Lesson 13. Christ the Healer. F. F. Bosworth. A Classic on Divine Healing.
Twenty-Two Reasons for Failure to Receive Healing
If all Scripture so clearly affirms that our Heavenly Father desires our healing, why then do some who seek healing today fail to receive it? This question arises in the minds of many sincere seekers. There are several answers to this question, which we will briefly mention. Through these answers, many who had failed to receive healing were able to identify the reasons for their failures and were afterward gloriously healed.
1. Lack of Teaching—Ignorance of the Gospel’s Healing Power
Paul tells us that “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” Many asked Christ for healing before they had heard or learned enough of the Word for it to build firm faith in them. The members of the early Church were united in proclaiming the full Gospel. They did not withhold anything that could be beneficial. They proclaimed the entire Word of God.
We have seen that God produces faith for healing in exactly the same way as faith for salvation or any other blessing. This means that a person in need must first learn God’s will in this matter. It is impossible to stretch out the hand of faith and take from God what the eyes of faith do not yet see. Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” The truth of the Word of God sets us free—the truth that is known, understood, accepted, acted upon, upheld, and firmly believed with overcoming faith.
Paul tells us that the Word of God “effectively works in you who believe.” The Word of God is “precious seed,” “incorruptible seed,” seed that has power and always accomplishes its work when it is known, received, and kept in good soil.
Some do not receive healing because they expect to reap a harvest from the seed—the Word concerning healing—without knowing what that Word is, without giving it its proper place, and without planting it in good soil, without which it cannot grow. The seed can work in us only when we know it and receive it.
Before God said, “I am the Lord who heals you,” and promised to take away all our diseases, He warned, “If you will diligently listen and obey.” This means being diligent to learn, understand, and apply what God says in His Word about healing. We must know what God offers us before expecting it from Him. Knowledge of God’s will must precede faith that it will be fulfilled. Many people today do not know that their healing is God’s will, fully revealed in His written Word, the Bible. Knowing this is the only evidence of receiving faith.
If those seeking healing cannot say during a trial, “It is written,” and quote to the adversary a promise that expresses God’s will in this matter, their faith cannot remain steadfast. Many sufferers who prayed for healing for years without success because they used the faith-destroying phrase “If it is Your will” in their prayers were later healed through the truth of the Word of God contained and explained in this book.
The members of the early Church agreed not only in their teaching on this subject, but also lifted their voices to God in prayer for “signs and wonders” before the sick were even brought into the streets of Jerusalem. This was not the faith of one evangelist, but the faith of an entire group of believers, which brought healing to “all” in the streets of Jerusalem after Christ’s Ascension (Acts 5:14–16).
Most ministers and members of the modern church, whether through ignorance or because of established traditions concerning the healing ministry, have not agreed with the way it was taught, preached, and practiced in the early Church.
Instead of praying in agreement for healing results, as the early Church did, the modern church does not accept our Lord’s attitude toward sickness as it is shown in the Gospels. Today, disagreement often takes the place of united prayer; unbelief takes the place of united faith; comfort takes the place of being filled with the Spirit. I will ask you a question: “Isn’t the unbelieving part of the church itself to blame for some people not receiving healing, if we are all members of one body?” I think you will answer, “Yes.”
Imagine if everyone thought that the days of spiritual revival had already passed, as people commonly say today: “The days of miracles are over.” This would become an insurmountable obstacle to the ministry of this part of the Gospel! Christian workers would not succeed in their work of saving souls; they would have to persuade church members to abandon a false tradition and put the Word of God in its place. However, if we had been taught from childhood that healing is just as much a part of the Gospel as all its other parts, I am sure that very few would have difficulty exercising faith for healing.
It is the Word of God that produces faith for healing. We rejoiced to see hundreds healed as they listened to the truth on this subject; others were healed by reading recommendations that answered their questions and removed obstacles to their faith.
2. The second reason why some do not receive healing—the lack of unity within the church itself
Christ planned to carry out the healing ministry in His absence through the entire Church, His Body, not through one member of that Body. He said, “These signs will accompany THEM”—the Church, not HIM—an individual person. It was not the faith of one evangelist, but the faith of the Spirit-filled Church as a whole, that brought healing to all the sick in the streets of Jerusalem after Christ departed and sent His successor, the Holy Spirit.
