Introduction
If
Jesus were physically present in your church on Sunday, and He were to say to
you, “I can stay after the service for an hour or so. What can I do for you while I am here,” what would you tell Him? What do you think your church would ask of
Him?
Why
do I think that people will line up and down the aisles and ask Him to heal
them? I could be wrong. I am not saying that physical healing is the
most important thing that we need. But I
will say that at many times in our lives it will be the most important thing in
the world to us.
We can always use more love or more
patience or more kindness. We could
always be smarter, wiser, and more knowledgeable. But health is something that we either have
or we don’t. At least that’s how most of
us view it. We either hurt or we
don’t. We are either sick or we are
well.
And when we are sick, or when we
hurt, it has a way of getting our attention more than the fact that we find
ourselves being angry over things that shouldn’t bother us or the fact that we
can’t stand our neighbors.
I would agree that it is far more
important that we become loving people than that we are healthy people. It is far more important that our minds are
free of dirt than our bodies are free of germs.
Yet we need to talk about it. The fact is it is hard to be kind to people
when we don’t feel good. It is hard to
be patient when we hurt. It is hard to
be joyful when we can’t even think straight.
It is hard to worship God when all we want to do is watch television to
get our minds off our pain.
Healing is
a difficult subject. I wouldn’t presume
to say that I have all the answers. But
to say that we don’t have all the answers does not mean that we don’t have any. To say that some things about God’s will
are unknown does not mean that
everything about God’s will is unknown.
To say that because somebody we know was not healed does not mean that
you shouldn’t expect to be. And to say
that we can’t tell God what to do does not mean that we are not supposed to
keep asking, seeking, knocking for something that we should expect Him to do.
Healing is a painful subject. Many of us have lived with people who have
suffered and died, good people who have prayed; and nothing seemed to
happen. We have been sick ourselves, but
maybe the sickness just has to run its course like with everyone else, or you
find that no matter what you do, everything stays the same. Year after year after year, and you just give
up. You know this just ain’t going
away. You just have to live with it.
But do you find that your spiritual
life just isn’t what you think it should be?
Sure, you can worship God, even get tears in your eyes as you worship in
church. But this is because you know
that God is worthy, God is God, and we are just mortal humans who deserve
nothing from God, but all we have from Him is due to His grace. And even without health, we know He is worthy
of our praise and thanksgiving for, oh, so much.
Yet.
Yet there remain questions, not necessarily even specific ones, but lingering
feelings of disappointment. Yes, in some
bigger scheme of things, this is all supposed to work together for some greater
good, but you just can’t help but wonder how your experience has made you or is
making you a better person. Or you
watched as someone suffered and died, and you wondered why God seemed to stand
there doing nothing and it just didn’t seem a very loving thing to do.
If you (God) can do something but
won’t, what does that tell me about Your love?
And if you want to do something but can’t, for whatever reason, what
does that do for me when I have another problem, like losing my job?
Every time we experience or see
someone suffering whom we know and care about, and we don’t see God working to
alleviate it, little by little it can diminish our enthusiasm for God. We may still use the word ‘love’ for God, but
our joy in God will become more qualified, more bounded rather than
boundless. Instead of wanting to dance
before the Lord, we may still raise a hand, or two, but something will be
missing. And we may or may not know just
what it is. The song may say “Shout for
joy,” but you won’t..
Healing is
a heated subject. And there are three
particular questions that stand out. To
talk about healing seems to presume that we know what God’s will is in the
matter. And the fact is most of us are
very reluctant to presume what His will is in the matter. One reason, of course, is that, if it is His
will to heal, why didn’t He do it already?
What on earth is He waiting for?
Then, too, why did we get sick in the first place? If He allowed it to happen, it must have been
His will, right? Then why would He then
turn around and undo what He seemed to have wanted in the first place?
We will
look at these questions in more detail later, but the fact remains that the
Church today is quite divided on what God’s will is in the matter. We can see a parent with three young children
come down with a life-threatening illness, and yet still admit that for some
reason we don’t understand, it very well may be God’s will for that person to
die and leave these children fatherless or motherless.
