Dear Roger and Brie,
How many times should I pray for someone to be healed? Especially when I see that healing just isn’t happening? I have friends who ask me to pray again and again for their healing. Or my church asks us to pray for somebody who is sick, and we pray again and again while nothing happens. Sometimes I feel like we just aren’t paying attention to God’s will. Should we ever stop praying for someone’s healing?
Sincerely,
Annabeth
Dear Annabeth,
Oh, my, we both know exactly where you’re coming from. As a chronic illness warrior (Brie), I’ve had to deal with the reality that God has shown me this is His will for my life. I’ve learned to pray for His strength to handle suffering rather than for healing. I don’t believe that this decision shows a lack of faith; in fact, I think that it has required more faith than anything else in my life. I’ll share more about this in a minute.
As a pastor, Dad had fifty years of experience with praying for healing—and dealing with it when God didn’t choose to heal someone. We often talked about how difficult it was to know when to keep pounding on the doors of heaven for healing and when to accept God’s will. Let me begin by sharing one of his experiences in his own words:
“Julie and I were in Turkey when I was invited to a healing service for an American missionary serving in the Middle East. For over ten years, he’d asked people to pray for his healing. He was at his wits’ end. As we prayed, it became increasingly obvious to me that he was struggling with brain chemistry imbalances.
When the prayer time ended, I gently told him that it was time to stop praying for healing: ‘If God hasn’t healed you after ten years of praying, then another year will probably not do it either. It seems to me that God’s answer to you is, “No. Stop asking Me. My grace is sufficient for you. I fully intend to pour the power of Christ into your life so that you may live victoriously with the sickness.’”
We’ve heard and prayed perhaps several thousand prayers for God’s hand to touch people with complete healing … and we’ve been privileged to witness some great healings. We’ll never forget how God brought life back to Ralph, healed the perpetual radiation pain and burns for Vi, and the bright light that overshadowed Tina and healed her in such a way that her upcoming cancer surgery was simply canceled.
However, your prayers and results much like ours have been. While some are healed, most are not. Many received medical attention that alleviated their problems. Others died from their sicknesses. Still others continued to suffer long-term.
From Scripture, we can glean several truths. First, it is not always God’s will to heal. Second, His will is always designed for the sake of our eternal good and His glory. Finally, He will give us strength in the midst of suffering.
When It’s Not God’s Will to Heal
Did you know that Scripture does not include Paul praying for others’ healing? There are none—except for the three times He prayed for God to remove the debilitating thorn in his flesh (see 2 Corinthians 12:7-8).
Instead, Paul’s recorded prayers reveal his deep concern for the maturing of the internal-eternal-human spirit. He never prayed for anyone’s body to get well, but he never stopped praying for the development of the inner person. He tells the Ephesian church, “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being” (Ephesians 3:14 NLT).
We might do well to follow Paul’s example when he prayed for God to remove the “thorn” from his flesh. Three times was enough:
I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:7-10 NLT)
“Thorn” is the Greek word describing a “tent stake” that is driven into the ground. The Babylonians used the word to describe the sharpened trees used for impaling people. “Torment” is a Greek boxing term meaning, “to beat, to strike with the fist.”
Paul had a stake impaled in his body tormenting him to keep him humble; he knew that God chose not to heal Him according to His good purpose.
Theologians have made four primary guesses as to the nature of Paul’s thorn:
First, he was ugly—probably a result of his five beatings with rods, three whippings, and one stoning (see 2 Corinthians 10:10).
Second, he was often incapacitated with malaria contracted in the marshy areas of the southern coastline of Turkey.
Third, he struggled with epilepsy, which was considered in the ancient world to be caused by demons (see Galatians 4:3-14).
Finally, and most probable of all, he had some sort of debilitating eye trouble. Think about the blind scales falling off of his eyes at his bright-light conversion in the desert and the comment about his eyes he made to the Galatians (see Galatians 4:15; 6:11; and Acts 23).
Consider following Paul’s example. If we are not healed after three prayers, we might assume that God has other things in mind.
When God Allows Sickness for His Purposes
Too often, we are obsessed with removing pain and problems. God, on the other hand, is obsessed with sensitizing our inner spirits. God will sacrifice the body every time if that is what it takes to mature the eternal!
We can pray seven times to be healed of cancer; nevertheless, we will eventually succumb to death whether it’s from cancer or something else. Life is a terminal disease. Praying for healing is not eternally effective. There are no biblical verses which describe angels rejoicing when bodies are healed! On the other hand, the angels rejoice when a lost sheep enters into eternal life.
Many Christians beg for God to change their situations and heal their bodies while not having the slightest idea of God’s eternal intentions. We must pray to see things from His perspective and interpret the circumstances surrounding our souls and bodies in light of how our requests affect our inner spirits.
To one degree or other, we are all like Paul in our weaknesses. Pray three times for healing. If He answers, “Yes,” then rejoice and go on with life. Otherwise, look for a reason why Jesus is saying, “No.” If no healing occurs, consider that God wants us to live with it and find grace and strength accordingly.
