Last week I went to a meeting where the subject of healing arose.
As a woman of God, I believe that God Almighty is the ultimate healer. That He is able to heal any of us from anything. I’ve heard about those who have witnessed limbs grow, sight be restored and even epilepsy be healed leaving no medical trace of ever having been present. I’ve heard many such miraculous accounts of healings evidenced and confirmed by the medical profession.
Wow, wow, wow.
We all love to hear about the miraculous.
Who doesn’t love a good ending?
By good I mean, when things turn out the way we want and think they should.
But what about when healing doesn’t happen?
Isn’t it just as important to talk about this reality too? About the pain, disappointment, confusion, doubt, disillusionment, resentment and the consequent effect upon faith. I’m talking about how it can really be rather than the super holy gloss we can hide behind.
Refusing to talk about these situations simply leaves us to struggle in silence. And that makes us unnecessarily vulnerable and isolated at the very time when support and understanding are most needed.
The fact is that sometimes God does not heal. (Think Paul and his thorn whatever that was.)
At least not in any way or timing that we can see or understand. And as far as I’m aware, we don’t know why. I imagine we know only the tiniest fraction of what our God is capable of or of what is going on within the spiritual world that remains largely unseen by our human eyes.
I accept this reality because I have learned to trust God and I am continuing to learn to do so as this is an ongoing, lifelong lesson that is learned through experience. Especially the unwanted hard experiences.
Knowing intellectually who God is, is great if you want to know how to talk a good talk. But if you want to actually walk that same talk, you have to know who God is on a heart level. And that means knowing in your heart that He is trustworthy even and especially when we do not see, know, understand or like the situation we find ourselves within, in this instance in the area of healing or rather not healing.
So, what to say about when God doesn’t heal?
Aside from the superficial response of, ‘there must be sin in your life or you don’t have enough faith’, most people are left to suffer in silence because a lot of people don’t like to acknowledge much less discuss the pain of not knowing why healing doesn’t always happen.
Of course there is truth that sometimes there is sin and sometimes there is unbelief, both of which can block healing. It doesn’t matter how able and willing God is to heal if amongst an environment that does not acknowledge any need for healing much less a willingness to ask. Even Jesus was limited in his ability to heal when amongst those with no belief in Him.
But, whilst everyone loves to share and hear about the miraculous examples of healing, when faced with the unhealed individual, there can be an unhelpful silence.
What I see is that people can get very hurt by a refusal to engage in discussion beyond the superficial realm of pat answers. And when the reality that none of us has all the answers, is not acknowledged in a sensitive, wise way, the impact on the individual can be a damaging one. Heart level damage. On top of whatever healing need there was to begin with. And when that is not tended to, it starts to steal the appetite for the spiritual. Because as much as emotions are often treated as the enemy, if left unaddressed these can damage our spiritual health. (And our physical health).
The bottom line is that sometimes God doesn’t heal and we don’t know why.
We can either accept this reality (which doesn’t mean we stop praying or give up) and seek God for a way to live within it or we can continue to make up unhelpful, damaging human reasons as to why this happens.
We all prefer to think that such matters are within our hands hence we like the sin or unbelief approach because these are within our power to rectify.
What we don’t like to admit is that actually we’re all at the mercy of the Almighty and we simply don’t see the whole picture.
As much as it seems rather appealing, how much faith would be required to trust a God that revealed and explained everything to us?
When we really trust God, we make a choice to trust Him no matter what and we focus instead on the business of meeting Him in the midst of the unhealed situation/unanswered prayer or whatever it is.
The healing may be a question of timing or it may never come this side of Heaven.
Hard but true.
Yet there are many examples of inspiring individuals who have gone on to fulfil their purposes for God in spite of vast physical injuries or limitations that they refused to allow to restrict God from working through them regardless.
Check out the website of Nick Vujicic; https://www.lifewithoutlimbs.org/, a man with no limbs but seemingly no limits. An inspirational example of living fully with what you do have.
