THOUGHTS ON THE RELATIONSHIP OF FAITH AND HEALING

Of the 23 separate specific healing miracles in the gospels eight of the 23 mention the faith of the individual, five of those attribute the healing directly to the presence of faith in the individual. I want to look briefly at the healings where faith is mentioned and see what we might learn.

 Many who believe in divine healing today either ignore or minimize the need and importance of the individual’s faith for receiving healing. They advocate praying over and over or getting as many people as possible to pray for a need as if God would be effected by the consensus of a larger group of insistent people asking for approximately the same thing? This strategy, although it may be done by people with compassion and good hearted motives seems to paint a picture of God as a politician who considers the general consensus of his constituents especially when election time is coming up. Many fail to realize that God is not moved, as many of his children are, by the opinions of men. God is only moved by his covenant love and his mercy. I don't know about you but when I have been in need I haven’t put out a bulk email requesting general prayer. While some may pray in faith others may pray, “Lord heal Paul, if it be thy will.” The remainder of that sentence that may be lurking in the back of the prayer’s mind might be, “And if it’s not your will to heal him then let him suffer for a while.” There are, of course, many variables that might be prayed. I do believe in the power of agreement but agreement requires that we pray the same thing, have the same mind, be motivated by the same source of information.

In a story told in Luke 5 where four men brought a paralyzed man on a cot to one of Jesus’ meetings, not being able to get him inside the building because of the crowd they took him up on the roof and after removing some of the tiles they lowered him down in front of Jesus. The text says, “When he saw their faith…” (Luke 5:20).

Can you see faith? Perhaps not with your natural eyes but one can certainly see the results or outworking of faith in the determination of the five individuals involved in this story. They could easily have given up because of the crowd and said, “It’s too difficult, we will just have to wait for another occasion, maybe we will find Jesus without such a big crowd.” Or if they were Calvinists they might have said, “Well, if God really wanted to heal this fellow he would have caused us to leave earlier or somehow made a way for us to get him into the synagogue, or just healed him spontaneously at his house.” Or the man himself could have succumbed to fear and protested saying, “Hey wait a minute guys, I’m not sure I want to go through with this.”  But instead, they were determined to get him to where Jesus would notice him and at least have the opportunity to minister to him. They took significant risk to get their friend close to Jesus where he could be healed. Receiving from God has two distinct elements, God’s provision and invitation (promise) and man’s response, (faith). Faith causes people to get determined and do due diligence to get themselves into the presence of God. 

I know many who are saved and even filled with the Holy Spirit who will not even lift a finger to get into the word and see what Jesus has to say about healing. They seem to think that if God is going to do anything regarding healing that it will have nothing to do with their participation or effort. They say, “Well, if God wants to heal me he’ll heal me.” If we adopted the same attitude concerning salvation how many of us would have gotten saved? The gospel narrative does not reflect this sort of attitude. We cannot say that God never healed anyone who was weak in faith, there are some who were healed and didn't even know who it was that healed them, like the man at the pool of Siloam. (John 5)

Even almost every case of healing registered in the Gospels at least some response is recorded on the part of the recipient.

If you need healing I want to encourage you to begin a diligent study of the Gospel record. See how Jesus healed people, what got his attention, what caused a negative or positive response on his part, what people did that caused Jesus to commend the quality of their faith or rebuke them for their lack of faith. Faith comes by hearing and hearing  by the  word of God.” (Romans 10:17)

God’s enablement in your pursuit of Him

Pablo