jas. 4:2, cf. Matt. 7:7).
Similarly, those who minister need to believe
themselves. Christian leaders are
expected to believe the promises of God and to pray in faith for healing (Jas.
5:14-15). On one occasion, the disciples
could not cast an evil spirit out of a young boy because of their own lack of
faith (Matt. 17:17-21), and yet the fact that healing was indeed God’s will for
the boy was amply demonstrated when Jesus delivered and healed him. Jesus told his disciples on this occasion
that in order to expel certain kinds of evil spirits, they needed to learn to pray
and fast to attain the level of faith necessary to accomplish this (Mark 9:29).
When faced with sickness or a particular
medical diagnosis, particularly in yourself or in a person you love, it is
natural (at least initially) to begin to worry and to give place to anxiety,
fear and perhaps even negative thoughts about God. Sometimes you can almost feel all the faith
within you drain away, leaving you in the grip of doubt and unbelief which seem
to paralyze any faith you may have. In
such times, healing can seem an impossible dream. These are deep, involuntary responses which
arise within us towards the presence of sickness. However, such worry, anxiety and unbelief
destroy faith. Worrying about
sickness chokes the word of healing (cf. Matt. 13:22) and doubt in our heart produces double-mindedness
(Jas. 1:6-8).
To attain healing, we must learn how to
overcome such responses by allowing faith to be aroused and strengthened within
us by the Holy Spirit through the promises of the word of God. Faith comes through the word of God, never
through worry or anxiety! To be healed,
we need faith, not worry. In fact,
talking the negativity and confusion of doubt and unbelief (whether talking it
to ourselves or with others) takes us away from healing, rather than
into it. So our thinking needs to be
brought into line with the word of God and its promises. It is faith in the promises which brings
us into healing, so we need to develop expectant faith that God will heal
(Mark 11:22-24, Rom. 4:16, Eph. 3:20, Jas. 1:6-8). This is why it is so necessary to meditate on
the promises of the word of God, as these bring comfort and strength to our
hearts and peace to our minds, displacing worry, doubt and anxiety, and allowing faith
to arise. Indeed, the very purpose of
the promises is to encourage faith. God
gives us promises because he intends to fulfil them, so we should believe
ALL of his promises for us.
When we are filled with faith, we are in a
position to look squarely at the physical symptoms of the sickness and yet not
be moved by worry or unbelief. Our hearts
will be moved by bold confidence and compassion, and we will be able to pray in
faith (cf. Matt 14:14, Jas. 5:14-15).
Abraham was strengthened in his faith by clinging to and standing on the
promises which God had given to him, despite the physical symptoms of his or
Sarah’s body, and despite the seeming impossibility of God’s promise being
fulfilled (Rom. 4:18-21). With faith,
we believe despite our symptoms.
True faith for healing comes before we are healed, not afterwards
when we see that our bodies have been healed.
We believe before we see, not afterwards when we have seen (cf.
John 20:25, 2 Cor. 4:18). Faith creates
within us an expectation that God will indeed do the healing work that is
needed (Heb. 11:1), and this expectation then drives us confidently to him and
his response is to answer the cry of our heart.
Expectant faith removes doubt and receives the fulfilment of the
promise. McCrossan said that ‘if we have
the expectant faith which God will impart to those who really meet His conditions,
there is no sickness He will not cure.’[2]
This process of coming out of unbelief, worry
and anxiety, often needs time. Most
believers who are new to the area of healing do not immediately believe for
themselves or for others. They need time
to come to the place where they have overcome their fears and unbelief, and can
pray in faith. It is good for sick
believers to have a network of encouragement and prayer support from other
believers who themselves believe that God heals, in order to encourage and help
them in this process.
We once
ministered to an older man who was young in the faith and who had suffered from
a particular physical condition for many years.
When I asked him for the first time whether he really believed that the
promises of God for healing were for him, he was very honest and said that,
although he believed Christ died to save him, yet he did not really believe
that God could heal him. As we continued
to minister to him and as the church stood with him, I encouraged him to read
daily through several passages of Scripture containing well-known healing
promises. I would meet up with him every
week and I made a regular point of asking him whether he yet believed. For several weeks he continued to struggle
with his unbelief (and said so openly!), until one day he told me that he had
finally begun to believe. It was at this
point that we began to pray for him to be healed, and several weeks later he
got the good news from the doctor that his condition was no more.
d.
Lukewarmness in
our relationship with God
The general state of our spiritual lives and
depth of personal devotion are obviously directly connected to our prayer life
and our relationship with God. Lack of
personal surrender, lack of ongoing discipleship, lack of hunger to spend time
with God in intimacy and seek his face, a generally weak or inconsistent spiritual life, and love for the things of the world, all
result directly in weakness in prayer or even simply in prayerlessness, and
therefore in lack of breakthrough, in spiritual powerlessness and so on. This all affects our willingness to really
seek the face of God for healing, to fight the fight of faith, and to believe
the promises of God in the way we need to in order to bring about healing. Lake underlined this link between lukewarmness and sickness/healing when he said the
following:
‘I want to tell you, when you begin to analyze
the subject of sickness, you will discover that usually the difficulty is that
there is sin behind it. Not necessarily
that there is an act of sin or some personal sin, but more likely: the laziness
of the soul; or the inactivity of our spirit; or neglect of God’s word; or
neglect of faith, love and prayer. These
are the things that usually underlie and generate difficulties in men’s lives…’[3]
My wife and I have seen many times in our own
experience that lukewarmness and half-heartedness in believers’ spiritual lives
do not achieve breakthrough for them.
The power of God does not flow through lukewarm believers, but through
surrendered, Spirit-filled men and women who have the courage to preach the
truth of healing and the faith to then lay hands on the sick and see them
healed. Lukewarm believers do not seek
God and do not believe the promises of God.
