Divine Physical Healing

For the past couple of months it has felt as though God has had me attend His school of divine physical healing.  As is the usual practice when asking the Lord what is on His heart that He wants me to know about Him or His church, He begins to place certain things on my heart or quicken me through the Scriptures.  Then in some way, shape or form He’ll follow up on that by bringing some information and teaching my way. Along with the Bible, one of the methods the Lord constantly uses to accomplish this task is to place some books at my disposal – usually written by people from another time and another century.

Although they’re all well and truly dead in the natural realm, the writings of these holy men of God live on, just as they themselves live on in the supernatural realm.  In other words, the stamp of the Holy Spirit’s approval remains on their works, as any Christian will testify when reading the works of men such as John Bunyan, Andrew Murray, Chas Spurgeon, JC Ryle, AW Tozer to name just a few.  I’m not saying today’s men and women don’t have the Spirit’s stamp on their work, it’s just that this is the way God has usually done it for me down through the years.  I haven’t had to go searching for this material either; God has always found a way to place it in my hand.

Some time ago I experienced pain in a tooth, but just before deciding to call for a dental appointment the pain went away.  The previous visit a few months before gave no indication of any need for work so I left it at that.  The other day the pain came back so I decided I would make an appointment and get it looked at.  Before doing so I went for a walk and as is my practice I also use that time for prayer.  In praying about this, I was suddenly struck with thoughts about divine physical healing, so I said, “Lord, based on what I know there’s no obvious reason for this pain, so why talk to a dentist?  I think it’s time for me to talk to You and get serious about what I’m relearning about healing.”

On this blog I’ve given plenty of testimonies to the Lord’s divine physical healing hand upon me, both instant and gradual healings; so what is it about my learning that I had to take very seriously?  Answer: Pray and believe for physical healing according to the Lord’s promises about physical healing and put away forever those faith-destroying words, “if it be Thy will, Lord.”  If I pray for a particular job, new home, motorcar, overseas holiday or I do so on behalf of others, it is right and honoring to God that I do use those words, but it is wrong and dishonoring to God when using them in prayer for divine physical healing … the Bible is full of evidence of God’s promise, willingness and even yearning to heal physically.

For lots of reasons, there are those who dispute that God divinely heals today; they’ve been told that miracles, signs & wonders and other works of the Holy Spirit ceased with the passing of the apostles.  Well, just as I am unwilling to make doctrines out of my experiences in God, I encourage disputing people not to make doctrines out of their lack of experiences in God. It’s easy for us to argue with one another and draw and fire our spiritual six-guns, but it’s never God-honoring.  What is honoring to God is for us to agree that God is the Lord and He does not change Malachi 3:6 and that Jesus the Lord is the same yesterday, today and forever Hebrews 13:8. 

Through this study of divine physical healing, God has drawn my attention to His attribute of compassion.  Biblically, God’s compassion means: ‘to feel sympathy for’ ‘pity’ ‘spare’ ‘mercy’ ‘merciful’ … and if Psalm 145:8-9 were the only evidence we had of such, it would be sufficient, but it is not the only evidence; both Testaments speak generously of His compassion and I’m puzzled as to why some church leaders I’ve sat under have not drawn our attention to it in relation to this subject.  God’s ability and power for healing were spoken of, but not His compassion to do so.  There’s only one reason I can think of as to why not, and that is: it’s difficult to draw attention to divine compassion if one’s own experience of it is rare.

In Matthew’s Gospel, we read of Jesus going through towns and cities healing every sickness and every disease among the people and that, “He was moved with compassion for them.”  One of the reasons He was moved was because the people had, “no shepherd.” Matthew 9:35-36.  To what degree a shepherd is the church leader, who fails to draw his people’s attention to the Lord’s compassion, sympathy for, pity upon and desire to physically heal people?  In all the sermons I’ve heard on this passage of Scripture the focus has not been on the Lords’ compassion to heal people, but rather, “the harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few…pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.” Matthew 9:37-38.

