Stories from God: Everyday People Experiencing God in Extraordinary Ways

Chapter 4: Stories of Healing

      The Bible is full of stories of healing. Healing and prophecy are the two miracles that God often used to establish His power and authority during Biblical times. Jesus had a healing ministry as described in Matthew 4:23, "Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people." Of course, Jesus is the Son of God. He would be expected to have the power to heal the sick. What about believers today? Should we expect healing to occur as the result of the prayers of the faithful? Or should we assume that supernatural healing is no longer used by God?

Jesus gave the twelve the power and authority to heal as part of their task to spread the Gospel as found in Luke 9:1-2, "When Jesus had called the Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick." Later He sent out the 72 with instruction to heal the sick as well. The Book of Acts is filled with stories of healing after Christ left the earth. Clearly, healing was done by Jesus and in the name of Jesus throughout the Bible. Nowhere in the Bible are we told that healing in His name would stop after the last apostle died. If God has not changed, if the power of His name has not diminished, and if His authority still reigns on earth, then the power and authority to heal must still exist.

The stories in this chapter support the claim that healing is still a tool used by God to establish the authority of those who come in His name. Of course, as you would expect, the enemy does not like it. He cannot stop real healing in the name of Jesus so instead Satan floods us with droves of fake healers. The enemy's only hope is to discredit healing. To a large degree Satan has succeeded. The concept of healing is rejected by major segments of today's church. They may pray and ask for healing from God, but the expectation is that it will come by natural means not by a supernatural intervention. That is too bad, because healing continues to be used by God even today as the following stories illustrate.

While fake healers are one tool of Satan to discredit Biblical healing, there is another 800 pound gorilla in the room when we start to talk about miracles of healing. It is the fact that healing does not occur every time we pray and ask God to heal someone. What we would like to see is a one-to-one correspondence between a righteous prayer for healing and the restoration of health. We do not. Sometimes, as in these stories, a person is healed. Sometimes, despite all our prayers, someone continues to suffer. Since God has the power to heal every disease, our expectation is that if we pray and ask Him it should be done.

With that expectation, however, we miss the real purpose of healing. Healing is not only done to remove suffering; it is done to glorify God. God will ultimately eliminate all suffering among believers but that will not come until Christ returns. Meanwhile, God will heal when it serves His purpose. After all, neither Christ nor the Apostles healed every sick person in sight. They did not cut a disease free swath in their path throughout the Middle East and Asia Minor. Even Paul was not healed, though he asked three times.

My wife has been blind since birth. Several people have prayed for her sight to be restored but the answer has been no. My wife has a great attitude about her blindness, and God used it when we were in the Philippines to draw people to her and, more importantly, to her message. She knows her blindness is only temporary, because she will see when she gets to heaven. In her case, the first face she will ever see clearly will be the face of Jesus. Not many people can make that claim.

Hence, the fact that sometimes when we pray and healing does not occur does not mean that God never heals or that our prayers are not adequate. All it means is that God has something else in mind.