Some do not like public healing services, yet when everything happened as God intended, He healed many people at the same time in the streets. He wanted His compassion to become known to the world and serve as the foundation of their faith. God wants His works to continue, and to continue through the entire Church, when every member is filled and remains filled with the Spirit.
The greatest conversions occurred when there was an outpouring of the Spirit and when the Church was in agreement; that is why all these people were healed in the streets of Jerusalem.
God works with people both by saving and healing them through the outpouring of His Spirit and through a Spirit-filled, united, praying Church. His method is revealed in the promise, “I will pour out My Spirit,” and in the statement, “They were all filled with the Spirit.” A Spirit-filled, praying church creates an atmosphere in which it is easy for God to work and difficult for the devil to interfere, because this atmosphere is the Holy Spirit Himself, who is stronger than the devil.
In the days of Finney and other great revivals, sinners came under conviction as soon as they stepped off the train in the area where revival was taking place. Finney tells of such unity in prayer that every adult living along a three-mile street was saved except one. The Christians prayed together for him, and he was saved too.
It is also true that individuals are saved and healed even when there are no large revival meetings, but usually God wants all His people to pray for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. We read: “They continued with one accord in prayer and supplication.” And how rarely we do this!
Today's theology forces many people to turn to past blessings without the daily renewal of the fullness they had at the beginning, when they were filled with the Holy Spirit. If the Church today is not filled with the Spirit and does not remain filled, it is impossible to create an atmosphere in which God will encounter no obstacles or limitations. In an atmosphere of a Spirit-filled Church praying in unity for the work of Christ, God is present to heal, just as He was at the beginning. God wants the Church to be filled and remain filled with the same Holy Spirit who saved and healed multitudes in New Testament times.
The results of God’s promises being fulfilled are the same in every age. If you want to know how the Holy Spirit works today, simply read how He worked when He had full authority over the Church. The Book of Acts is the blueprint according to which the Holy Spirit desires to work in the present age. Just as the early Christians in Acts (see chapter 4) were filled with the Holy Spirit and all prayed effectively for “signs and wonders” of healing, so in the Epistle of James (see chapter 5) all Christians are commanded to pray for the healing of the sick and to do so as earnestly as Elijah prayed for rain. When this took place in the early Church, the elders’ prayer of faith was nothing more than the voicing of the prayer of the whole church.
John says: “We have confidence in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.” This was demonstrated by a group of Christians in chapter 4 of the Book of Acts. Every Christian today should be filled with the Holy Spirit, pray for the outpouring of the Spirit, and prevail in prayer for the healing of the sick. Every priest should exercise his priesthood, but many do not do so today; the atmosphere of our meetings becomes polluted, and it becomes harder for the sick to have faith that the Holy Spirit will begin to work in them.
The fact that Christians do not live and walk in the Spirit limits the Holy One of Israel, because the condition for His perfect work is that a person be filled with the Spirit. Instead of a supportive environment, a poor, sick woman is often surrounded by opposition from her own family and frequently even from her pastor and members of her own church; she fails to receive healing because she is too weak in mind and body to fight this battle alone. The very Christians who oppose her should be the people praying in faith for her healing. We must all “bear one another’s burdens” and thus fulfill the law of Christ.
Usually today, it is precisely those who violate the conditions observed by the early Church who ask why some people do not receive healing. The answer is this: because these very doubters prevent the Church from reaching unity in prayer and faith for the healing of the sick. The Church has strayed from God's program.
A remarkable document signed by twenty bishops of the Episcopal Church of the Commonwealth of Australia contains a report of miracles of healing manifested in these churches in various Australian cities. The report says: “Not only individual faith is necessary, but also united faith—the faith of households, ministries, and the whole Church. The Body, not an individual member, must cooperate with the Head, Christ, when there is a need for the healing of the sick. The wave of intercession was highest and spread farthest among the congregation… The world today is waiting for a fresh revelation of the presence and power of God in the work of the Church and in the lives of its members. The world has already seen and experienced the miracle of divine healing.”
Today, through their ignorance, most church members oppose what the early Church prayed for. They have not accepted our Lord's attitude toward sickness and have not fulfilled the conditions necessary for the healing of the sick as God desires; and these very people point to the failures of others, in which they themselves bear a considerable share of responsibility.