It is wholehearted believers who are strong and hot in faith, who
regularly seek the presence of God and who know how to fight spiritually and
believe the promises, who are the ones who see healing: ‘Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen
to you. You will seek me and find me
when you seek me with all your heart. I
will be found by you…’ (Jer. 29:12-14).
In Isaiah 58:3-8 there is a clear connection
between fasting and healing: ‘Is not this
the kind of fasting I have chosen… then
your healing will quickly appear.’
Jesus also appears to have made this connection in Mark 9:29 in the case
of the young boy who had the deaf and mute spirit. In the ministries of the great healing
evangelists, we can also see that an emphasis on prayer with fasting was a key
factor in bringing success in their healing ministries.[4]
Furthermore, over
many years of observation in pastoral ministry, I have come to believe that
real-life lessons in personal discipleship, in prayer and faith, and in
learning to stand on the promises of God for healing, are much easier to learn
when we are younger as adults, rather than older. It is not that we cannot learn these things
when we are older, but they are easier to learn when we are younger and more
open to change, to learning and to spiritual growth. If we do not learn these things when we are
younger, it will not be any easier when we are older. In fact, it will be harder when the years
come when we are more set in our ways and less open to change, in which we find
our physical and mental strength weakening, and our physical bodies wearing
down and succumbing more often to sickness than they did when we were
younger. If we learn the lessons of
prayer, faith and standing on the promises when we are younger, then we will
have put in place a strong foundation to believe when we are older.
e.
Lack of openness
to the Holy Spirit
The anointing and power of the Holy Spirit is
related closely to healing ministry (Isa. 61:1-3) and it is his power which
actually heals our body. Our physical
body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, so our body is meant for the Lord and the
Lord for our body (1 Cor. 6:13,19).
Furthermore, some of the gifts of the Holy Spirit are intrinsic to the
practice of healing ministry (1 Cor. 12:7-11).
So it should be plain that, in order to receive healing, a believer
needs to be open to the Holy Spirit. This is a crucial point in healing ministry. Resisting the Holy Spirit, or simply a lack
of openness to the Holy Spirit (for whatever reason), or a lack of openness to
the present-day operation of the gifts of the Spirit, may well mean that a sick
person remains unhealed or that our prayers for the sick go unanswered. In order to allow the Holy Spirit to minister
to us or through us, and to be successful in healing ministry, we need to learn
to live in daily intimacy with him and to be led by him. In this regard, it is very helpful in public
meetings to create a sensitive atmosphere of praise and worship in which the
Holy Spirit is free to work, as he can then minister healing to people as they
are prayed for.
As we seek God in
intimacy for the fulfilment of his promises, it is being open to the Holy
Spirit which allows him to plant the word of God into our minds and hearts, and
to then inspire faith within us from this word.
Faith comes through the word of God as the Holy Spirit himself ministers
its truth and life to us from within.
The process of coming to believe God for the fulfilment of his word is
therefore a dynamic spiritual process within us involving prayer, the word of
God and the Holy Spirit. It is not the
mechanical verbal quoting of God’s promises which inspires faith, but rather
this dynamic inward process which happens as we seek and remain in intimacy
with God. It is this dynamic process
which happens as we seek God, and at the same time determining to press by
faith through the outward situation of sickness, that gains the fulfilment of
God’s promises and sees healing come.
f.
Lack of
compassion
The gospel writer
Matthew tells us that Jesus healed sick people because he was compassionate
towards them (Matt. 14:14). This
reflected God’s heart of compassion (Ps. 145:8-9). Jesus was deeply distressed at the hard and
stubborn unbelieving hearts of the religious teachers of his day which
prevented them from ministering healing to the sick (Mark 3:5-6). Indifference and hardness of heart towards
the suffering of others can never bring healing to them. Similarly, if we do not really believe that
God is a God of compassion towards us personally, then we will struggle to
believe God for our healing when we are sick.
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of
compassion; his heart and his character are that of a healer.
g.
God chooses
through whom he will heal a person
An important principle to understand in
healing ministry is the free sovereignty of the Holy Spirit to demonstrate
his grace of healing through whom he will.
This means that we cannot always expect that we will be healed through
the ministry of a particular person, and neither can we assume the opposite of
this, i.e. that we will not be healed through a particular person’s
ministry. God himself chooses through
whom he works on any given occasion.
On the occasion of the healing of the invalid
man in John 5 at the Pool of Bethesda, there were many people lying there sick,
yet Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit to pick out only this one man and to bring
healing to him. The rest were left
unhealed by Jesus on that particular occasion (John 5:1-9). Probably like many other people, I used to
wonder why Jesus healed only this one person at the pool that day, when there
were evidently so many other people in need.
However, in asking such questions, we should avoid reaching the
conclusion that it was somehow not God’s will for them to be healed. There were other occasions when Jesus was in
Jerusalem on which some of them may have been healed. Furthermore, in the book of Acts, it is
recorded that many people were healed in and around Jerusalem under the
ministries of the various apostles. Many
of these people may well have been healed then (cf. Acts 2:43; 5:12,15-16;
6:8).
Similarly, in Acts 3:2-10 we can read about
the man crippled from birth who was often placed by the temple gate called
Beautiful to beg for alms and who was healed through Peter. Being that invalid beggars were often placed
on the street in the same or nearby places every day (and therefore often
became familiar faces to those who passed by), it is reasonable to conclude
that, on his various visits to Jerusalem, Jesus must have seen this man sitting
there begging. And yet he did not heal
him. This man remained unhealed until
the day that the Holy Spirit spoke healing to him through Peter in Acts 3.
These then are two clear instances of healing
coming as the Holy Spirit acts in his free sovereignty. He chooses the time, the place and the
person through whom he works to bring healing. It is important to realize this truth, so
that we do not resist or even reject any particular messenger or ministry
through whom the Holy Spirit may work to bring healing. It might be that this is the particular
ministry that he will choose to use to bring healing to us on any given
occasion. It is not for us to
determine whom God will use. This
truth demands humility on our part to open ourselves up and to allow God to use
the person or ministry that he himself chooses.
