Yesterday God answered a pressing prayer of mine. In light of my physical struggles the last 1.5 years and those of people around me, I’ve been asking Him for wisdom on healing and His will for us in this area.

I fully believe God is our Healer. He’s healed me of numerous issues, including “incurable” ones and most recently, this daunting one. How awesome is that?!

So in recent years, I’ve been very perplexed when people I know and myself go months or YEARS praying and believing God for healing without seeing the fruit of it.

What gives? How can God (who’s not a man that He should lie) say He’s our Healer while His children walk around unhealed? I needed to know.

Before going any further, we must cover a few reasons why people received healing in the Bible. Yes, Jesus healed a lot of people with all kinds of sicknesses and diseases – blindness, lameness, bleeding disorders, people possessed by evil spirits, even dead people He brought back to life. Tens of thousands witnessed His miracles; these aren’t stories manufactured in some author’s basement. Jesus was a historical man with incredible authority to make humans whole again, even physically!

However, Jesus declared time & time again to people He healed that “Your faith has made you well.” He didn’t beat around the bush: Faith & healing are intertwined. At times Jesus went places to heal people, but their lack of faith prevented His miracles from happening there. These people rejected Jesus’s power and missed out on His blessings. From this we learn that our belief activates His power.

But what if I’d been praying in faith, so much that I was surprised by His seeming apathy? I’ve prayed for many things through the years & watched them happen – so why should healing be any different?

I’ve come to realize that whenever I pray God’s will (as He laid out in Scripture) for a person or situation on my heart, I can fully expect Him to respond! In fact I SHOULD expect His response because I’m just asking Him to do what He already wants to! Whenever I don’t receive a response from Him, I must be missing key insights in that area of my prayers. I must need more understanding about His will in that area before I can expect to see it manifest.

Jesus also tied forgiveness and healing together. Many times after healing someone, Jesus said “Go and sin no more!” What a bold thing to say, yet it appears Jesus was giving them the key to walking in continued healing. He’d cured them, but if they persisted in the sin that brought their illness on in the first place (though Scripture makes clear that not all ailments are caused by sin!) they may wind up back in their diseased condition. Jesus was showing people how to stay forever free from their maladies: Quit sinning!

Side note: If our sin triggers a physical problem in our lives (e.g. Alcoholics who get liver disease), OUR ILLNESS IS NOT GOD’S PUNISHMENT. Scripture simply says we will reap what we sow – if we sow to our flesh, we reap destruction, chaos, and eventual death. If we sow to the Spirit, we reap health, life, and peace. God warns us what paths to avoid, but if we rebel we bring bad things on ourselves! Scripture also says (rather comically in my opinion) that “A person’s own folly leads to their ruin, yet their heart rages against the LORD” (Prov. 19:3). We can create huge messes for ourselves and others, but we mustn’t blame Him for them. Yet mercifully, when we pray for Him to intervene, God comes in and restores our messes even when we don’t deserve it.

In light of all this, the last year and a half I’ve searched my heart and life for sinful attitudes, unforgiveness, and a whole host of things that Scripture says cause illness and physical decay. I’ve confessed and repented of things He’s revealed and felt lighter with each load – yet no healing. I couldn’t understand it.

As Prayer Team members at our church, we often receive requests for healing prayers. However, my struggle has been how and what to pray for these people while waiting for my own physical healing. I prayed and claimed Scripture over them for physical health – and I believe those claims, I really do! But maybe it’s easier to believe for someone else’s healing than your own. Maybe my faith for myself wasn’t as strong as I thought. It’s hard to know sometimes.

One more thing Scripture teaches about healing is that sickness can be a test – as in the case of the Biblical man Job. God said he was more righteous than any other man on the face of the earth (no big deal). While I’m nowhere near that status, I’m wondering if I was being tested, too? Perhaps my physical problems weren’t caused by my sin or unbelief but rather God testing my heart to reveal if I would blame Him or recognize my true enemy – the one who tries to steal, kill, and destroy. If that was His lesson, I failed miserably for awhile! 🙂 I complained a LOT on my down days – especially in the beginning – cried and got angry at Him. Eventually, however, I started fighting back at the enemy for trying to steal my life from me. Only then did I start to see breakthrough!

With all that said, yesterday as I read “The Power of a Praying Wife” by Stormie Omartian, the following words rang loud and clear. This was the answer I’d been seeking, at least in part – an excerpt from chapter 11 on praying for your husband’s health:

“I believe that when God said, ‘I am the LORD who heals you,’ He meant it (Exodus 15:26). I have the same faith as Jeremiah who prayed, ‘Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed’ (Jeremiah 17:14). I trust His Word when it promises ‘I will restore health to you and heal you of your wounds’ (Jeremiah 30:17).

Jesus ‘took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses’ (Matthew 8:17). He gave His disciples power to ‘heal all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease’ (Matthew 10:1). He said ‘These signs will follow those who believe…. They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover’ (Mark 16:17, 18). It seems to me that God is interested in healing, and He didn’t put a time limit on it; only a faith limit (Matthew 9:22)…

Even though we pray and have faith, the outcome and timing are God’s decisions. He says there is a ‘time to heal’ (Ecclesiastes 3:3). If you pray for healing and nothing happens, don’t beat yourself up for it. God sometimes uses a man’s physical ailments to get his attention so He can speak to him. Keep praying, but know God’s decision is the bottom line.

The same is true when praying that God will save someone’s life. We don’t have the final say over anyone’s hour of death. The Bible says there is ‘a time to die’ (Ecclesiastes 3:2), and we are not the ones who decide that, God does. And we must accept it. We can pray, but He determines the outcome. We have to give Him that privilege without resenting, faulting, or getting angry at Him. Pray for your husband’s health, but leave it in God’s hands.”

Wow.

I know God is our healer, but sometimes the how and when hasn’t been as clear. Thank You, Lord, for enlightening me on this – that “For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven.”

I hope I always pray in faith for His complete healing (for others & myself) but that I leave the end results in His all-knowing hands. I don’t EVER want my lack of faith or my sin to hinder Him from healing anyone! If someone passes away without receiving physical healing, may it be only because God knew it was their time and not because I didn’t have the faith to believe for it.

Ultimately, perhaps the best way God heals us is to take us home. Only He knows when that will be. I can just rest in knowing that our Father knows best and that His will is our complete healing – whether here on earth or in eternity with Him.