We know
that God is infinite and we are finite, and we know that there will always be
things about God and life that we will never understand this side of heaven,
but then in real life the result is that we see no pattern or apparent purpose
in God’s actions or His will. One day
(usually quite rarely) He does a great healing in someone’s life, but more
often we are left to the doctors to do whatever it is they can do. If the doctor’s treatment works, we thank God
for the results. If things don’t go so
well, that must have been what God wanted as well.
Now it is
true that we will never understand all that God does in the world. There will be reasons for Him to do or not do
things that we may never find out about.
Yet the Bible makes it clear that we can know God[1]
or at least it is common in churches to hear talk about knowing God or having a
personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
But what
does it mean to know God, to know anybody?
Now we often use the expression to refer to someone that we have met,
that we have been introduced to. We hear
a name, and we blurt out: “Oh, I know him, or her.” But all we mean is that, if we were to see
them in an airport, they might smile at us and even pass the time of day while
we are waiting.
We use the
expression at times when we know a lot about
a person, facts, details, a bit of their history. But if someone were to presume they knew us
on the basis of these facts about us, we would insist that they don’t really
know us. And we would be right. Until you understand why I do what I do, and what I think about, and what is important
to me, and what I am trying to do with my life, and what I love and what I
hate, you don’t really know me. If you
knew me, you could probably predict what I would do in a certain situation,
what kind of dessert I would like, what kind of clothes I would buy, what kind
of car.
True, we
will never fully understand God, but He did give us a 1,000+ page book that is
supposed to reveal Himself to us, a record of His dealings with humans over the
course of 4,000 years. Now, if God
doesn’t change, which is something that most Bible students would agree upon,
then you would think that some patterns would develop, that there would be some
consistency in how God responds to human sickness. Does He have anything to say about it? I think the answer is: Quite a bit, actually!
The fact is
the Bible talks a lot about sick people.
There are many, many instances where sick people come to Jesus or His
disciples (or apostles) for help. And
the response is very consistent.
Another
question that troubles people is that they feel like expecting God to do
certain things is like we are bossing Him around, like we are expecting Him to
do what we say rather than we seeking
to do what He wants. I agree that it would be a very foolish thing
for a person to live a life without God, to form one’s values apart from God,
to make one’s decisions without consulting God.
I agree that you would not want anything that God does not want for you
nor should you seek anything that God would not bless. The Bible is clear that “the fear of the Lord
is the beginning of knowledge”[2]
and “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”[3] It is only a life that is formed around the
knowledge of God that can be said to be living wisely.
So this
means, first of all, that if you try to figure out life without including God,
all your conclusions will be wrong, like doing math problems without knowing
the value of the variables, without even knowing there are variables. But we have
already tried to show that there is consistency in what God wants in the
world.
The second
question asks how much we can expect God to work to bring about these
things. We know that God wants us to
provide for our families, but He expects us to work to do that, right? So if God wants us well, He expects us to
take care of ourselves and to get the best medical treatment possible, right?
According to the latest statistics,
40,000,000 Americans today are without medical insurance. I am sure that in many countries in the
world, there isn’t even that option. So,
are we saying that, when it comes to a person’s health, medical treatment is
our first option? I am not sure this is
the approach the Bible supports.
There is the familiar story of a
woman who came to Jesus for a condition that she had for 12 years.[4] It says that she spent all she had on
physicians and only got worse. That
possibility is very real today as well.
She came to Jesus and received healing.
He then told her that her faith had made her well.[5] Must we be like her and spend all we have on
medicine and doctors before God heals us?
There is another story where Paul
the Apostle and Luke, a physician, land on the island of Malta.[6] I suppose Luke could have started a clinic;
but, instead, all the people came to Paul for healing. The impression given in the text is that
everyone who came to Paul for healing was healed. How interesting that there was no one there
whom God thought it best that they remain in their sickly condition!
