Divine Healing Made Simple: Simplifying the supernatural to make healing & miracles a part of your everyday life (The Kingdom of God Made Simple Book 1) (4 page)

When I use the term “healer” in this book, I’m not implying that “healer” is a special title or privilege given only to a few people. It is the right and responsibility of every believer. The term “healer” as I use it, merely refers to someone who happens to be active in healing, as opposed to someone who could be, but is not.

There exists a widely-held belief that God uses sickness to teach us lessons and develop character. Although I once held this view, let me explain why I no longer do. Many people point to the life of Job as an example of how God uses sickness and affliction to build character. The first assertion made is that God makes people sick, so let’s examine this idea.

In the second chapter of the book of Job, Satan came to ask God for permission to afflict Job with sickness (see Job 2:3-6). God granted Satan’s request and put limitations on it. He would be allowed to afflict Job with sickness, take away his wealth and even kill Job’s family, but he was not allowed to kill Job. After receiving permission, Satan put his plan into action:

So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD, and struck Job with painful boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.
JOB 2:7

From this passage we can see that sickness, disease and even death are planned and carried out by Satan and not God. While God may give Satan and his minions permission to do things like tempting us to sin or giving us sickness, His permission should not be viewed as approval of them and we should not accuse God of making us sick or causing us to die. The agent of sickness and death is Satan.

Satan wanted to make Job sick, take his wealth and destroy his family because he believed Job would curse God if he did. But the Lord knew the whole time Job wouldn’t curse Him and even told Satan so. He boasted to Satan that Job was a man of great character before Satan attacked him. Job’s sickness and afflictions didn’t build character; they revealed the character he already had.

I’m not suggesting that the Bible teaches that all sickness and pain have spiritual causes or that they all come from Satan. Some of the things we suffer from are nothing more than the effects of physics and poor choices. Many obese people who suffer from diabetes have their blood sugar return to normal after losing weight. Peptic ulcers often clear up after the individual quits their stressful job that caused it. Industrial diseases can be cured in some cases by leaving the toxic environment. God does not afflict us with sickness, Satan does. But not all sickness is from Satan; some of it is self-inflicted.

Now let’s look at some of the most common reasons I’ve heard people give for not being healed.

In this section, I’ll refer to the passage below where Jesus healed a number of people:

And he came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of His disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, who came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. And those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all the crowd sought to touch him, for power came out from him and healed them all.
LK. 6:17-19

If you believe that you haven’t been healed because you aren’t good enough in God’s eyes, allow me to ask, how many righteous people do you suppose Jesus healed in this large crowd? Consider that demonized people are often involved in drug use and idol worship, yet Jesus healed and delivered all of them. This was probably a group of average people such as you’d find on the streets of any city in the world. None of them were righteous enough to deserve healing, because healing isn’t based on how good we are. Healing is an act of God’s grace, just like salvation.

There are three biblical principles I’d like to mention briefly; they are justice, mercy and grace. Justice is receiving what we deserve. Most of us like justice as long as it’s not being measured out to us. Mercy is when God withholds the justice we deserve for our wrongdoing. Grace is when God gives us something we don’t deserve. Salvation and healing are acts of mercy and grace. Concerning God’s grace, the apostle Paul wrote:

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, not of works, that no one should boast.
EPH. 2:8

The word “saved” in this verse is the Greek word
sozo,
which means to save, preserve, protect, heal or make whole. Healing is one of the ways in which the grace of God is revealed to us. I sometimes receive prayer requests where a relative cites a long list of good deeds done by the person they want me to pray for. They do this because they believe that people who lead a life of sacrifice or service to others are somehow more deserving of healing than those who do not. Thankfully, neither our good deeds nor our bad ones matter when grace is at work. God’s grace can never be earned. It is a free gift. All we can do is receive it. As someone who needs healing, you’re a candidate to be healed, regardless of your beliefs or lifestyle. No one is outside the reach of God’s grace for healing except those who don’t want to be healed.

This belief comes from the idea that our physical bodies are bound to suffer sickness and damage in this life and that once we are in heaven, our bodies will be healed. There is an assumption made here, that we will have physical bodies in heaven. We must ask then, “Do we have physical bodies in heaven that can receive healing?”

The answer is no. The apostle Paul teaches in a number of places that there are two kinds of bodies. We have a physical body for this life and a spiritual one for eternity:

The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body… For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
1 COR. 15:42-44 AND 53

Our physical bodies do not go with us in eternity. In heaven, we will receive a spiritual body that is created for our eternal existence – one that does not become sick or injured; therefore our physical bodies cannot be healed after we die. If our bodies are to receive the healing God has provided for us, it can only be received while we are alive.

A popular teaching in the Charismatic church is that when a strong attitude of unbelief is present among a group of people, it creates an environment of unbelief. It is taught that when this type of environment is present, the healing work of God is blocked by the “atmosphere of unbelief.” Adherents support this teaching by quoting the following passage where Matthew noted that Jesus did not perform many miracles in His hometown:

Now He did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief.
MT. 13:58

If we took this passage at face value, we might agree that an attitude of unbelief prevents miracles from happening. But let’s look at another passage that describes the scene in more detail. This parallel passage notes that Jesus did heal a few people in His hometown:

Now He could do no mighty work there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them.
MK. 6:5

If the work of God is restricted by a corporate attitude of unbelief then how did Jesus heal these people?