Furthermore, it is important also for us not to place our faith in any
particular person or ministry to bring healing to us. We must seek God, since he alone is the One
who will heal us, and we must keep our eyes fixed on him alone as we seek
healing and ask people to lay hands on us or visit the meetings of any given
person or ministry. It is God alone
who heals, not people. He simply
uses people to convey his healing to us.
We have a lady in our church who had been
seeking healing for a condition in her shoulder and neck area for some
time. She was away from our church one
Sunday and was in another part of the country visiting relatives for the
weekend. While she was there, she
visited her previous church and during the morning service went forward for
prayer. She went down under the power of
the Spirit and was completely healed of her condition. When she returned to our church the following
week, she gave a testimony of what had happened to her. As I sat there listening to this wonderful
testimony, in my heart I was a little jealous of the minister that God had used
that day, and was wondering why the healing had not happened to her in our
church. I would have loved to have seen
it happen through us! However, a few
weeks later this same woman went down under the power of the Spirit in our
church and was healed of the tooth problem that is related elsewhere in this
chapter. So God chose to bring
healing to a person on two separate occasions for two different problems using
two different ministries in two different places.
It is the sick
person’s responsibility to seek healing and it is the responsibility of the
minister to pray for healing. But it is
the Holy Spirit’s work to actually do the healing; we cannot do that. He is sovereign and freely chooses when he
will heal, where he will heal and through whom he will heal. We simply need to do our part in seeking
healing, and in praying for sick people, and to trust him to actually do the
healing work.
h.
Healing as a
process or as an instantaneous miracle
There is a difference between healing which
takes place as a slow process over a period of time and healing which happens
as an instantaneous miracle. These are
both valid biblical ways in which God’s healing can take place. There is a charismatic manifestation called ‘gifts
of healing’ and another, different one called ‘the workings of power’ (1 Cor.
12:9-10,28). So if we expect that our
healing should always happen instantaneously as a miracle, then we will
inevitably get disappointed. And we
should certainly not stop praying and believing for healing simply because we
did not receive an instantaneous miracle the first time we prayed. In fact, experience suggests that God often
brings healing as a process over time.
This implies that we will need to persevere in prayer and believing
until the healing both begins to manifest and then becomes complete in time.
Back in the early 1980s, my mother had been
suffering with the symptoms of multiple sclerosis for several years. She was seeking healing and decided one
Saturday afternoon to attend a meeting in Manchester that would be held that
evening by a visiting healing evangelist.
During the meeting, she joined the prayer line when the time came, and,
when the evangelist laid his hands on her, she immediately went down under the
power of the Spirit and was unconscious for several minutes. When she came to, the ushers picked her up
and sat her in a seat nearby to regain her senses properly. She testified afterwards that when they sat
her down, the power of God began to burn at the base of her spine and moved
slowly all the way up to her neck, getting hotter and hotter as it went. When it reached her neck, it stopped. She found she was completely healed and could
even bend and touch her toes, something which she had not been able to do for a
long time. All the symptoms which she
had been suffering from disappeared and have never returned. At the time of writing this chapter, she is
84 years old and has never had a recurrence of the problem. It was an instantaneous and permanent miracle
wrought through the power of God.
Last year (i.e. in 2015) I was suffering pain
in my lower back together with some mild sciatic pains. A few weeks later I found that I was also
suffering from a pain in my left elbow.
For both of these problems, I prayed and asked the Holy Spirit within me
to heal his temple and I trusted him to heal them. However, in neither case did I receive an
instantaneous miracle, although I was conscious of a healing process beginning
with both problems when I had prayed in faith for them. Both of these conditions were healed over a
period of several weeks as I continued to pray and stand on the promises of
God, trusting the Holy Spirit to do his healing work. They were both process healings.
In his final
letter to Timothy before his death, Paul wrote that he had left Trophimus sick
in Miletus (2 Tim. 4:20), evidently because he had other work elsewhere that he
felt he needed to get on with.
Presumably Paul had prayed for Trophimus to receive healing, but he
certainly did not receive it immediately; he continued to be sick. However, we are not told that Trophimus did
not get well afterwards, so it would be wrong for us to assume that he did
not. That would be to add to
Scripture. His healing probably came
about as a slow process over a period of time, rather than as an instantaneous
miracle. More than once I have heard it
suggested that, towards the end of his life, Paul no longer exercised the same
apostolic healing ministry that he had in earlier years and that Trophimus’
lack of immediate healing is evidence of this.
However, I would say myself that this experience of Trophimus simply
indicates that God can heal miraculously and immediately, or as a slow process
over time (but through prayer and faith), or through the use of natural means
(see below), or that healing eventually came to him through the ministry of
someone else other than Paul.
i.
Lack of
perseverance
The
writer to the Hebrews emphasized that it is through both faith and
perseverance that we inherit the promises of God (Heb. 6:12). Our prayers sometimes do not get answered
because we give up too easily when they do not seem to get answered straight
away. A simplistic approach that always
expects to receive an immediate answer to prayer is frankly naïve. If we give up praying because of an apparent
lack of healing, then we will no doubt end up seeking human medical help with
more earnestness than when we briefly sought God’s help through prayer! However, we need to realize that God is more
willing to heal us than we are to seek him.
Indeed it seems that king Asa died from his sickness because, although
he sought the help of doctors, yet he did not seek help from the Lord (2 Chr.
16:12-13). Many believers can testify
from experience that they did not receive their healing as an instantaneous
miracle, but received it after persevering in continued believing prayer and
faith over a period of time. So we need
to keep praying, praising and believing until the healing comes and is complete.
We are told that
God rewards those who earnestly seek him (Heb. 11:6), and the emphasis
here is on continuing to seek until we find (cf. Matt. 7:7). Someone who gives up easily is not a person
who will see the sick healed.
