God wants us to be part of His work to bring healing to the sick and to our hurting world.

God wants and waits for us to come to Him in prayer with our questions, hurts, needs, and joys. Our need for healing is often the very point that opens our eyes to our mortality and the state of our dependence on Him. The seemingly smooth flow of life—when we are not sick or in particular trouble—perpetuates the illusion that we don’t need to put trust or faith in anything outside of ourselves.

When something like an illness comes along to destroy that illusion, when the doctor finally says, “There is nothing we can do for you,” we don’t know where to turn and think we are really without resource. Sometimes, people will then pray a fearful, needy prayer, without letting themselves learn how or why they should trust in God through the experience. Such an attitude doesn’t bring the person closer to a relationship with Him, which is the deeper point.

A context for this discussion on healing

All of our experiences, whether being sick or being healed, need to bring us to the realization that God wants a relationship with us. He is not just there to wave a magic wand over us and get us back to our state of seeming self-sufficiency. My personal opinion is that a lot of our desperate prayers for healing are not seemingly answered because the kind of healing we think we need is not what we need the most. More than physical strength and healing, we need to know the God that made us. If we pray to God for a healed body, but are not willing to see Him who He is—our Creator—we have missed the chance to begin that relationship. I know people who have been very sick but found that the relationship with God that they found through the experience was of greater value than any healing they may have come to their body.

But as Christians, when we read the New Testament, we see that Jesus’ moral teachings, like the Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 5-7; Lk 6:20 ff), came forth accompanied by many acts of healing the sick. Healing is a very obvious part of Jesus’ ministry and integral to His commands to those who follow Him, “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying; give without pay“ (Mt 10:18).  How can we take to heart His teachings yet ignore the prayer in faith for healing the sick? 

This post is not a comprehensive teaching on the topic of healing. Many books—both good and bad—have covered the topic. I will post a few suggested readings at the end of this article with some resources with more information on a Biblical view of healing. My point in writing this is to stimulate our faith by availing us of these resources and also to point out a few things that I have noticed to be careful about when it comes to the topic of healing prayer. 

Opportunities to experience God’s healing power, promises, and provisions are all bought for us through the work of Christ’s death and resurrection. When you start speaking with individual Christians, especially older ones, you are likely to hear stories of how God healed or answered prayer for the sick. Ask around. You may hear of out-and-out amazing things, like growths disappearing before the surgeons could remove them, or more subtle things, such as doctors finding the growths by accident while looking at something minor. I have personally heard and experienced some of these over the years.* We need to go back to the Bible to check the references to know and understand the context of whatever we hear or read so that what we think and do is Biblical and done Jesus’ way.

Challenges to be aware of in prayer for healing

One of the challenges in the topic of healing has to do with our reticence to actually step out and ask someone whom we know is sick if they would like prayer or if they would like to come to church with us. Sometimes the Church or churches have not been a safe place for the hurting and so those we know might have concerns or past experiences that went sour.

For example, sometimes those who pray are more concerned about the appearance of a healing, than about the sick person’s feelings. I really like how one of the pastors at my church, Greg Berglund (see his book in the list below) has stated that we as Christians need to keep three things in mind.

• We need to understand what the Bible really says about God’s power and intention to heal—we pray for healing because it is part of Christ’s commands to us;
• We need to get alone with God in a serious way through prayer and personal reflection before Him—we need to be in relationship with Him to hear His voice and to be attuned to what He wants us to say and do, submitted to the Holy Spirit; and
• We need to be willing to take the risk of praying publicly (or at least in front of our sick friend)—otherwise, we just believe in healing as a sort of mental and hypothetical exercise that “someone else” will be doing, not me.

When it comes to our words and prayers, we also must be very careful to never make the sick person or their friends seem to be at fault if they don’t seem to receive an immediate alleviation of their symptoms or sickness. This is a terribly wrong attitude that comes from a sort of control issue on the part of the person praying or requesting the healing. God does the healing, not you. You can ask—we are told to be persistent, in fact. You can speak to the illness—Jesus did that (Mt 8:3) and we are to be like Him, so that His words, “Greater things will you do in My name” (Jn 14:!2) will mean something to the people on this earth in every generation.

However, Jesus never chastised the sick person or their friends bringing them to Him for a lack of faith. Faith and courage are required already to come in a weakened and needy position to Christ or to a church or to a Christian for help. We are never in any way to burden people with worries about whether they are healed. I have seen this done too often by people who want to pray for the sick and such behavior is unbiblical. Saying that “God always wants to heal everybody at all times from anything” or that if someone is not healed it is “their own fault” is unbiblical; saying those things can make the person doing the praying feel that they are off the hook if the healing isn’t obvious, but prayer for healing isn’t about the person praying. Compassion for others and a God’s eye view of what is going on is what is really important. See healing prayer the way God does.

Doing “it” right (healing prayer) is about letting God have His way in the situation and focusing on the voice of the Spirit of God giving us instruction through the gift and checks of the Holy Spirit as based on the Bible’s teaching. Part of the checks of the Holy Spirit is a willingness to listen to the wisdom of others in the body of Christ who may have something to say about the way we are praying for others. Be accountable! Getting out of His way and letting His power be at work to change, heal, transform, and lead doesn’t focus on the person praying, but on God! That is why we have prayer ministry training and accountability structures. We individually can and should be out there praying wherever we are led to pray, but we also need to keep a humble and accountable, teachable heart and mind about the topic, so that others can give us needed correction and guidance about it.

I have heard some people say that God wants to heal every single illness and that complete healing is always His will–as if we were not ever going to die someday–and that implies that dying is a bad thing. However, we actually want to leave our life span in God’s hands, since as Christians, if we believe in the power of God to heal, which we see only through “looking in a mirror darkly” (1 Cor. 13:12), then we certainly should believe that Jesus goes to prepare a place for us in heaven which is much better than our existence on this earth (John 14:3). We should always realize that the timing of healing is still in God’s hands and we will all some day die. That is better, don’t you agree? Maybe not for those left behind, but it is certainly better for us.

I want to encourage us to learn more about the topic of healing. We can learn more by attending good churches with Biblical viewpoints, such as mine, (the North Heights services in person or online are a good place to start), reading good books on the topic, talking to others, and most of all, by reading the New Testament. Especially the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are the place to learn what Jesus taught and did about healing the sick. When we know what Christ said about healing, we can become willing to put ourselves under the authority of His words regarding healing today. And we want to be sensitive to the way our words and actions effect those we pray for; we want to affect people for good, not for ill. 

In addition, when we pray for people, we really need to follow up with them and try to meet their holistic needs, whether spiritual, emotional, or physical, and not just do some kind of “prayer blast” at them, without regard to any further consequences in their life. Hopefully, we will all move forward in this time with great anticipation for what God will do in our midst to further His kingdom and work. 

 

 

For further reading:

Berglund, Greg M. Div, M. D. This Mountain. XULON Press, 2017.

Gumbel, Nicky Does God Heal Today?. Thomas Nelson, ALPHA INTERNATIONAL, 2016.

MacNutt, Francis. Healing. Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 2006.

Murray, Andrew. Divine Healing. Aneko Press, 2016.