Of course there is more to this story. Just because Paul and God handled his thorn in one way does not mean that He will always handle our troubles likewise.
Our Suffering Has a Purpose
The apostle James tells us to “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face troubles,” (James 1:2). Have you ever thought about how backwards that is?
The dictionary defines “joy” as “the emotion of great delight or happiness caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying.”
So, let’s paraphrase that verse together: “Take great delight in suffering.”
Personally (this is Brie again), I struggle with a serious chronic illness that causes constant pain. I endure fourteen-hour infusions every other week of a medication that gives me several days of incapacitating migraines. I also have to deal with constant infections and medications that cause major side effects.
I’m here to tell you that taking delight in suffering is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do…and I have to make that deliberate choice every single day. But here’s the good news: I don’t have to face it alone!
When I ask, God continually reminds me that He is with me. He has a very specific eternal purpose for my suffering; look at James 1 again: “Consider it true joy when you face troubles.” Why? “Because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance … “Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” James 1:3-4).
In other words, when we choose to trust God in response to suffering and allow Him to do His work through it, we grow up spiritually. Ultimately, we become more like Jesus.
That’s what I want, more than anything else. I want my response to suffering to bring Him glory. I want enduring the pain with a joy-filled attitude and a genuine smile to point people to Jesus. Our pain has a purpose.
When Healing Is in God’s Plan
I don’t want you to come away from this thinking that God won’t heal. Many times, He does! And it’s also always for our good and for His eternal purposes.
One of the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray (see Luke 11:1-13). Jesus shared the Lord’s Prayer and then told a parable about a man who received a visitor late at night. It was customary to feed a guest upon arrival. Unfortunately, the man with the guest had no food. This was a big deal in their culture.
So, he went to his neighbor and asked for some bread. His neighbor was bedded down for the night and refused to get up. The man seeking bread begged and pleaded but his neighbor refused and refused. Finally, to get rid of him the neighbor got out of bed and gave him some bread.
Then, Jesus said, “Though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless persistence he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.” I love those words; “shameless persistence.” How often do we pray that way?
Then, Jesus followed up the parable with these encouraging words, “Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened for you.” Some translate the three Greek verbs in the imperfect tense as “keep on asking; keep on seeking, and keep on knocking.”
However, I think that in this context, translating the imperfect here as ongoing action misses the point of Jesus’ parable. The implication is that we have to keeping praying and pleading with God and if we are persistent enough, He will give us what we ask, seek and knock for. I don’t think that this is what He meant.
He continued on to say that if sinful earthly dads know how to give gifts to their children, then how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.
Matthew 7:9-10 records Jesus’ follow up like this:
Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!
When we put the entire passage in context, we see that Jesus is doing everything possible to communicate that God is not at all like the sleeping neighbor who had to be pestered and pestered until he finally gave the man what he wanted in order to get rid of him.
Our God is a Father who delights to give good gifts to His children. We don’t ever need to beg, plead and cajole. All we have to do is ask, because He can hardly wait to give good things to us.
Let me close with a story from Roger that illustrates God’s incredible healing as a gift from His Father heart to one of His children:
“When I was thirteen, the Dallas doctors told us that I had a hole in my heart and needed surgery to close it. I knew how to pray. In my young mind, praying for God’s healing work was as easy as asking mom for breakfast! Without a doubt, many other were praying for me, too.
Two weeks before the surgery, I dreamed that God answered the prayers and healed me. It never dawned on me to ask the doctors to recheck. I told mom about the dream, and she said, “Oh, well, that is interesting.”
Several days later the heart surgeon sat on my bed in the I.C.U. “I hate to tell you;” he said, “but we made a terrible mistake. There is nothing wrong with your heart. I held your heart right in my hand, I slit it open to find the hole and there was none. I put it back in and sewed you up. You have a perfect heart.”
God was delighted to give me what I’d asked for. I imagine that He was just waiting for the moment when I first asked Him to do His healing work. Unfortunately, I failed to check on His answer, even when He sent me a dream. I’ve tried to listen to Him more closely ever since.”
How many times you pray for healing or the removal of difficulties is between you and God. We’re not about to try to limit the times you want to pray for something.
What I hope is that you will see that God is not lingering or waiting until you have begged enough before granting your desire. If the answer is to be “Yes,” then He never hesitates. He passes it on as soon as possible.
What I do hope is that when God says, “NO,” you will stop praying and begin focusing both on how God is using your trial to mature your inner spirit and on how He intends to use this trouble to bring Him glory.
Now, back to our missionary friend in the Middle East. Roger shared,
After the prayer meeting, he and I discussed the genetic implications of his disorder. We shook his family tree and all sorts of ancestors with the same malady fell out. I encouraged him; “There is medical treatment which can give you great relief. Go see a doctor.” The next morning, the missionary approached me as I was eating breakfast and said, “Thanks, I needed those insights about Paul and his thorn. I’d forgotten that His grace is sufficient.”
Well Annabeth,
I hope this gives you some insight into how and when and how much to pray for healing.
Love,
Roger and Brie
