Can We Trust Without Being Healed?

Ask anyone who has had a disease or crippling physical problem and they all will say they would loved to be healed and would do almost anything to get healed. Yet there are millions who have never received what they longed for or prayed for. People in many different age groups from young and old will tell you the doctors and medicine don’t seem to be able help them even with all our advanced discoveries. Some sicknesses and problems in life we don’t seem to recover from, so people have to live with chronic illness for the rest of their natural lives. I know this isn’t a popular thing to say but many people, Christian or not, will not receive their healing. In many Christian circles, especially if you believe prayer makes a difference, this seems contrary to what they have been taught in scripture.

Many teachers in the body of Christ have used our desire and desperate need for healing as an incentive to get people to become Christians. Although the four gospels talk a lot about Jesus healing many people, that was not the focus of his ministry or message. The healing part of his ministry was to first verify he is the Messiah and secondly to show the love and compassion of God. His message was, and is, that we are broken people, separated from God and his blessings because of our sin and rebellion. Our self-centeredness is our real problem, not our broken bodies. Promising healing when that promise is not ours to give wounds many when they aren’t healed and then they reject the gospel because we included something that was not in scripture.

When people embrace Jesus as their Messiah with the expectation they will be healed, but then they aren’t, they feel like they have been lied to about what following Jesus really means. Many parts of the body of Christ have embraced this deceptive lie that it is God’s intention to heal everyone, all the time, and thus they preach that message in their churches, wounding believers and unbelievers alike.

Let me be clear, in case you think I’m against God healing us, or against praying for others to be healed. I am saying that churches who believe in healing tend to work on people’s desperation to force them into a confession about Christ that is not based on embracing Jesus as their lord and savior. God uses our pain to drive us to himself but all too often the church uses people’s pain to manipulate false conversions.

Here is the danger in overemphasizing coming to Christ for healing: Although God designed the body to heal itself, there are times when we need or desire God to heal us supernaturally. There is nothing wrong with that desire, but we have to look at the fact that many Christians remain sick and some die while confessing and believing God’s word says they are to be healed. The truth is many people are healed, but not as often a some would believe. The question is why do we experience so few healings if God wants everyone healed? This is the question we all should be asking if knowing the truth will set us free, as Jesus declared it would? Truth empowers while lies hinder, even if those lies come from good intentions.

Here is a basic starting point when discussing healing: Death happens to all of us because our bodies wear out over time. Praying for healing won’t change that until Jesus takes us home and sets up the new heaven and the new earth and gives us new bodies that don’t wear out. Even if God heals us of different sicknesses and ailments today, eventually our bodies just stop working and we die. I do believe God wants us healthy, but some of that possibility lies within our own control and decisions, as well as God’s. For example, if you eat candy all the time and nothing else you die sooner! Praying for healing when we have eaten so badly will probably be a waste of time.

Before you get mad at what I have just said, I do believe God heals today, just like he did in the Old Testament as well as the New Testament. The problem is when we make a rule of “God Heals Everyone” because of what Jesus did on the cross, and fail to admit that the facts and evidence don’t bear that belief out. Yes, we can and should pray for healing, but not from the false belief that “God Must Heal” but from the position of trusting and not demanding. Trusting God in our struggles, like sickness and disease, is biblical truth like it was for Job in the Old Testament and Lazarus in the New Testament. Trusting God’s love in our pain often brings us closer to God than our healing does.

There is a real struggle with many believers when God doesn’t meet their needs. In our needs like financial problems, or health or even the salvation of our loved ones, we are called to trust God regardless of our circumstances. We build false ideas about everyone getting healed partly because we are taught by poor teachers, and partly because we might be desperate for some form of instant deliverance. Trusting God without fully understanding the why’s are part of our life’s journey.

Paul the apostle, who preformed many healing miracles, found himself in a place to confess and believe that God could, and should, heal him.  He discovered a biblical truth that I believe scared him at first. It is the truth that God can heal us, but for some reason, mostly beyond our understanding, he chooses not to. Look at Paul’s own experience and consider his life lesson that we all need to embrace.

2 Corinthians 12:8-9

Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

In the end Paul was faced with the fact that even though he had great faith for miracles God is not obligated to grant such miracles whenever we want. Our faith does not determine miracles, but God in his wisdom does, and in that he may or may not decide to give us the miracle we seek. What he does desire is for us to trust him even in our weakness. Even when our prayers are not granted as we had hoped for. Even when we are encouraged to ask, seek and knock on heavens door.

Paul learned that “Grace” was what he needed to rely on not his own prayers or even his powerful faith. Maybe we have a totally wrong perspective about grace? Maybe the grace in the scripture is far more than just believing it is “Unmerited Favor” as we have been taught? Maybe we have more to learn on how to rely on grace more than we have ever done before.

In the future I will teach on what I believe grace really looks like that is far more than unmerited favor.

Questions:

1) Have you struggled with the desire for healing and yet not received it? Prayer and faith is a key to your answer but maybe exercising those two elements is meant to draw you closer to God more than heal your body.

2) Have you thought about your need in healing or other areas may be meant to clarify your walk with Christ? There is a throne of grace that we need to seek in order to find mercy. Seek that today (Heb 4:16)

Seeking God for my own healing and praying you find yours as well,

Pastor Dale