Today it is common for people who should be doing the works of Christ to urge the sick to stay away from places where the works of Christ are being done. Would it not be better to warn people not to go where confirmation, baptism, church membership, or reformation have taken the place of the new birth?
3. The third reason why some fail to receive healing from Christ is the unbelief of society
Although Jesus performed signs and wonders and healed all the sick in other places, when He came to Nazareth, where He had grown up, He could perform no miracles because of the unbelief of its residents (Mark 6:5–6). Think about it! Christ Himself, being fully anointed by the Holy Spirit, encountered the obstacle of society's unbelief. If this is true, then it is not surprising that some people today in various cities cannot receive their healing. If God did not allow the gift of working miracles to operate through Christ where people made God out to be a liar because of their unbelief, would He allow it today? Paul, surrounded by Gentiles, had greater success in working miracles than Jesus did in His hometown (Acts 14).
Traditions concerning healing, which modern people have been taught to believe instead of the simple Word of God, have turned the whole world into a veritable Nazareth of unbelief. I mean that society's unbelief has become almost universal today. Those who preach the full Gospel and pray for the sick have to labor in a Nazareth of unbelief. We can achieve results only to the extent that we can rid ourselves of the “traditions of the elders” concerning healing by teaching people what Scripture actually says about healing. In doing so, I boldly declare that Jesus Christ—not we—had greater success in working miracles in all the cities where our revival campaigns were held than He did in His hometown of Nazareth. Do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that we were successful. I am speaking of the work Christ accomplished wherever and whenever people were enlightened through our ministry to know their privilege concerning healing.
Does the fact that Christ could not perform miracles in Nazareth prove anything other than the unbelief of the people there? Some teach that He healed the sick simply by passing by, without their faith being involved; if that is so, why did Jesus not go and heal the sick in Nazareth? The Bible answers: “Because of their unbelief.”
If it is right to explain the failure of some to receive healing by questioning Christ’s willingness to heal all the sick, then why do we not question His willingness to save all sinners to explain the fact that there are so many unsaved people in churches?
In the case described in Scripture, only one woman in the entire crowd touched Jesus with faith for healing. Many acted in the same way later. This is a matter of enlightenment and faith.
When the nine disciples failed to heal the boy with epilepsy mentioned in the Gospel, some theologian of those days, if he had been like many modern theologians, might have seized on this failure and said: “You see, now we have proof that it is not always God’s will to heal!” But the father wanted the boy to be healed, the boy himself wanted to be healed, and the disciples who had been sent by God to cast out demons and heal the sick also wanted him to be healed; nevertheless, under certain circumstances, some would say today: “It was not God’s will for him to be healed.” They build a theology out of failures. But Jesus came down from the mountain and healed the boy, proving that God’s will is to heal, even when His authorized representatives have failed. Why not build a theology out of this?
When the boy’s father said to Jesus, “If You can do anything,” Jesus refused to take responsibility for the failure. He replied, “If you can believe.” Then the father cried out, “I believe, Lord; help my unbelief!” and, of course, after that he received the help he had asked for and succeeded where the apostles themselves had failed, because Christ delivered the boy.
Considering the fact that in the healing ministry we are forced to work in the face of almost universal unbelief, while those who preach only the part of the Gospel concerning the salvation of the soul work amid universal agreement with this doctrine, I think that God provides evidence of divine healing just as clearly and convincingly as He provides evidence of spiritual rebirth in response to teaching that produces far less faith. When I reflect on the lack of teaching about healing, the unspiritual condition of churches, and their generally accepted attitude toward this forgotten part of the Gospel, instead of wondering why some do not receive healing, I marvel at the success God grants to those who pray for the sick. I have seen many deaf-mute people healed, even though no one in the hall expected healing.
Are not the thousands who testify that they have been healed by God in as good physical health as the average Christian in a church is spiritually? Can the physical health of those who testify to divine healing not be compared, to the advantage of the former, with the spiritual health of those who do not accept the Gospel of healing? Is the average Christian a better proof of the doctrine of spiritual rebirth than someone testifying to divine healing is proof of the doctrine of healing? It should be so, because they hear this part of the Word of God throughout their lives, whereas most of those for whom people prayed and who were healed hear the simple teaching of the Word of God about healing for only a few days. Today there are many people who were deaf-mute from birth and were healed, and they hear physically better than the average church member hears spiritually. I have seen many people who could not take a single step until someone prayed for them, and now they walk physically better than the average Christian walks spiritually, although the average Christian hears about the healing of the soul all their life, whereas those who were healed heard the teaching of the Word of God about the healing of the body only a few times.
