Most people know that God can heal them. But they are not sure that it is God’s will to heal them. And it’s not what we know God can do, but what we know He will do that inspires faith. Faith rests in knowing the will of God, not in the ability of God alone. Faith begins where the will of God is known.
Many people have religious roadblocks in the way of receiving their healing from the Lord. They quote the scripture taken out of context, “Whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives” (Hebrews 12:6). And the religious roadblock tells them that God sometimes uses sickness to chasten the believer. But God does not make people sick. And He is not a child abuser! We would be accused of child abuse if we harmed our children physically, but people refer to God as a child abuser when they say that He puts sickness on us to teach us a lesson. God chastens us in our spirits through His word!
Other people say that God puts sickness on us to teach us to trust Him. Still others tell us that God lets us get sick so that we can glorify Him in the sickness. And I’ve heard others say that “I’m in God’s hands, and nothing can come into my life except it come through Him first.”
But what does the Word of God teach? It teaches that “…God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him” (Acts 10:38). It teaches that “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning” (James 1:17) It DOES NOT teach that God puts sickness on His people!
Jesus prayed in Matthew 6:10, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” There is no sickness in heaven, and it is His will that there be no sickness on the earth! Moses admonished the Israelites to keep the Word of God in their hearts “that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land of which the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, like the days of the heavens above the earth” (Deuteronomy 11:21).
Sickness came with the fall of man, and its’ cure is found in God’s remedy for the fall, the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ! To listen to some people, it sounds as though God and the devil have changed jobs over the last two thousand years. To them, God is the one who makes us sick, and the devil is the one who heals us! But “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).
For me, the will of God concerning my healing is settled by the Lord Jesus in Matthew 8. Jesus came down from the mountain where He was ministering the Sermon on the Mount to His disciples, and there was a man stricken by leprosy waiting for Him at the base of the mountain. The leper said to Jesus, “…If you are willing, you can make me clean. Then Jesus put out His hand and touched him saying, ‘I am willing; be cleansed.’” If Jesus could tell this leper that it was His will to heal him, then He must also tell me that it is His will to heal me, or He is partial and treats some people better than He does others. Romans 2:11 reads, “For there is no partiality with God!” Again, if it’s the will of God to heal the leper, then it must be the will of God to heal me!
If it is the will of God to heal some and not all, then there is no basis for faith in God to heal except through some special revelation. That’s the reason we sometimes hear the faith destroying prayer for healing, “Lord if it be thy will…” Folk that pray that way for healing simply do not understand the Word of God on the subject. We as Christians know the will of God through His Word. His Word is His will for us!