Easy-believism and flippancy do not see the sick healed either. The promises of God need to be gained,
rather than simply being claimed superficially (Heb. 11:33). They need to be believed into fulfilment. It is recorded that, on one occasion, even
Jesus the Son of Man had to minister twice to a blind man before his healing
was complete (Mark 8:22-25). The prophet
Elijah had to pray seven times before the rain came (1 Kings 18:42-45), and
Naaman had to wash himself no less than seven times before his healing was
complete (2 Kings 5:10,14).
Jesus
likened sickness and oppression to a mountain (Matt. 17:17-21, cf. Mark
11:22-24). So, although God can and does
answer prayer for healing immediately or quickly on some occasions, yet we need
to understand that if we are figuratively up against a mountain, then we are up
against something strong and seemingly immoveable, which may at first sight
seem daunting and that may cause our faith to drain away, making us feel weak
and hopeless, and filling us with doubt.
However, it is simplistic and wrong (and perhaps even cowardly?) to
relegate healing to not being the will of God when we have difficulty believing
his promises in the face of this strong and seemingly insurmountable mountain
of sickness. No, rather than doing this
we should embrace our learning curve and persevere! If we persevere we can certainly overcome this
mountain and see it moved by faith, according to God’s promise.
As we persevere in prayer for healing for
ourselves or for others, it helps if we can ask the Lord for a specific word or
promise from his word for our situation, a so-called ‘rhema’ word. The Holy Spirit
can speak such a word or promise into our spirits as we seek God, and he can
continue to encourage and strengthen our faith as we keep standing expectantly
on this word. Abraham received several
such encouraging words from God at various times as he continued to persevere
for many years over the promise of the birth of Isaac (Gen. 12:2, 13:15-16,
15:2-6, 17:1-22, 18:9-14). We too can
stand on such rhema words as ‘the
word of the Lord’ for our situation. As
time goes on, and if our faith and this word from God are tested by a seeming
lack of answer, we should not throw away our confidence, but should continue to
stand on God’s promise and believe (Heb. 10:35-36, cf. Ps. 12:6). Furthermore, if our healing does indeed come
as a slow process over a period of time, then we should not place our
confidence on seeing the gradual improvements in our condition, as doing this
can make us take our eyes and hearts off the promise of God. It is God’s word, and not what we see with
our eyes, which needs to remain our only ground for faith and confidence. It is faith in God and confidence in his word
that brings about a complete healing in our body.
j. The tension between the use of natural means, medical care and divine
healing
When king Hezekiah sought the Lord for
healing, the Lord led Isaiah to tell him to use a poultice of figs as medicine,
and Hezekiah was then cured through this (Isa. 38:21). This is a simple case of God using natural
means to bring about healing. By way of
complete contrast with this, the woman with the issue of blood had exhausted
her financial means on medical bills only to find that she was incurable; the
doctors could not make her well. After
twelve years of suffering from this condition, she was healed miraculously
through the power of God (Mark 5:27-30).
By way of contrast again, we are told that king Asa sought only the help
of doctors when he was diseased in his feet, and did not pray or seek the Lord
about his severe condition. As stated
above, he then appears to have died of his condition a couple of years later (2
Chr. 16:12-13).
Anyone who has ever sought the Lord for
healing, or has been involved in praying for others to be healed, has no doubt
quickly discovered this three-fold tension between the use of natural means,
human medical care and divine healing through faith. I believe that God expects us to use each of
these methods and I myself generally advise believers to use them all. We should seek God and stand on his promises,
but we should also use natural means and seek medical help. Believers should rely exclusively on prayer
and faith alone (refusing both natural means and medical help), only if they
feel specifically led to do so as they seek the Lord. It would be presumptuous and perhaps even
dangerous to act otherwise. Sickness can
be healed through medicine and/or surgery, and God can and will also use
natural means to bring about healing.
After all, it is he who has made such natural means available to us in
creation and who has also, by grace, given us the enormous medical knowledge
and expertise which have been developed over the last few centuries, all to use
for our own benefit. However, in tension
with these, and as a complement to them, the Bible makes it abundantly clear
that God will also answer prayer for healing as we believe his promises.
A believer once called me to her home to seek
my counsel and prayer as a pastor. She
was then in her late 50s and had recently been diagnosed with a blood condition. Her doctor had initially prescribed a
medicine which, after she took it for a few days, did not seem to make her any
better. So she went back to him and this
time he gave her another, stronger medicine.
However, she told me that this was actually now making her condition
worse.
So she told me that she wanted to stop taking
the medicine altogether and simply trust God to heal her by prayer and
faith. She was fed up with spending time
and money on medical appointments and medicines seemingly to no avail. She asked me if she should take this
step… So as a pastor I was faced with
the dilemma of how to advise her. I
believed firmly that God could heal her, yet should I advise her to leave off
the medicine altogether? Would not that
be irresponsible? What if she simply
then became even worse? However, as we
continued to talk and pray about it, she said she had peace in her heart about
trusting God to heal her completely. So
we prayed together for God to act and heal her, and she stopped taking the
medicine. When I next met her several
days later, she was rejoicing. God had
indeed healed her blood condition and she was now perfectly well again.
Another example of this is the case of a lady
in our church who had had some dental treatment to extract a tooth several
years previously. As a result of this
extraction, a fragment of the tooth (about the size of half of the nail on her
little finger, she said) had remained in her gum. It was then sealed over as the gum healed
up. She said it was a constant
irritation to her and was particularly painful when she ate food. Four years later, when she could endure it no
more, she went to another dentist who, after examining her, said that it could
only be removed by surgery. She realized
that this would cause her even more pain and would mean she would have to take
significant time off work to recover afterwards.
So, instead of opting for surgery, she
determined that she would trust God for it.