Has everyone who was baptized been cleansed from sin? No, only those who have faith; just as water is the rite of Christian baptism, oil is the rite of anointing the sick for healing.
If someone said to me, “So-and-so was anointed but was not healed,” I would answer, “So-and-so was baptized but was not saved—he was not healed from the disease of sin.” If that person said again, “I know someone whom you anointed, but his body was not healed,” I would answer, “I know someone whom you baptized, but whose soul was not healed.” Thousands who have been baptized have never experienced spiritual rebirth, and ultimately this is worse than a Christian failing to receive healing for his body.
Some say, “If so-and-so were healed, I would believe in divine healing.” Why not be consistent and say, “If so-and-so were saved, then I would believe in salvation”? This is the same as saying, “I believe the experience of so-and-so more than I believe God, the Bible, and the experience of thousands who have been saved and healed.” Why not say to God, “I will believe if You heal one more person,” after He has healed thousands?
Would you reject the doctrine of sanctification simply because some church members are not sanctified, even though thousands of others have been sanctified? I heard a minister comment on the work of an evangelist: “So-and-so was anointed and prayed for, but he died without being healed.” Yet this same minister baptized that person and brought him into the Church, thereby proclaiming to the world that his soul had been healed from the disease of sin; but the man died without being born again, and his soul was lost. Ultimately, this is worse than when a sick Christian does not receive healing, dies, but rises in glory.
If the testimonies of those of us who have been healed are not taken into account when, after careful examination by a medical expert, no physical well-being is found, then, to be consistent, why not appoint a spiritual expert with spiritual discernment—like that possessed by the apostle Paul—to examine those members of the modern Church who do not accept the Gospel of healing, and reject the testimonies of those who do not spiritually measure up to what a healthy soul should be according to biblical standards?
Although I have witnessed the miraculous healing of many thousands and am convinced that the evidence of healing is just as clear and convincing as the evidence of spiritual rebirth, nevertheless, I base no doctrine on these answers to prayer. I will preach the full Gospel all my life, even if I never see another person saved or healed. I have decided to base my teachings on the unchanging Word of God, not on manifestations.
No minister can achieve results until, through preaching the Word of God, he produces faith in what the Word offers. Sixty thousand churches in the United States reported not a single convert for an entire year, but I am not going to offer this fact as a reason to fight the doctrine of spiritual rebirth or any other part of the Gospel.
Some say, “We believe in healing, but we do not believe it should be put on display.” I have noticed that those who cannot rejoice with everyone who has received healing from Christ are quick to publicize failure, while saying nothing about success. To me, this is a mystery: how can a Christian not rejoice when a poor, sick person is healed by Christ? I do not merely rejoice when someone who is suffering receives healing from Christ; I am glad to show the world God’s mercy. “Let His deeds be known to people” is God’s command. Jesus commanded the demon-possessed man from whom He had cast out the devil to go to his hometown and tell everyone about the great mercy God had shown him, and Scripture tells us that he proclaimed throughout the Decapolis the mercy of Christ. In the next chapter, we see many people receive healing from Christ and glorify the God of Israel.
4. Human traditions hinder divine healing and even deprive the healing part of the Gospel of its power
Jesus said to the Jewish teachers of His day, “By your traditions you have made the law powerless.” Today, many preachers do even worse, because by their traditions they make the Gospel powerless.
(1) One tradition claims that God is the author of sickness and that He desires sickness for some of His followers. To me, it is a mystery how anyone can hold such a view in the face of Scripture and the ministry of Christ, who spent three years healing all who were oppressed by the devil—or at least all who came to Him for healing.
If sickness is God’s will for His followers, then every doctor is a lawbreaker, every trained nurse rejects the Almighty, and every hospital is a house of rebellion rather than a house of mercy. If God wants someone to be sick, then that person’s simple desire to get well is a sin, because we must love God’s will, whatever it may be.
