There’s much about healing I don’t understand.
- Do we need the gift of healing to pray for someone to be healed or can anyone pray?
- Why are some people healed and others not?
- Who’s faith is needed, the person seeking healing, the person praying for the person seeking healing, or both?
- Why, if Jesus said we would do even more than he did in his earthly ministry do we not see this among the Christian community?
Do we need the gift of healing to pray for someone to be healed or can anyone pray?
With the gift of healing, the Holy Spirit gives an awareness that God would like to heal a certain person or segment of people. It sometimes is accompanied with the feeling of heat or tingling in the hands and sometimes not. Some people experience this gift and have a ministry of laying their hands on the sick and the sick recover. Others may, on occasion, sense the Holy Spirit wanting to heal an individual, and be faithful to pray for that person. The rest of us can still pray for healing and the person may be healed. Even if you do not have the gift of healing, still do pray for the sick.
Why are some people healed and others not?
According to Francis MacNutt, PhD in his book Healing, there are several possible reasons a person doesn’t receive healing. Among these are what we would naturally consider – a lack of faith. But he has identified many other reasons to consider, such as an illness which is allowed by God for a redemptive purpose, as seen in the Apostle Paul’s “thorn in the flesh.” Others might be:
- A person may not be ready to be healed. Perhaps they get much needed attention from the illness, or they believe God wants them to be sick, which undermines their faith.
- The person may have sin in their lives contributing to the illness, such as unforgiveness.
- Perhaps they are contributing to their illness, for example, by not eating or sleeping right, taking drugs, or smoking cigarettes.
- Or, the healing won’t come until they rid themselves of stress factors, which might be coming from, among other things, wounded emotions.
- Another might be that the prayer focuses on the symptoms rather than the root cause, or not on the correct issue to begin with.
- One thing we might not want to consider is demonic influence. Such influence seems far removed from our western Christian mindset. Yet with the increase in Hinduism, Buddhism and the New Age in America, along with satanic cult worship, we should not dismiss this too quickly.
Lastly, MacNutt describes the need for people to live in a loving community to be healthy. We are interconnected and what affects one will affect another. Sometimes healing is not received until others in the community receive healing or relationships are mended.
Dr. MacNutt also mentioned how often, in his ministry, healing didn’t happen immediately, but over the course of hours or days. So, don’t be discouraged if the person you are praying with is not healed instantaneously. Just be faithful to pray.
Who’s faith is needed, the person seeking healing, the person praying for the person seeking healing, or both?
It has never been clear to me whose faith is active, just that faith is needed for healing to occur.
Healing based on the individual’s faith, or non-healing because of lack of faith –
There are several examples of people who showed great faith, such as the woman with the flow of blood. Jesus seemed unaware of her need, yet she received healing because of her faith. There are many other examples of Jesus telling people they have what they asked due to their faith.
Then there are examples of individual’s not receiving healing due to a lack of faith. The main example being in Jesus’ home town where he was not able to do many miracles except that he healed a few sick people. Jesus possessed faith, so the lack of faith from the townspeople had a negative effect on their receiving healing.
From these examples, it seems that those requesting healing need some faith for the healing to be received.
Healing based on another’s faith.
But sometimes the Gospels give accounts where the person being healed is not able to participate. I’m thinking of the girl who Jesus raised to life, though her father had faith and since she was a minor, her father held a spiritual authority in the home. Jesus encouraged faith in this father after he heard of his daughter’s death. Peter’s mother-in-law lay sick with a fever and Jesus healed her. It is not clear what faith she had, only after her healing we read that she immediately got up and served Jesus and those with him. Another example was Lazarus, who obviously was dead, but this miracle I believe was preordained by God to point to Jesus’ resurrection. I’m guessing there are more examples. I’ve just not taken time to look into the Gospels to find more. These are the ones that come to mind readily.
Today, there are believers who pray for people who don’t even know Jesus and healing occurs. Healing happens on the basis of the believer’s faith. God showed up to demonstrate his great love for the individual.
Example of some faith, but not enough.
Then there was the incident of the poor father who admitted he had some faith but evidently not enough. Because a scene was being created, Jesus went ahead and healed the boy, evidently on the foundation of Jesus’ faith.
So who’s faith?
I have to admit, I still don’t know. What I do know is that God is the one who heals, not us or our faith. See ‘Faith is a curious thing‘ below for more discussion on faith.
Why, if Jesus said we would do even more than he did in his earthly ministry do we not see this among the Christian community?
Some say we are doing more than Jesus did through the multiplication of people and time. Jesus was just one person; we are many. Jesus was performing miracles for just over three years; the Church has been doing so for about 2,000 years. Still I am not satisfied.
I don’t see us, the Church at large or myself as an individual believer, doing even remotely what Jesus did. The gospels state Jesus’ commission to his disciples to go out and preach the gospel, heal the sick, and free the captives. In Acts and the Epistles, God demonstrated his power after the disciples testified about Jesus. What we would expect, then, would be for God to reveal himself through signs and wonders to those who, with an open heart, hear the Gospel message. There are other times recorded when the power of God was demonstrated first, before the sharing of the Gospel. This led people to have a more open mind to more easily believe the Gospel when they did hear it. So it seems the Church, individual believers, are not preaching the gospel, healing the sick, and freeing captives. But why?
Since faith and healing go hand-in-hand, it seems a lack of faith is the issue. In Luke 18:8, Jesus ends a parable asking, “When the Son of Man comes, will he indeed find faith in the earth?” Do we truly believe Jesus has power and authority over everything? Do we truly know that God’s Spirit in the believer is more powerful than any other spirit that is in the world? Do we truly understand that we are healed by the stripes that were laid across Jesus’ back? Or was his ministry to liberate those who were bound or oppressed, and to give site to those who couldn’t see merely meant to be spiritual metaphors, (Luke 4:18)?
Faith is a curious thing
What exactly is faith? The short answer is faith is belief. Paul said he was persuaded. Faith is being convinced; to know something to be true beyond what is comprehended through our physical senses. As Hebrews states, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,” (Heb 11:1). Faith is as though it were true, regardless of what is currently happening or seen.
Simply put, faith is our belief system. We believe all sorts of things, some of which is true, much of which is not true in the sense that our beliefs do not line up with what God declares is true. Faith itself is neutral. But faith isn’t something we are to focus on.
God is the one we are to focus on. Faith is a goal but not the means. It is the by-product of our relationship with God. What we know to be true is based on our experiences. We may be trying really hard to believe God’s Word to be true, but as long as these truths remain a matter of our own efforts in cognitive learning, we will not be fully convinced. When God’s truth is experienced or God speaks in such a way that we receive what he says over what we previously believed, faith in God grows.
Therefore, we come to believe God’s Truth through experiencing God. We gain such experience by hearing the Holy Spirit speak through reading his Word, through him speaking to us while praying, through him using others to speak into our lives, even by us sharing our testimony.
Sometimes, though, faith is given directly through the Spirit. God gives the gift of faith to believe in Jesus. Sometimes God gives faith supernaturally for a specific event.