She came forward for prayer in a Sunday morning service and was prayed
over. She went down under the power of
the Spirit, but I did not think anything more of it and a little later she got
up and returned to her seat. After the
service, she came up to me with her husband and both of them had beaming smiles
on their faces. She said that, after
being prayed for, she had felt something moving in her mouth and, as she was
drinking coffee after the end of the service, this fragment of tooth had come
fully out of her gum and was loose in her mouth. She took it out and showed it to one of the
other ladies in the church and then disposed of it. There was no blood at all, and since then her
mouth has been fine.
It is recorded
that Paul instructed Timothy to deal with his recurring stomach problem through
the regular use of small amounts of wine in addition to drinking water (1 Tim.
5:23). Timothy evidently suffered from
some kind of ongoing stomach condition.
Some people interpret this to mean that he had a naturally weak
disposition that had made him prone to a chronic condition. However, it is perhaps more likely that
Timothy had picked up this problem during his frequent missionary travels. As all missionaries know, travelling in
strange places exposes us to viruses and bugs which may not be prevalent in our
country of origin, and these may then affect us. This would be particularly true in Paul’s day
when modern medical advancements and vaccinations were unknown. Paul would undoubtedly have prayed for
Timothy, but it seems that healing did not come through prayer alone. So he advised Timothy to start drinking a
little wine every now and then to help him.
It is a medical fact that red wine in particular has certain therapeutic
properties, and so this would perhaps have helped to alleviate Timothy’s
condition. Again, this points to God’s
readiness to use natural means to bring about healing (much as Isaiah had
advised Hezekiah to use a poultice of figs), rather than always using
supernatural, miraculous means to bring healing to us.
k.
Unforgiveness
Holding on to an attitude of unforgiveness towards
those who have hurt us prevents us from receiving any answer to our
prayers. If we are not willing to
forgive others, then God will not forgive us either (Matt. 6:14-15, Mark
11:22-25). So the willingness to genuinely forgive is essential to receive healing. Similarly, we should make sure that we put
our relationships right with others by seeking forgiveness from them when this
is appropriate (Matt. 5:23-24). We also
need to learn to forgive ourselves for anything that we may have done in our
past, in order to walk freely and fully in God’s grace and forgiveness towards
us.
At one time, my wife and I ministered to a young
woman who was coming to our Sunday meetings.
I noticed almost immediately that she was not really free in herself and
always seemed to look unhappy, as though she was under a dark cloud of
oppression. She opened up one day and
said that, although she enjoyed coming to church and was a believer in Jesus,
yet every time she came to the meetings she started to have a bad headache
during the worship. This rang warning
bells in my heart and I immediately suspected that a spirit was causing the
pain in her head as a reaction to her worship of Christ. However, although we laid hands on her and
prayed for healing and commanded the spirit to leave, yet this same pattern
persisted.
A few weeks
later, I started a series of teachings in the midweek meeting which she
attended, on the theme of forgiveness.
As part of this teaching, I got those attending to write out a list of
all the people against whom they were holding an attitude of unforgiveness at
that present time. I then challenged
them to take one name on their list and to forgive that particular person
during the coming week and, furthermore, to then go to him/her and to get
reconciled with them. Along with the
others in the group, she went away after the meeting and put this teaching into
practice. The next time she came to the
Sunday meeting everyone could see that she was transformed. Her face literally radiated with freedom and
joy. She testified that she had forgiven
a particular person over something that had happened a long time ago and that
she was now reconciled to that person again.
This was great news and we could see from her demeanour what a blessing
this was for her! She was free. And guess
what? Her headaches in the meetings
stopped and never happened again. The
spirit that had been tormenting her had left her when she forgave the person
who had wronged her.
l.
Unconfessed sin
hinders prayer
As someone once said, we cannot cling on to the
works of the devil in our heart and yet still expect that God will deliver us
of them in our body. In addition to the
sin of unforgiveness discussed above, any other kind of unconfessed sin will
prevent us from receiving an answer to our prayers: ‘If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened’
(Ps. 66:18). For example, the apostle
Peter made it clear that our prayers can be hindered if our relationship with
our spouse is not right. He instructs
husbands to live considerately and respectfully with their wives, so that
nothing will hinder their prayers (1 Peter 3:7). Furthermore, if it is clear that we cannot
receive an answer to our prayers if we have unconfessed sin in our hearts, then
it is also clear that we cannot receive healing either, since healing comes in
answer to prayer.
So, if we are
seeking healing, we need to make sure that we have confessed to God any sins in
our life that we are consciously aware of, so that he can forgive and cleanse
them away. Then healing can come in
answer to prayer: ‘Therefore confess your
sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed’ (see
Jas. 5:15-16, 1 John 1:9). If we want to
see healing come, either for ourselves or through us for others, then we need
to repent and do away with any sins of which we are consciously aware in our lives, particularly ‘pet sins.’ We must learn to live blameless lives (cf.
Ps. 15:2-5, Eph. 5:1-2). Healing
cannot come until any hindrance caused by unconfessed sin is dealt with properly. In particular, if in suffering our sickness
we have allowed any hardness of heart, resentment or bitterness against God to
take root within us, then this must be confessed, repented of and cleaned out
of our hearts before we can receive healing (cf. Eph. 4:31). Naaman almost lost his promised healing
because of his uncontrolled, angry reaction to Elisha’s instruction to him,
which was rooted in pride. It was when
he humbled himself and obeyed the instruction given to him that he was then in
a position to receive his healing (2 Kings 5:10-14, cf. 1 Peter 5:5-6).
m. Sickness is sometimes caused by a specific sin which needs to be
repented of
Further to the
above, lack of healing can also have its cause in the fact that the sickness
was brought about by a specific act of sin which first needs to be repented
of. It is important at this point to
note that sickness can have many causes.