(2) Another tradition, responsible for many people dying prematurely after years of physical suffering, teaches that we can glorify God more by remaining sick and demonstrating patience than by being healed by God. An honest but unenlightened minister will kneel beside the bed of someone suffering from arthritis, cancer, or another dangerous disease and pray: “Lord, since in Your loving providence You have seen fit to lay this suffering burden upon our dear sister, give her the strength and patience to bear it.” He does this instead of obeying the command to “anoint the sick” and praying the prayer of faith for their healing (James 5:14)—that is, applying the method which, according to John Wesley, was the only healing method in the Church until it was lost through unbelief.
If it is true that a person can glorify God more by remaining sick than by being healed, then Jesus never missed an opportunity to rob the Father of glory by healing everyone who came to Him for help throughout His earthly ministry. And His successor, the Holy Spirit, who was sent to continue what Christ began to do and teach, likewise used every opportunity to rob the Father of glory by healing everyone in the streets of Jerusalem (Acts 5:15–16). And Paul never missed an opportunity to rob the Father of glory by healing all the sick on the island of Malta.
(3) The most widespread and hackneyed tradition on this subject consists of the worn-out assertion that “the age of miracles is past.” Of all modern traditions, this is the most foolish, illogical, and unsupported by Scripture. The Holy Spirit, in whose age we now live, is God’s only Miracle Worker and the only Keeper of God’s will—the One who healed the crowds who came to Christ in the days when He lived on earth in the flesh. Every miracle that ever took place before the Day of Pentecost was performed by the Spirit, the Miracle Worker, before He officially entered into His ministry.
The time in which we live was intended by the Father to be the most miraculous of all, because it is the age of the Miracle Worker, the Holy Spirit. In this time, God gives the great promise of pouring out the Holy Spirit, the Miracle Worker, on all flesh. This is the only time when the Miracle Worker manifests Himself; it is the only time when the gifts of the Spirit—including the gifts of faith, healing, and miracles—are distributed to all people as He, the Holy Spirit, wills. Jesus declared that the works He did would continue, and that even “greater works” would be performed by the Holy Spirit, the Miracle Worker, after He entered into His ministry following Christ’s ascension—that is, in the age of the Spirit.
How absurd and laughable it is when an educated Bible teacher calls the age of the Miracle Worker the only age in which miracles cannot occur! How absurd it is when such a teacher says that the Holy Spirit will perform miracles at any other time, but not in His own! An age with a “better” covenant, a “better” High Priest, and “better” promises—an age when everything should be “better” than in the previous age.
From what some people say, one might think that we do not actually live in the era of the Holy Spirit. There is only one era of the Spirit, and it includes the time between the first and second comings of the Lord. It is true that we live in the Laodicean, or lukewarm, period of the era of the Spirit. The Church’s first period was a period of being filled with the Spirit, while we live in the lukewarm period of that same era. But even if I were left alone (thank God, there are many like me), I would rather base my preaching and life on the preaching and life of the Church during the period of being filled with the Spirit than on the preaching and life of the Church during the lukewarm period. I would rather labor to raise the true Church to the biblical standards of the first century than try to adjust the Bible to the standards of the lukewarm twentieth-century church. In previous chapters we saw that God performed miracles in every century from the time Scripture was completed to the present day, and this hackneyed tradition is completely refuted by historical facts.
(4) Another tradition asserts that it is not God’s will to heal everyone. If God’s will is to heal only some, then none of us has any basis for faith until we receive a special revelation that we are among the favorites. If God’s promise to heal is not for everyone, then no one can determine God’s will for themselves from the Bible. Should we understand such teachers to mean that we must close our Bibles and receive revelation directly from the Spirit before praying for the sick, because in this case God’s will cannot be determined from Scripture? In essence, this is the same as teaching that all of God’s activity concerning healing is governed by direct revelations of the Spirit rather than by Scripture.