Or for those who love a film based on a true story, see Soul Surfer which offers an honest illustration of the unavoidable process that takes us from experiencing the unspeakable through a painful process of grieving and adjustment in order to fully re-engage with life afresh with what we do have.
But as was highlighted last week by the excellent speaker Mark DuPont, there are also times when the healing doesn’t happen because for God to do so would be detrimental. In his example, an open leg wound that refused to heal and that wasn’t healed by God, eventually led via various medical professionals to the discovery of a damaged vein. This required dealing with before the external wound could heal.
In other words, the invisible root cause had to be identified and addressed before the visible, surface level symptoms could heal. If God had simply healed on a surface level, the unexposed root cause could have led to other issues, such as DVT as a frequent flyer.
We don’t see or understand all that is happening.
But God is trustworthy no matter how things look or feel to us.
He’s definitely not a half a job bob kind of a God. And way too loving to heal the symptom without the cause. But sometimes we have to go through a process in order to experience the healing. One where lessons are learned about God’s goodness even in the midst of pain that we don’t understand. Lessons that are not learned on the mountain top but the journey to get there.
Hard lessons but lessons that continue to move our faith beyond the intellect and in to the realms of heart level knowing. From which corresponding actions are made possible. Let us acknowledge that the man/woman on the top of the mountain didn’t fall there.
I don’t know why God allowed Mark to go on a long, painful journey to find his healing. We can all come up with our own ideas; meeting God during unanswered prayers and pain, learning that God sometimes heals through people – emphasizing our need for one another, obedience even when things don’t go our way (maturity), the call to persevere in all etc etc but the fact remains that none of us have all the answers and just as in Job’s day, our God does not have to explain or justify Himself to us.
In thinking about all of this, I can’t help but reflect upon my own ministry; healing of the heart and mind, especially as it’s becoming more and more common for individuals to experience physical symptoms as an expression of internal, invisible mental and emotional pain.
If God simply healed these physical manifestations with no thought for the root causes, how loving would such an act of healing really be? Simply reducing the symptom to seek alternative expression via other physical symptoms.
Neurologists are constantly coming face to face with an ever-increasing number of medically unexplainable physical symptoms. An increase that appears to coincide with the decrease in understanding of the importance of emotions and emotional health. Our Society is so fixated on external productivity that we are losing our souls in the process.
Whilst many like to imagine that emotions are some kind of poor relation to intellect, it is often the denied emotions that hold the power to bring us to our knees. Physically and spiritually.
Mental and emotional health matters.
The current resistance to addressing the internal issues of the heart is costing much in terms of health and even in terms of our experience of healing and indeed of the Healer.
We all love to experience God as healing us just like that and without our being required to having any input much less any pain, patience or work. It’s human nature.
But there comes a time when we need to learn to actively participate in our own healing by doing our part.
How else will we learn to grow up?
The time has long been here to take mental and emotional health seriously. A refusal to do so simply saps the appetite for the spiritual and without that, we’re really in trouble.
Overall, it is true that sin and unbelief do block healing.
It is equally true that in the absence of these, sometimes God doesn’t heal the physical symptom because it is indicating a deeper heart level issue that needs identifying and working through. A bit like physio for the soul – painful and costly but with life changing benefits.
According to my last pastors, during their thirty year healing ministry, 70% of people who came for physical healing were actually manifesting heart level distress. A figure that requires our attention for these issues do not disappear because we’ve pretended they don’t exist, that simply gives them permission to grow, fester and cause more damage. These issues actually need addressing along with the ultimate healer’s help to do so.
As I’ve said it is also true that sometimes God does not heal and we don’t know why.
This can be an incredibly painful, vulnerable and isolated experience for anyone. One where what is needed is love (in word and deed), compassion, support, encouragement and prayers. No one needs or benefits from the self-elected spiritual elite Job style friends.
God is our ultimate healer but sometimes we don’t experience the degree or level of healing we may want, whilst this side of Heaven.
The question is, will you allow this to stop you turning to the one who wants to comfort and help you to be all that you can be, during or in spite of any unanswered prayers for healing?