Much sickness that people experience has its cause in the physiological
breakdown of part of their body for whatever reason. It can also sometimes be caused by accidents,
or it can be psychosomatic in nature (i.e. the physical condition has been
caused by ongoing stress, anxiety or bitterness that the person is carrying
within them, for example). It may
sometimes have a genetic cause. Physical
sickness can also sometimes be caused by the direct action of an evil spirit
upon a person’s body, and this spirit of infirmity needs to be cast out of the
person (see below). So, not all sickness
is caused by a specific act of sin by any means. However, in some cases the physical condition
has been caused by a specific sin in the person’s life. It may be God’s (hopefully temporary)
discipline on the person because of their sin and disobedience. There is much evidence in the Bible to
support this, particularly in the Old Testament.
For
example, Pharaoh and his household were inflicted with serious diseases because
he took Sarai away from Abram.
Presumably, they all became well again after he returned her to Abram
and sent them away (Gen. 12:10-20).
Miriam was disciplined with a skin condition because of her rebellion
against Moses. She was not healed
miraculously when Moses prayed for her.
Her healing appears to have come naturally when she was confined outside
the camp for seven days (Num. ch.12).
Michal, Saul’s daughter and David’s first wife, remained barren for her
whole life, because of her critical attitude of heart when she despised David
as he celebrated and danced before the ark (2 Sam. 6:16-23). Because of his sin, king Jehoram was
afflicted with an incurable disease of the bowels, and he died in great pain (2
Chr. 21:12-19). King Uzziah was struck
with leprosy and eventually died in isolation, because of his pride which led
him into unfaithfulness and sin (2 Chr. 26:16-21). Sickness and disease would be given to the
Israelites as a curse for disobedience (Lev. 26:14-16; Deut.
28:21-22,27-28,35,59-61; 32:24). God said that he
wanted to heal Israel again and again as a nation, but it was their unrepentant
sin which hindered this from happening (Hosea 6:11–7:1).
When the person confesses the specific sin
and repents of it before God, then we are free to pray for healing for
them. In fact, when a person is seeking
healing, it is always good to counsel them to firstly search their hearts
prayerfully before God and to confess and repent of any sins that they become
consciously aware of (in particular the sin of unforgiveness). When they have done this and their heart is
clean, they can then begin to meditate on the finished work of Christ in
relation to healing (cf. Isa. 53:4,5;
Matt. 8:17; 1 Peter 2:24). When they
realize and believe that Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever (Heb.
13:8), we can then pray and stand on the promises of God together with them,
expecting them to experience the healing power of God (Jas. 5:15-16). Furthermore, when healing has been attained, it is important for a believer to continue to live in repentance from all known sin. Jesus, after he had healed the invalid man by the pool of Bethesda, warned him to stop sinning, lest something worse come upon him (John 5:14).
n.
The condition is
caused specifically by an evil spirit
As I stated above, sickness and disease do not
always have their root cause in physiological issues or in damage to a person’s
body. Sometimes the condition is cause
by an evil spirit which has gained a foothold in their life (however this may
have happened) and has caused the condition.
Peter said of Jesus that ‘he went
around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil.’
(Acts 10:38). Clear examples of this can
be seen in the case of the woman who had been bound and crippled by a spirit of
infirmity for eighteen years (Luke 13:10-16), and in the case of the boy who
had a spirit which was causing a condition of deafness and muteness in him
(Mark 9:25-26). These physical symptoms
were caused by a spirit afflicting the person; they were not simply
physiological issues.
When sickness has been caused by a spirit,
then, rather than simply praying for healing, the spirit must first be cast out
of the person for healing to then come. If
the spirit is not cast out, then no amount of prayer for healing will prevail. So in cases such as this, those ministering
need to seek for discernment as to the cause of the sickness (cf. 1 Cor.
12:10). They will certainly need to
persevere until the spirit is cast out and healing comes. Jesus suggested that prayer and fasting may
well play a role in preparing those who minister in such cases (Mark
9:28-29). Furthermore, any occult
objects such as charms or amulets should certainly be removed and destroyed
before ministering to the person.
Sometimes when believers begin to pray against
the activity of a spirit in a person’s life and to take authority over it, it
may happen that the symptoms initially seem to get worse rather than
better. This simply means that the spirit
is contesting the person’s deliverance.
It is trying to resist and fight back, rather than leaving. This is what happened when Moses called upon
Pharaoh to let God’s people go. For a
while, Pharaoh resisted this command, and the situation got worse before it got
better (Ex. 5:1 - 6:1). If we are not
aware of this principle, it could perhaps put us off from continuing to
minister to the person, thinking that it is not working. This is where the need for perseverance and
continuing faith come into play. We
should not surrender to discouragement and give up, rather we should continue
to believe and minister. The victory
will indeed come as we persevere; the spirit will leave and the person will be
set free.
We were once ministering to a man who had come
into our church. He was indeed a
believer, but, for various reasons, he had become angry and embittered several
years before. Ongoing pain had developed
in the area of his neck and down his spine.
The pain could sometimes be so intense that he would not be able to do
practical work. After ministering to him
over several months concerning his anger and bitterness, he became free of
these issues and knew the joy of the Lord in his life once again. However, his problem with physical pain
continued. We prayed regularly over him
in our meetings, and sometimes the pain would ease, but it would tend to come
back during the week. Furthermore,
sometimes the pain would get much worse when he was in meetings, and it could
become so excruciating that all he could do was to bend over in his seat and
endure until the end of the service. We
discerned that there was a spirit working in his life which was causing this
pain. It was not simply a physiological
condition. We began to take authority
over it and to command it to leave. It
put up a real fight for several weeks in the ways I describe above. However, it finally came out of him when he
was walking by the local canal one morning, praying and praising the Lord. He vomited it out, the pain disappeared and he
has been free of this pain since then.
o. God has a secondary purpose in allowing the sickness to continue
In Galatians 4:13-14, the apostle Paul
mentions the fact that it was through suffering a temporary illness that he was
able to preach the gospel to people in Galatia.