(5) Some people are hindered from receiving healing because they have been taught to add a faith-destroying phrase to their prayer for healing: “If it is Your will.” In the New Testament, there is only one example of a person asking for healing in this way. This is the case of the leper who said, “If You are willing, You can make me clean.” This man could not pray otherwise because he did not yet know God’s will on this matter. Jesus did not heal this leper until He added to his faith not only that He could heal, but also that He wanted to heal. Jesus’ word “I am willing” canceled the “if” spoken by the leper. No one can pray in faith until the “if” is removed from their prayer. To have genuine faith means to be “fully convinced” that God will do what He promised, and a person cannot be “fully convinced” if they add the words “If it is Your will” to their prayer. Since God has revealed His will on this matter in His promises, saying “If it is Your will” is the same as saying, “If it is Your will to keep Your promise.”
(6) Another teaching that has no roots in Scripture, sending many sufferers to an early grave and preventing many others from receiving healing, is the modern teaching that Paul’s thorn in the flesh was a physical illness. The falseness of this position is shown in the following sermon about Paul and his “thorn in the flesh.”
The expression “thorn in the flesh” is used nowhere in either the Old or New Testament except as an illustration. The expression “thorn in the flesh” is never used in the Bible to describe an illness. Every time this phrase is used in the Bible, it clearly defines what this “thorn in the flesh” is. For example, in Numbers (33:55), Moses said to the children of Israel before they entered the land of Canaan: “But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land, those whom you allow to remain will become as barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they will harass you in the land where you will live.”
Here Scripture itself tells us in plain language that the “barbs in the eyes” and “thorns in the sides” of the Israelites were the remaining Canaanites, not an eye problem or an illness. God simply uses an illustration to show that just as a thorn stuck in one’s side causes discomfort, so the Canaanites, if allowed to remain in the land, would continually trouble the children of Israel. And in all the other places in the Bible where this expression is used, people are called “thorns.”
Just as every other example in the Bible clearly identifies what the “thorn” was, so in this case Paul indicates what his “thorn” was. He says that it was a “messenger of Satan,” or, as others translate it, an “angel of the devil,” an “angel of Satan,” and so on.
The Greek word “angel” appears in the Bible one hundred eighty-eight times. It is translated as “angel” in one hundred eighty-one cases and as “messenger” in the remaining seven. In none of the one hundred eighty-eight cases where this word is used in the Bible does it mean a thing or phenomenon; it always refers to a person. Hell was created for the devil and “his angels,” and an angel, or messenger, is always a person sent by one person to another—never does this term refer to an illness.
Paul not only tells us that his thorn was an angel, or messenger, of Satan, but he also tells us why it came.
Speaking about this messenger, or angel, Rotherham uses the pronoun “he” in his translation. Here is Weymouth’s translation: “Three times I asked the Lord to deliver me from him.” This pronoun, just like the words “angel” or “messenger,” proves that Paul’s thorn, as he himself explains it, was a person—Satan—not an illness. Paul could not have used the personal pronoun “he” when speaking of an illness, because an illness has no personhood. Paul lists almost every problem one could think of in this regard, but illness is not on the list.
Jesus healed every person who came to Him for healing, and by doing so He showed us the unchanging will of God, but He did not promise to remove affliction or persecution from us.
Those of you who have listened to our programs know that Paul was the teacher who taught more than anyone else in the Bible about divine healing.
(7) Another tradition that hindered the healing ministry is the teaching that Jesus healed the sick as the Son of God, rather than as the Son of Man. Such teachers believe that we are not Christ and cannot do such works today. Scripture teaches us that Jesus, the Son of God, laid aside His divine glory and became like His brothers in everything except sin. He called Himself the Son of Man approximately eighty times, and it was as the Son of Man that He said, “I can do nothing of Myself.” This was not true before He became the Son of Man, because all things were created through Him and for Him. We have already seen that Jesus performed His works by relying on the Spirit, and what He began to do and teach before the day of His Ascension, He Himself promised in the Gospel of John (14:12) to continue and multiply in response to the Church’s prayers when He would be in glory. These very words are taken from the book of Acts (1:1): “What Jesus began both to do and teach,” and they prove that the Lord “began” what the Holy Spirit was to continue by working through the Church.
5. I think many do not receive healing because they violate natural laws
Do not forget that natural laws are God’s laws, and they are just as divine as His miracles. Nature is God in action, only without miracles. Not knowing the natural laws, some fail to provide their bodies with the necessary nourishment or overeat and ask God to deliver them from stomach problems, thereby hindering answers to their prayers. After revealing Himself as Jehovah-Rapha, our Healer, God set conditions requiring His people to follow the laws of health. There are times when sick people who know nothing about diet and other simple requirements need the advice of someone knowledgeable in these matters.
