Have you ever needed a public restroom only to rush to the door and discover a sign reading, “OUT OF ORDER”? Something wasn’t working properly. Similarly, friends of ours reported how their oven stopped working on anything but the broil setting, making it effectively unusable. Since the days of Genesis 3, the world has been out of order and disconnected from God’s good purposes.
Of course, Jesus came to realign the world with His Father’s Kingdom. Jesus possessed authority over demons, over nature, over infirmities and diseases, over human rebellion, and over death itself. Jesus used the vocabulary of a medical professional to describe this readjustment: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17). Apparently, through His ministry, Jesus considered Himself a doctor of souls and bodies. Indeed, He even gave His disciples authority to forgive sins, make disciples, and heal people of physical maladies.
Jesus called His twelve disciples to Him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness... Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give. (Matthew 10:1, 8)
The second generation of disciples also exhibited the power to heal souls and bodies through prayer in Jesus’ name,
Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. (James 5:14–15)
Despite the wonderful hope we have in our Healer, a painful reality remains true. The world is still staggering under the injuries of sin and disorder. Young people die in car crashes. A mom of five children dies suddenly from a brain tumor. A five-year-old son dies of Leukemia. A beloved friend and missionary succumbs to Lou Gehrig’s disease. Mothers still miscarry their babies. Healthy fifty-year-olds perish from cancer. And despite our earnest prayers, some people are not healed, at least not in this lifetime.
A confounding question emerges. If God still heals—and indeed He does—if God heals some people, why doesn’t He heal all people? Why does one woman get healed of her injury to an arm while her sister goes unhealed of an autoimmune disease? And how do we know when to keep asking God for a healing we haven’t yet received, and when it is appropriate to accept that God may not heal this condition in this lifetime? Acceptance is not necessarily a lack of faith. Our ultimate hope is anchored in Christ’s power over sin and death; our inclusion in His glorious resurrection is the anchor for our faith (see 1 Peter 1:3). Here are four things to consider as we persevere, even when God doesn’t heal us.
1. Embrace God’s presence instead of the anxiousness of helplessness.
You are not hopeless or helpless. God is with you and has not abandoned you. Psalm 34:18 says, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” God is your greatest gift; your healing is not your greatest gift. Outside of Christ, nothing is eternal, and everything will pass away. But there is a principle in God’s Kingdom. When we surrender our loved ones and blessings over to the Lord, he gives them back to us in their proper value, transformed, reinterpreted, or resurrected with greater meaning than they had before (see Luke 18:29–30).
Loss and grief can chew holes through us, but Jesus fills the hollowness with His nearness. Conversely, success and safety apart from Christ are empty. I’m not insinuating that God is a sadistic pain-producer just so that you will need Him. But I am suggesting that God is inviting us to lean into Him as our life source and companion.
A friend of ours told us how her acute physical maladies over several decades had created an intense dependence on the Lord and awareness of His care for her. After dozens of years, the Lord began healing her incrementally, yet she noticed simultaneously that her need for Him decreased and her awareness of His presence withdrew as well. Her words were, “I would never trade the suffering I had to walk through because in it I encountered my Lord intimately.”
2. Grieve with God instead of accusing Him.
There’s a difference between grieving and accusing. The Lord teaches us to bring all of our wounded and churlish emotions to Him. Vent. Tell Him how you really feel. Don’t ignore it or hide it away. Don’t put on a face. You have to grieve what you’ve lost. You have to ask the unmentionable questions; that’s part of the journey. God wants you to pour out your heart to Him (Psalm 62:8), but here’s the catch. The book of Job says that “in all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing” (Job 1:22; 2:10). Job expressed his outrage to God. He wanted to understand what was going on. But he did not malign God’s character or vilify God as an enemy.
Evil and suffering have a curious effect on us. They tempt us to lay the blame at God’s feet—He could have done something about it, why didn’t He stop it? He must not be as good as He says He is. In reality, the world is out of orderfrom God’s good ways. Evil and human rebellion have launched a sequence of catastrophes. The psalmists were careful to bring their grief to God and cry out, but not to blame Him in the process. For an example of this, read Psalm 22 that Jesus prayed while hanging on the cross.
3. Nurture faith, don’t grow cynical.
Just because God didn’t heal you doesn’t mean He doesn’t heal. And just because He didn’t heal you doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you. We do not fully comprehend the timing or precision of God’s ways. Sometimes he heals suddenly, sometimes through a process, sometimes through medicine, and sometimes through homeopathic remedies. And sometimes we may never receive healing in this lifetime, but will receive ultimate healing in the life to come.
Twenty years ago, our church prayed and fasted and firmly believed that an influential mother in our congregation would be healed of cancer. She was not. The loss was devastating. And the struggle to resist doubt and skepticism was like standing against an ocean wave surging in. Yet, since then, our church has also witnessed God perform miraculous healings and provide for our community in supernatural ways. If we don’t continue to nurture faith, we won’t see the many miracles God still wants to perform.
Faith in Christ’s potency for our situation can be a battle. Of course, life after death is the ultimate victory. But skepticism and doubt continually creep in and can even hamper the healings God wants to perform in this moment (Matthew 13:57–58). As difficult as it is, we must keep our hearts soft towards the Lord and continue to believe in His good nature and power. God is still acting compassionately to renew this broken world.
4. Instead of blaming others, repent!
There are times our prayers are impeded by sin; the Bible is clear about this. Disobedience can stop God’s plans to heal. Blaming others keeps us from accepting responsibility, and disobedience keeps us enslaved to the curses over our land, our children, our produce, and people (Deuteronomy 28:15–68). Yet to all who humble themselves and repent, Jesus offers forgiveness and healing like he did for the paralytic (Mark 2:1–12).
Recently, a young man reported how he had been walking in unforgiveness and offense towards church leaders. When he repented and asked God to forgive him, he felt an incredible weight lift from his shoulders. Simultaneously, he was healed of the gastrointestinal problems he had been having over that same period. In his case, the malady was spiritually connected to his disobedience to God’s command to forgive. Jesus clearly associated disobedience with physical infirmity. Listen to his warning to the invalid in John 5:14, “Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, ‘See, you are well again. Stop sinning, or something worse may happen to you.’” Infirmities are not always the result of sin (see John 9:1–3), but sometimes they are, and we must break our agreement with evil and its curses.
Summary:
The world is out of order. Thankfully, we serve a good God who is powerful and victorious over our maladies and mortality. Yet, He doesn’t always heal. In our losses and grief, we have opportunities to lament to Him, grow close to Him, express our trust in Him, and still believe in His goodness even when we don’t fully understand His ways. This is the battle of faith. We will receive our ultimate healing and reward in resurrection life. Still, God is a gracious Father and is acting to alleviate the injuries of our sin and diseases even now in this renegade world. Can you continue to believe that?
Tags: sin, power, resurrection, forgiveness, doubt, healing, miracles, death, cancer, presence, blame, grief, loss, skepticism, disease