The converts from this ministry formed the church that we now know as
the Galatian church. So it seems that
Paul was forced by a temporary illness to remain in a place which he had not
intended to stay in, in order to recover.
During his recovery, he preached to the people around him and another
new church then blossomed and grew. He
was evidently looked after by these new believers until he recovered (Gal.
4:15), before then moving on to minister somewhere else.
This experience of Paul’s illustrates yet
another important principle to us, vis.
that God can indeed make use of sickness in order to fulfil a secondary
purpose. The sickness is allowed to
continue temporarily, but is then removed when the secondary purpose has been
fulfilled. In such cases, it is
evidently important to recognize and discern that there is indeed a secondary
purpose that God is trying to fulfil, rather than simply fixing one’s eyes on
the fact of sickness and praying for it to be removed. It is the fulfilment of this secondary
purpose which is important to God.
The experience of Job was also of this
nature. The painful sores all over his
body were caused as a direct result of satanic activity, and this was allowed
by God to happen (Job 2:7). As the book
tells us, Job cried out many times, questioning God why it had been allowed to
happen to him. However, the underlying
purpose of this whole matter was that God was trying to make a crucial point to
Satan, that the genuine heart faith of a true believer can indeed overcome
whatever Satan can throw at him (Job 1:7-12, 2:2-6). Satan can be allowed to do his worst, and yet
a true believer can still overcome this by continuing to trust in God to
deliver and keep him/her, without denying his/her faith. And as we know, although Job did indeed
struggle with all that was happening to him, yet his faith also shines through
in the narrative. God did eventually
heal, restore and bless Job once again (Job 42:10-17).
The biography of the well-known missionary
John ‘Praying’ Hyde also provides us with an illustration of this
principle. It is recorded that he was
laid aside by sickness from his busy activity as a teacher and evangelist for
several months at an early stage in his career.
It was during this extended time in relative isolation that Hyde learnt
lessons of waiting upon God and living consistently in intimacy with him. God spoke to him and impressed deep lessons
on his heart which helped to further form him into the great man of God that he
later became. After several months, he
recovered and emerged from his illness, but he had grown deeper spiritually.[5]
We can also read of the experience of Smith
Wigglesworth, the Pentecostal evangelist who was greatly and powerfully used in
healing ministry in the first half of the twentieth century. His gift of faith was clearly discernible and
powerful in effect. When he was in his
seventies, Wigglesworth discovered that he was suffering severely from kidney
stones. However, he refused to have an operation, choosing instead
to trust God to heal him. So he
evidently prayed for himself for healing, just as he would for other people
with such a condition. However, in his
case God did not seem to answer his prayers, but allowed him to go through the
agony of passing every single one of them until they had all come out six years
later. So what was the purpose of God in
allowing this? Salter relates that
Wigglesworth’s suffering developed in him greater compassion for the sick
people for whom he would pray in his meetings. During the years that he was going through
this, he never gave in to self-pity, but would always answer the call to go and
pray for others to be healed and to preach and minister to the sick in his
scheduled meetings. He made his own
suffering serve the purpose of God in his ministry.[6]
So does all this mean that sickness is a good
thing? Is sickness good if it brings me
and keeps me close to God? Is sickness
good if I can learn deeper lessons in my spiritual life as a result of it? Is sickness good if I can triumph over my
circumstances by faith?
The psalmist notes that he had understood from
his own personal experience that God can work good out of affliction: ‘Before I was afflicted I went astray, but
now I obey your word. You are good, and
what you do is good; teach me your decrees…
It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees’
(Ps. 119:67,71).
However, notice carefully that he does not say
that the affliction itself was a good thing.
Affliction is not a good thing (whatever form it may take). Indeed, the instinctive response of any human
being (believer or otherwise) to affliction shows that no-one thinks that
affliction is a good thing! Sickness is
a form of affliction and it is not a good thing. Our natural response to sickness of any form
is always to try to cure it. We seek a
doctor, we take medicine and/or we undergo surgery, because we want to get
better. This gut human reaction to sickness
reflects God’s own response to it, and we see this in Jesus’ ministry when he
healed people wherever he went. God has
given us bodies which are wired up physiologically to respond to sickness by
fighting against it to try to get rid of it.
Sickness is never a blessing to us and it never does us any good, but
always the opposite. And it certainly
cannot make us more holy. Sickness is
never seen as a good thing in the Bible.
The psalmist does
not say that the affliction was good in and of itself. He says that God is good and that what God
does is good. God took affliction and
used it to bring about something good in his life. The temporary evil of affliction was used by
God as a means to bring about a good end (cf. Rom. 8:28). It is in this sense that it was good for him
to be afflicted.
p.
Keeping fit and
eating a healthy diet
The prevention of sickness should play a key
role in any teaching on healing. As the
old saying goes, prevention is better than cure. We live in a generation in which gluttony
(i.e. overeating), unhealthy diets (especially the regular consumption of junk
food and sugar-laden fizzy drinks), obesity, the excessive consumption of
alcohol, and taking little or no regular exercise have had detrimental effects
on people’s health in increasing ways, particularly in the West. It is essential to realize that our diet
affects our body and our health, and we do indeed become what we eat. The incidence of type 2 diabetes in
particular has sky-rocketed in recent years.
The amount of taxpayers’ money spent every year treating just this
condition and obesity by the UK’s NHS is truly stratospheric.
The healing
process from some physical conditions will not simply depend on prayer, faith
and God’s promises, but also on learning to look after ourselves properly by
being willing to make appropriate changes in our lifestyle where necessary. God expects us to use natural ways to keep
ourselves healthy wherever this is possible, and not simply to depend on his
power and intervention in divine healing.
An essential part of keeping fit and healthy –
and so avoiding some types of sickness and disorders – is learning to honour
God with our bodies since these are the temple of the Holy Spirit (cf. 1 Cor.