6. Some are not healed because of the unbelief of the elder or minister praying for them
Christ’s disciples were unable to heal a boy with epilepsy, even though they had been sent by God to heal and cast out demons. When Jesus came down from the mountain, He healed the boy and rebuked the disciples for their unbelief.
7. Some are not healed because their illness is the work of an evil spirit that must be cast out
Jesus did not heal the disease of epilepsy but cast out the spirit of epilepsy. He also cast out deaf, mute, and blind spirits. He said of believers: “In My name they will cast out demons.” Many times we have seen people healed instantly when we bound an evil spirit, simply acting in the name of Christ as representatives of His authority.
8. Some do not receive healing because they keep iniquity in their hearts
Such people must learn to say with David: “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.” God did not promise to destroy the works of the devil in our bodies while we cling to his works in our souls. Unconfessed sin prevents people from receiving mercy from God. His Word tells us: “He who conceals his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them will find mercy.”
9. In the present Laodicean period of the Church, a “lukewarm” condition is one of the greatest obstacles to healing.
After Christ was taken up in glory, He sent a message to the angel of the church in Laodicea: “I wish you were cold or hot! But because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of My mouth.”
The very best thing for us is to be red-hot for God or to be cold, but it is mortally dangerous to be lukewarm, because then the Lord will vomit us out.
Remaining lukewarm is a worse disease than cancer, but first God wants to bring us out of this condition.
He promised to heal our backsliding and fill us with His love. God speaks of a person whose heart is “hot” with love for Him: “Because he has loved Me, therefore I will deliver him.” Serving God with a joyful heart was a condition for healing in the days of the Old Testament. Surely, the standard should not be lowered in these days of grace!
10. People’s diseases and infirmities serve as a “leash” by which God brings them into the center of His will, and once this is accomplished, He destroys the “leash”.
If God removed this “leash” too quickly, many would stray and lose their lives according to the divine plan. It is impossible to pray the prayer of faith to remove the “leash” from those who do not wish to be led into the center of God’s glorious will.
11. A spirit of unforgiveness or a desire for revenge prevents some people from receiving healing from the Lord.
Jesus said, “If you do not forgive people their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive you.”
The first thing we need, and the first thing God wants to give us, is forgiveness of sins, but God cannot forgive us when we do not forgive others. And if He cannot forgive us, then of course He cannot heal us. Many times we have seen sick people healed “in the blink of an eye” as soon as they were ready to forgive those who had harmed them.
12. People’s uncorrected wrongs hinder their faith from receiving healing.
Those who have treated their neighbors badly in any way should ask for forgiveness. We have seen many such people healed of the most severe diseases as soon as they fulfilled this condition.
13. Some people lack purpose and perseverance, and miss God’s opening for healing
God rewards those who diligently seek Him. We have known sufferers who underwent surgery ten or even more times, without any positive promise of being healed. Nevertheless, when coming to God for the healing He has promised, many do not show even the diligence demonstrated by those who seek help from people.
14. Because of incorrect teaching, many fail to receive healing because they try to limit God’s work to miracles
If some people do not become strong and healthy instantly, they lose their former confidence. God has established a distinction between a miracle and healing. If every sick person became strong and healthy in an instant, there would be no healing, because all of it would be miracles. When listing the spiritual gifts, Paul includes both healing and miracles. Christ could not perform miracles in Nazareth because of the people’s unbelief, yet He still healed several people there. People confuse healing with miracles, and this is a very common obstacle to healing today, when clear teaching on this subject is virtually absent.
15. Some people waver in faith while watching their symptoms
Instead, like Abraham, they should grow strong in faith by looking to God’s promises. These people make their feelings, rather than the Word of God, which He established as the sole foundation, the basis of their faith.
16. Others do not receive healing because they do not act in faith
“Faith without works is dead.” God’s turn to “make a move” will not come until we have faith accompanied by corresponding actions. A literal translation of the command, “Have faith in God” (Mark 11:22), reads: “Rely on God’s faithfulness.”
