I want to begin by saying to those who are sick, brokenhearted, or injured – God has not left you, no matter how you feel. Even if your friends, or family have given you up – He will not EVER leave you. I have learnt in the hard places, like many men and women of God have learnt before me, this is the time to lay down upon the altar: “I will build an altar to You in this difficult and dark place. I surrender once again Lord, to Your will, Your way.” Amen.

This is a difficult subject for me, I have experienced healing from the Lord, supernaturally, many times in the past. But at this moment in time that is simply not my current experience. I wanted to talk today about some of the things we don’t want to talk about. Instead we can get caught up in a little man-made eddy of “I’m asking the Lord to heal me, or somebody I care about, and I must speak positively all the time or I will wreck it” – only to find that the answer is not what we hoped. 

We can easily go astray in our faith walk while we are in a dark valley. We know the Lord Jesus is with us – He promised to be there. But the reality of our experience denies the faith we are fighting to hang onto. So we read books about healing, because we desperately want to be healed, or to see it happen for someone else. We read the Bible reading the appropriate scriptures out loud over and over again. We run after His grace and go and get prayed for in every and any healing line. 

Meanwhile all of these things are good things to do – however, would the Lord require us to lie? I don’t think so. HE doesn’t lie, so why would He require us to lie on His behalf? Still, we can and must learn to persevere, Jesus Himself said so on several occasions. “… ask keep on asking so you can you find knock on the door will be open to you.” He taught us that perseverance in in prayer is a good thing. It was said of the Lord that He healed ALL who came to Him. Even when He fed people – no-one left hungry… Our God loves to provide and heal – it is His nature.

So what do we do when our experiences in these areas do not match up with what we are taught? Here is my two cents worth: whether it is my fault, and I don’t have enough faith, or it’s misunderstanding about what the Bible says, or simply haven’t been to the right person to get prayed FOR … —I refuse to measure Almighty God by my experience of Him or with Him. Instead I choose to find out Who He is from His book, independently from my own experiences.

He doesn’t ever answer to me, I answer to Him. You could easily say that I have weak faith in this area, but I say it takes more faith to believe in His goodness in adverse circumstances, than it does to believe in His generous and precious provisions in this life and receive them. Often we measure the King of all Kings with our grotty little man-made rulers and then we do one of two things –

We decide that it must be the unhealed person’s fault …OR …we sentence the sick person into a nether world of trying hard to get healed, and strangle them with the edict that they must not be negative and honest about their difficulties, thereby leaving them to struggle with their enormous burdens – alone. Neither of those responses even vaguely resemble what Jesus would do! He once prayed for a blind man twice… and offered no explanation for doing it that way either!

Jesus’ disciples also prayed for a little boy that had a demonic spirit that kept throwing him into the fire. The kid had convulsions, and the disciples couldn’t do anything about it. It is interesting to me to note that the Lord rebuked THEM. He didn’t growl at the father, or the kid, or even the people standing around watching. He rebuked his disciples instead for not having enough faith! 

I believe this is our problem in this day and age. We have tied the burden of being healed onto the sick person. As if they haven’t got enough to go on with! We haven’t thought about the fact that we have taught a whole generation that being sick is a sin. Plus we are saying that these sick people are responsible for their current circumstances. Implying that there must be something terrible hiding around corners in their lives somewhere, and they’d better toddle off and dig about until they find it! Instead of simply holding them up before the throne of Grace, and reminding them that they have greater faith than even they understand, because they love Him and serve Him, despite their negative circumstances.

Jesus told the disciples once when they asked Him: “Who sinned this guy, or his parents?” His response was – ‘Neither! This is for the glory of God.’ Funny how we tend to overlook that answer. We must learn to be honest with ourselves and others, and learn to say: “I DUNNO!” when we do not know. Then turn everyone’s attention to the goodness of God and all His Mighty works, and praise Him because He is worthy. Healing is absolutely His children’s bread but the children are led by a loving gracious Father. 👋🏻