6:19-20; 1 Thess. 4:3-4, 5:23). Our
physical bodies have been redeemed by Christ, just as our spirits have. They are members of Christ himself, so they
too belong to God (1 Cor. 6:15,20). Our
body is for the Lord and the Lord is also for our body (1 Cor. 6:13). Our health will be better if we consecrate
our bodies to God for his purposes and live wisely in terms of our diet. Sinful habits of whatever nature in our
physical bodies will hinder us from receiving healing. Not everything is beneficial to us (1 Cor.
6:12-13).
So, for example, we should not smoke; we need
to be wise in the way we approach alcohol, if we do not choose to be altogether
teetotal; we should learn to eat a healthy diet, to be wise in the amount or
kind of food we eat, and we should not become gluttonous; we can research and
apply to ourselves the positive effects of herbs and other plants or roots (or
extracts from such), which we can easily procure either from a local health
shop or sometimes simply from nature around us; we should get regular exercise
to keep ourselves physically fit, and so on. Medical practitioners today recognise the autophagus benefits for our body of the regular practice of fasting. Fasting breaks down stored fats and removes toxins from our body, so leading to better health as a result.
Developing these
kinds of habitual practices will have long-term beneficial consequences for our
physical health. If we look after our
bodies in such ways, making wise choices which reflect biblical values, then to
a degree we can maintain our physical health and remain free of some of the
conditions and disorders which effect today’s society. God is indeed Yahweh Rapha, the LORD our healer, but let’s not forget that after
giving this revelation of himself to the Israelites (Ex. 15:26), he then also
gave them a body of law which contained dietary regulations which were meant
for the practical good of their own health and to which he expected them to
adhere (see Lev. ch.11, Deut. 14:1-20).
q.
It is God’s time
to take the person through death
In the Scriptures
it is recorded that Moses seems to have maintained good health until the end of
his life (Deut. 34:7), yet, in tension with this, we can also see that the
godly prophet Elisha died as a result of a sickness (2 Kings 13:14,20). Although I do believe that it is God’s will
for believers to inherit the healing promises of God, so that they can know a
general state of good health through their lives, yet it is also true that the
inevitable ageing process of our bodies leading to physical death is normally
associated with their physiological weakening and deterioration. Ultimately, our physical bodies will know the
full effects of Christ’s redemption only when they are resurrected from
death. It is then that our mortal bodies
will finally put on immortality and be imperishable (1 Cor. 15:52-54).
Pastoral Implications
The above factors, and their variety,
suggest strongly that healing ministry is not a simplistic task and, from a
pastoral perspective, that such ministry needs a wise, informed and sensitive
approach, as well as being permeated spiritually with faith and God’s
power. From these factors, we can draw
out several pastoral implications for involvement in healing ministry.
· The fact that Jesus on the cross carried all of our sicknesses away unto death, and the promises of God in relation to healing, need to be taught clearly and regularly if believers are to exercise faith for
healing.
·
As believers seek healing, they need the
close, loving support and encouragement of a community of believers. This is particularly true in the waiting
period in which they are standing by faith on God’s promises before their
healing is actually manifested.
·
Sensitivity to the leading of the Holy Spirit
and his charismatic gifts are crucial to healing ministry. As we have seen above, without these healing
may not take place. All believers should
be encouraged to grow and develop in this area.
·
Faith for healing should always be placed in
Jesus, not in any minister, however powerful or blessed their ministry may
be. It is Jesus who heals, not believers
or ministers.
·
Similarly, we should not ‘have faith in faith.’ It is faith in Jesus which brings healing, not
any particular ‘faith formula’ or any ‘list of steps to take.’
·
Testimony of healing is for the glory of God
and the encouragement of other believers.
Believers who are sick should embrace encouragement for themselves from
the testimonies of others, rather than reacting negatively by questioning God
about their own sickness or their lack of healing.
·
Those who for whatever reason remain unhealed
should not be made to feel guilty or condemned for ‘not having enough faith.’ God can and will still minister sustaining
grace to them. Believers should still
live by faith and trust God in an apparent lack of healing, just as they do for
healing. He is still with them in the
midst of their struggle.
·
When healing does not seem to come, it is
clear from this chapter that there can be many causes. The reason may not be apparent. If we do not know the cause of lack of
healing, then it is reductionistic and wrong to simply assign it to ‘lack of
faith.’ We should seek and trust God to
reveal the hindrance.
·
If, for whatever reason, sickness leads to the
valley of the shadow of death, then, again, the sick person and other believers
should not lose trust in God and give in to confused or negative
questioning. Our lives are in God’s
hands and, when we do approach our time of death, he will walk with us through
it, giving us all the sustaining grace and strength we need. In Christ, both sickness and death will
ultimately be swallowed up by life in the resurrection of the dead in Christ (1
Cor. 15:20-23).
[1]
See Bosworth, F.F. “Why Some Fail to Receive Healing from Christ” in Christ the Healer, New Jersey, Fleming
H. Revell, 1973, pp.163-189.
[2]
McCrossan, T.J. Bodily Healing and the Atonement, Second
Edition, Tulsa: Kenneth Hagin Ministries, 1982, p.49.
[3]
Taken from Lindsay, G. (Ed.),
Chapter VI, “Hezekiah’s Sickness and Healing,” The John G. Lake Sermons on Dominion over Demons, Disease and Death,
no details or date, pp.48-55.
[4]
For example, see Kuhlman, K. Nothing
is Impossible with God, Orlando, Bridge-Logos, 1974, pp.21, 114; and see
Liardon, R. God’s Generals, Tulsa,
Albury Publishing, 1996, p.390.
[5]
See Carré, E.G. (Ed.), Praying
Hyde, South Plainfield: New Jersey, 1982, pp.174-175.
[6]
See Liardon. R. God’s Generals,
Tulsa: Albury Publishing, 1996, pp.221-222.
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