And with that focus in mind only, the emphasis has then been placed on sin, sinners dying and going to hell, and something like, “now that we are saved, God’s expectation for all of us in this church is that we get out there and preach the gospel to every creature, amen?”  Fact: People will not come to our churches if all they hear from us is that they are sinners on their way to hell.  That’s not the good news, that’s bad news!  Yes, they are sinners and hell is a reality, but apart from speaking to and rebuking religious hypocrites, that’s not how Jesus operated.  When He gave the gospel, He gave all of it in total to the total person, with the intention of saving the total person, not just saving his/her soul so he/she could “come to church.”

What I’m also finding increasingly disturbing is the amount of Christians who see their physical illnesses as a cross to bear, one sent by God.  In other words, “God has sent this illness so as He can teach me about suffering.”  Not only is that a gross lie but it also greatly dishonors God, it runs contrary to everything the gospel (good message, good news) stands for. What sick person in their right mind ever says, “Look at me, I’m as sick as a dog with this aching back, arthritis and cancer, but praise God, it’s a cross He must think I can bare otherwise He wouldn’t have sent it.”  As they speak, you look at their bedside table and note a half dozen bottles of pills and medicines.

Should they really be swallowing their pills and medicines if they believe God sent the sickness?  Same goes for their doctors and hospital confinements – what are they doing there seeking cures if God sent this thing as a cross for them to bear?  That’s how a Roman Catholic lady viewed her illness.  Speaking to her through her bedroom window, here she was riddled with arthritis, rosary beads wrapped around arthritic fingers and when I mentioned that God was the Healer who took her diseases to the cross with Him, her only response was, “Oh well.”  In one sense Roman Catholics can be excused because most of them look to their priests, not to the Bible.

But how about Protestants?  Too many of them look to their pastors and not to the Bible.  In other words, the sick and chronically ill among them are not healed and are never likely to be so because the theology of the leader is one that either doesn’t acknowledge divine physical healing or says that it’s dependent upon, “whether it’s God’s will to heal you or not, because sometimes He does heal and sometimes He doesn’t.” It was this theology that a Christian man dying with asbestos disease had embraced when I met him in his home.  He was quite some years away from reaching his threescore and ten Psalm 90:10 and I wish I knew then about God’s will for physical healing what I know now.

It is true that many people who get prayed for do not get healed and many die.  The answer to that has always been that God is sovereign and that He doesn’t always respond to prayer in the manner or way that we would expect Him to after such prayer.  It’s true, God is sovereign. But given the amount of physical healing Scriptures that saturate both the Old and the New Testaments, there’s every chance that too many of us have been using the sovereignty of God as a cop-out.  Instead of coming together, falling to our knees or prostrating ourselves to the floor, storming heaven armed with a ton of Scriptures and reminding God of them as David did, have we been wimping out with, “Thy will be done, Lord.”?

In the church, I have heard “Thy will be done, Lord” a thousand times more than I have ever heard, “Lord, Your word says….”  I’m sorry I got caught up in it!  Then there are those who believe that God heals physical diseases, but at the same time they talk about psychosomatic disorders as hindrances to healing and then, instead of quoting the word of God, they get hindered by the word of the psychologist.  Jesus didn’t do that … neither did the apostles.  They looked at each situation and under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, they took the right action, they spoke the right word for the right person at the right time.  They didn’t generalize or get caught up in what’s possible versus what’s not.

In my post: The Broken Spokes of the Wheel and the Soul Salvation Single Barrel Shotgun, I make mention of the Bible teacher who taught, “We must give the truth in healthy proportion.”  One of the problems we have with falling back on the sovereignty of God when our prayers are not answered is; we tend then to operate our lives more so out what God doesn’t say rather than what He does say … then opinions come into the equation, “I think” “He thinks” “They think.”  As Christians, we should never be content to live our lives from the realm of opinions … and most certainly not our own!  What I think, doesn’t matter … what I know, does!  That’s what God wants to impart to us because we’re powerless in helping sick people without it.

I don’t know what God’s intentions are as I currently sit in His divine physical healing classroom, but I do know that as I appropriate the lessons I’m learning, I am experiencing the truth of His physical healing promises.  I’m also being tested in others.  This time around, however, it is the word of God I’m standing on and not one opinion, feeling, symptom or circumstance that currently gives evidence to the contrary. “And when He called His twelve disciples to Him, He gave them power over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease  … and commanded them saying, Go … preach … heal the sick.” Matthew 10:1, 7-8. “For we walk by faith, not by sight.” 2 Corinthians 5:7.