If we are to exhaust all human
efforts before God steps in to help us, then I think we are establishing a
dangerous precedent. How can we ever say
that we have done all that we can? How
often have we looked back on some misfortune or some failure and not thought
that we could have done better? Isn’t
God to be our first resort rather than the last? Isn’t this where the Israelites often made
their big mistakes?[7] In trying to do all that they could to
protect themselves from their enemies, it was so hard for them, as well as it
would be for us, not to join forces with the ungodly, either because they are
the experts in a matter, or because you both have a common enemy. I think God’s response is that He doesn’t
want and doesn’t need their help.
Am I saying that we shouldn’t go to
doctors? Not at all! But I am saying that we need to know where
our real help is, and that what He does is not limited to what the doctors do,
say, or know.
But our second question asks if
believing in healing presumes too much, that it expects God to work when and in
ways that He might not want, and we are trying to force God to do what we
want.
The disciples came to Jesus once and
asked Him to teach them how to pray.[8] He describes prayer as going to a friend in
the middle of the night, waking him up, and not leaving until you get what it
was you came there for. It can be
foolish asking, or demanding, that God do something for us, when we don’t have
any idea what we are doing. But when we
know what God wants, sometimes we will have to stand our ground until we get
it. I think this is one reason why the
Old Testament has so many stories about wars and fighting. Even in the New Testament, there is talk
about a war.[9]
What all this means is that there
are spiritual forces in this world that oppose God and His people, that what we
see on the surface is not always what God wants for His people or for the
world, and that the only way to bring about God’s purposes is to stand strong
and wage spiritual warfare.
The third question that troubles
people about healing has to do with the fact that we all know of someone, maybe
it’s us, who prayed and prayed for healing and it didn’t come. They did all the right things and yet they
died. Wasn’t Paul not healed of
something? This is a difficult
question, and I need to be careful not to be insensitive. But I do think we need to make clear what the
issues here really are.
Let me detour for a minute here
first. There is a story in the Bible
about David and Goliath.[10] The story is a familiar one, so familiar that I think we often don’t even
think twice about it anymore. But there
were two opposing armies in a standoff.
The champion of one was a giant named Goliath, who challenged the other
army to send their champion to fight him one on one. But no one was willing to face him. They were afraid. But one young lad, who wasn’t even a soldier
volunteered and even killed Goliath. What
was the difference?
David had learned how to win by
having to face a lion and a bear earlier in his life while tending sheep. He was able to learn from past, smaller
victories how to win bigger ones. Most
people don’t give a thought to healing until they are face to face with a
serious, life-threatening illness. When
that happens, it is hard not to be afraid and often hard to even think clearly
about what God’s will might be.
I don’t know about anyone else but
myself. I first learned about healing
when I was healthy, long before I was diagnosed with cancer. I saw how this worked with headaches and
earaches and all those mysterious pains that suddenly hit you and you don’t
know where they came from.
Now I used to have to go to the
doctors frequently for all kinds of infections and pains. And then I didn’t. And then when I got cancer, my first response
was not to take the treatment but to give God a chance to work. If I just took the chemo right away, how
would I know what God did or the doctors?
But back to the third question: if a person is not seeing healing, there are
only two basic options. Either this is
God’s doing, meaning it’s entirely His decision not to heal you, or somehow,
somewhere, the reason lies within us. We
have all been in circumstances where if we had been smarter, stronger, faster,
better educated, whatever, we would have achieved something, gained something,
or in some way attained different results in something in our lives.
Do we blame God because we didn’t
make the dean’s list, or because we lost the championship tennis match? Even the disciples were unable to help a man
with a demon possessed son, because of their lack of faith.[11]
So when
healing doesn’t come, either it was God’s decision, or something on our end
made the difference. So the tendency is
to say that God had a greater good in mind. That can be hard to explain to the
small children who are left behind.
We don’t
want to say that somehow it was our fault.
That sounds so cruel or guilt-producing.
So it’s better to say that it was God’s fault? But fault isn’t even the right word
here. It’s not blame, but
responsibility.
Ask the
question: is everything in life God’s will?
