Subject: Divine Healing? |
Bible Note: John Reformed, You asked "How you counsel people who pray for healing for someone but do not receive it." Well, I'm going to be honest with you up front. I'm only a student on his way to becoming a pastor, but I know enough to answer your question because I have wondered the same thing. Let's say that a woman prayed for her 10-year-old boy who was hit by a car. First, why was he hit by the car? It's because mankind was cast out of Eden into a fallen world. Bad things will happen because this world is not perfect. As I explained in my last post, Jesus came to heal people. Read Isaiah 53:4-5. The same blood that was poured out for our sins was poured out for our healing also. Peter references this verse in 1 Peter 2:24 as does Matthew in Matthew 8:17. So we know that God is willing to heal and able to heal. Now we must ask, “Why don’t we receive what we pray for?” There are several potential reasons: 1) Lack of faith. In Mark 6:1-6 Jesus couldn’t heal people because they didn’t have faith in him. We notice the story of the centurion in Matthew 8:10, the woman with the issue of blood in Matthew 9:22, and the woman of Canaan in Matthew 15:28 all received what they came for because they had faith. 2) We don’t pray inline with the word of God. Nowhere in the Bible does it ever say that when you pray for healing that you should say, “If it be thy will heal so and so.” Only two places did Jesus ever tell us to pray that way. Actually, it’s two accounts of when He was in the garden praying the prayer of consecration. (Matthew 26:42 and Luke 11:2) James 5:14-15 tells us to pray the prayer of faith for the sick. There is no if in faith. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) So we can be out of line by being of little or no faith. I know there are still others, but none are coming to mind. If you still have questions I’ll be more than happy to do all I can to answer them. Jesified |