In the cities of Judea, Jesus was regarded as a man of God who taught with authority and had the power to do miracles. Many sought Him for healing because they understood who He was. But in His hometown of Nazareth, He was regarded as just another one of Joseph’s sons. They knew Him from childhood and didn’t regard Him as a miracle worker. Many of the townspeople were offended by Him and doubted His claims; they were full of unbelief. The people of His hometown could have experienced the same miracles Jesus did elsewhere. But their unbelief kept them from bringing the sick to Him for healing, thus it was said, “He did not do many mighty works because of their unbelief.” It wasn’t because His power was restricted; it was because they didn’t ask Him to do the miracles out of their own unbelief (see Jn. 6:42 and Lk. 4:21-30).

A few people mentioned in the Bible obtained healing by their own faith. The woman healed of a bleeding disorder, which she had for twelve years, is one example (see Mt. 9:22), but the majority of those healed by Jesus and the disciples had little or no faith. The only time Jesus ever told anyone they didn’t have enough faith was when He reprimanded His disciples for their faithlessness when they couldn’t cast a demon out of a boy who had epilepsy (see Mt. 17:17).

As the one who needs healing, it doesn’t hurt to have faith, but it isn’t necessary. What you need is the desire to be healed. Healing comes by faith and in the majority of cases, it’s the faith of the one praying that determines the outcome. Sometimes when healing doesn’t appear to manifest, the would-be healer will accuse the one who is sick of not having enough faith. Don’t fall for this blame shifting tactic.

Healing doesn’t require the sick person to believe in Jesus or even in God, because healing is intended to make believers out of those who witness or receive it. Jesus told people to believe in Him because of the miracles He did. He didn’t require them to believe before being healed:

“Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves. ”
JN. 14:11

God often heals those we least expect because His grace and mercy are intended for everyone. Pete Cabrera visited the UK in April of 2011 to do some street healing. While in London, he met a man in a pub who was an atheist. Pete learned that the man suffered from chronic back pain. (One of the most common causes of low back pain is a misalignment of the hips due to one leg being longer than the other.) Pete asked the man to sit in a chair and extend his legs. He found that one leg was shorter, so Pete commanded it to grow. The legs became equal in length, which healed the back pain. The man became a follower of Jesus before he left the pub.

Sometimes healing miracles can even draw an observer into belief in God as this story of mine demonstrates:

In September of 2011, I transported a woman in my ambulance who complained of numbness in her right leg from her groin to her toes. Her doctor ordered an ultrasound, suspecting a vascular injury. She’d had a heart attack and stent placement a few weeks earlier.

(To insert a stent, they place a large needle and sheath into a blood vessel in the groin and advance it to the heart. Our suspicion was that the insertion site for the catheter in her groin may have developed an aneurysm, compressing the femoral nerve, causing numbness to her leg.)

To complicate the picture, she had end-stage kidney failure and was on dialysis. The dialysis fistula in her left arm deteriorated to the point where it was no longer useful. So her surgeon tied it off and following the surgery, she developed pain and some loss of function in her left hand. She also had complete blindness in her left eye and partial blindness in her right eye from detached retinas.

She lived at a nearby facility across the parking lot from the hospital. I had a few hundred feet of blacktop in which to work a miracle. As we wheeled her toward the elevator, I asked if she’d let me pray for her. She agreed, so I started with her left hand. She reported the pain as six out of ten. As we got on the elevator, I commanded the pain to leave in the name of Jesus. After the door closed, I asked how she felt.

“I don’t feel anything, now.”

“Do you feel any pain in your arm or hand?”

Smiling, and flexing her wrist and fingers in amazement, she said, “No pain at all. It feels normal.”

Wheeled her toward the ambulance, we loaded the gurney. I needed to get her vital signs and call the receiving hospital. I asked my partner to get in back for a few minutes. I did a neurological assessment of her right leg. She felt nothing when I ran my finger along the sole of her foot. I did it several times to make sure. I pinched her skin above the ankle.

“I can feel you touching me, but I can’t tell if it’s dull or sharp.”

Just below her knee, she could tell that I was pinching her skin. As I tested her ability to sense pain in her leg, I could tell that her neurological deficit was slight at the knee, progressively getting worse toward the foot, which had no sensation at all.

I placed my hand on her leg and invited the Holy Spirit to touch her, then commanded the nerves and blood vessels to be healed in the name of Jesus. I asked if she felt anything.

With a smile she replied, “My whole leg is tingling.”

I rubbed the bottom of her foot again and asked if she felt anything.

“Yes, I can feel you touching the bottom of my foot.” I pinched the skin above her ankle. “I can feel you pinching me.” All the numbness in her leg was now gone.

My EMT partner, who had never worked with me before and had never seen a miracle, looked on in quiet amazement. The silence was broken when she finally said, “I think you may have just made a believer out of me.”

H
EALING IS THE SUBJECT OF
much debate, both inside and outside the church. There are many skeptics who would challenge the validity of divine healing. Some doubt healing itself, insisting that there is no clinical evidence demonstrating that healing is a real phenomenon. Others challenge the idea of healing as a biblical principle that is valid for today. In this chapter, we’ll survey the most relevant passages of Scripture showing that healing is not only relevant today, but that it’s a biblical imperative.

The Old Testament is rich with passages that teach the people of God about His character and nature. Each of God’s names, which are found in the Old Testament, describe something about Him that was unknown at the time. In Exodus 15:26, God revealed that one of His names is, “Jehovah Rapha”…
“I AM the LORD, who heals you.”
The literal translation of this name is:
“I AM your healing.”
Healing is one of God’s unchanging attributes, and although God’s plans may change, He himself never changes (see Mal. 3:6). If God’s nature was to heal then, it is still His nature to heal today.