If it is, why do people pray for things?
We should all only be giving thanks for everything that is. So if prayer changes things, so that means
there are probably an awful lot of things that need changing in the world. And who among us will say that we pray as
much as we should, or that we even pray in the manner that we should. Even the disciples asked Jesus to teach them
how to pray.
So if there
are things in life that need to be changed, and our prayers are one of the main
instruments for doing that, and no one of us would claim to pray as much as we
should or could, and, since, like the disciples, we too need to be taught how
to pray, and who would say we have learned enough, then surely somewhere there
must be things that are not good that could have/ should have been changed but
were not because of human failure.
But surely
not our prayer for healing, or that of our Aunt Harriett! Consider that man with the demon possessed
son that we mentioned earlier.[12] This son had had the problem since his
youth. We don’t know how long this was,
but Jesus asked the father how long it had been, so his son was not very
young. The man asked Jesus if He could
help, because the disciples could not.
And Jesus’ response is: “(As for ) that if you can, all things are
possible to the one who believes.”[13]
So here is
this distraught man with a son possessed by a spirit which has been trying to
kill him for years. Has this father
prayed for his son prior to this? I am
sure he has. But so far nothing has
happened. Then he asks Jesus for help,
and Jesus essentially tells him: “Sir,
if you could have believed it, your son could have been healed years
ago.” Unlike us, Jesus was not hesitant
to chide His listeners for lack of faith.[14] This seems to me the thing that upset Jesus
the most with His disciples and the thing that took them the longest to
learn.
When I was
a kid, there were bigger, stronger, or older kids who often picked on me. They could push me around and hurt me if and
when they wanted to. God allowed them
to, so should I blame God for this? What
if, when I was younger, my father told me:
“Now, son, when you go off to school, you will most likely meet other
kids who are bigger, stronger, or older than you who will want to steal from
you, pick on you, and generally make your life miserable. So, I want to prepare you for that time. I am going to train you to become stronger
physically and to be able to defend yourself against any and all bullies.”
I believe
it is the same with physical illness and a myriad of other problems that we
will face in our lives. Jesus talked about
moving mountains and doing things that are impossible, and we look at that as
hyperbole. We don’t take it seriously,
and what church teaches its people on how to grow their faith to do these very
things?
You can’t
read the Bible for very long without seeing that it shows a reality of God both
in His presence and in the demonstration of His power which is greatly lacking
in our churches and lives today.
Theologians, Bible teachers, and pastors have tried to provide
explanations why this is so. The most
common view taught today is that God doesn’t intend for it to be that way. I think any position that removes all
responsibility from us and places it entirely on God should be examined very
carefully before we hold on to that very tightly. It is our view in this book that, at least as
it applies to healing, there is very much more that we can do to see God’s
power work in our lives. And it is
important that we do just that.
[1] John
17:1-3 These things Jesus spoke and,
having lifted His eyes to heaven, He said, "Father, the hour has come;
glorify Your Son that the Son may
glorify You, just as You have given Him authority over all flesh, in
order that all which You have given to Him, He may give to them eternal
life. And this is the eternal life, that
they know You, the only true God, and the One you have sent, Jesus Christ.
[2] Proverbs
1:7
[3] Proverbs
9:10
[4] Mark
5:25-34
[5] Mark
5:34 o( de\ eiåpen au)tv=,
Quga/thr, h( pi¿stij sou se/swke/n se: “
But He said to her, Daughter, your faith has saved you.” The perfect tense emphasizes her present
condition as that of being saved, and the word ‘save’ sw/zw (sode’
–zoh) can be used of any kind of deliverance from something, including
sickness.
[7] I Kings
3:1, II Chronicles 25:5-10, Isaiah
30:1,2
[8] Luke
11:1-13
[9]
Ephesians 6:10-17
[10] I
Samuel 17
[11] Matthew
17:14-20
[12] Ibid.,
Mark 9:14-28, Luke 9:37-43
[13] Mark
9:23
[14] Matthew
6:30, 8:26, 14:31, 16:8, 17:20
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