To exercise faith means to think by faith, speak by faith, and act by faith. Jesus said to the blind man, “Go, wash in the Pool of Siloam.” This action gave the man an opportunity to exercise his faith in his heart, mind, and body. He was not healed until he visibly expressed his faith. He believed that healing belonged to him before it was manifested.
The same was true of Naaman, the leper, and the ten lepers whom Jesus told, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” It is written: “As they went, they were cleansed.” A visible expression of faith, involving their heart, mind, and body, was required of them before their healing was manifested. Some put healing first, reversing the divine order.
17. Forgetting their hope in times of testing, some also forget that their faith, like Abraham’s faith, should become more perfect rather than be destroyed
We become partakers of divine healing on the condition that we hold firmly to the confession of our hope to the end (Hebrews 10:35). If the Word of God is the foundation of our faith, we must never abandon confidence in it.
18. Some do not receive healing because they neglect receiving the Holy Spirit, who was sent to us to bring the blessing of redemption.
In Romans 8:11, Paul says that our mortal (not physically, but legally) bodies are made alive by the Spirit who dwells in us. Since our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit brings healing, we can say that He is the carpenter who repairs the house. Some deliberately keep the carpenter outside while asking Him to repair the house from within. Paul first said, “The body is for the Lord,” and then, “The Lord is for the body.” We must present our bodies as a living sacrifice (Rom. 12:1) and allow them to become the temple of the Holy Spirit if we want them to be healed. This reason for failure usually does not apply to those who do not know about the privilege of being filled with the Spirit.
19. Some are not healed because they replace faith in their personal healing with faith in the doctrines of divine healing.
20. Some are not healed because they cannot accept God’s written promise as His direct word to them.
They cannot accept by faith that the Word of God is the voice of God. In Psalm 138:2, we read: “You have magnified Your word above all Your name.”
21. Some will not believe that their prayer for healing has been heard until they feel and see the answer.
Christ did not promise us that healing would begin before we believed that He had heard our prayers. Some think they should continue praying without believing that their prayer has been heard until they become well. This is the exact opposite of what God requires of us.
In Mark 11:24, Jesus clearly defines the conditions He requires us to fulfill in order to receive the blessings He promised. He says: “Whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.” That is, “you will have them” after you believe that He has heard your prayer. Just as Jesus said, “I thank You that You have heard Me,” while Lazarus was still dead, so we should say, “I thank You that You have heard me,” although we are still sick. “You will have them” is Jesus’ answer to you, as well as proof that your prayer has been heard.
As we have already noted, the Word of God is the voice of God. God did not promise us that healing would begin before we believed that He had heard our prayer. “If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.” If this is true, then we must believe that our prayer has been heard when we have truly prayed. We must say: “We know that we receive what we ask from Him, not because we see the answer, but because God is faithful and will fulfill it.”
Abraham did not continue praying for the birth of a child until Isaac was born. Instead, he continued to believe and praise God for His Word, in which God had promised him descendants.
We have read more than once that the blessing came precisely when Solomon finished praying.
At Lazarus’s tomb, Jesus “finished praying” and said, “I thank You that You have heard Me,” before Lazarus came out of the tomb.
Jehoshaphat and the children of Israel “finished praying” and praised God “with a loud voice” for answering their prayer before they went into battle against three armies. Their faith was “the assurance of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1).
The one hundred and twenty gathered on the day of Pentecost “finished praying” and continually praised and blessed God together when the Spirit was poured out upon them.
It is at the end of the prayer that a person is anointed for healing, and if the one who was anointed truly has faith, we will hear nothing from them but thanksgiving until they are healed.
A little girl pesters her mother, asking her for a new dress, until her mother says, “I will buy it for you.” Then the child stops pestering her, although the dress is not yet there. Instead of continuing to say, “Buy me a dress,” she already says, “Great!”
Perhaps I should say here that after such a commitment, a person should not sit with folded hands. A person's trust must remain active, like the trust of the children of Israel when they marched around the walls of Jericho and blew their trumpets; or like Jehoshaphat and his people, who, after finishing praying, went into battle praising God.
The healing of the ten lepers took place when their trust was manifested in their active obedience. God also said to the perishing Israelites, “Everyone who looks at it will live.” The word “looks” is used in the continuous tense. It is not a fleeting glance, but a sustained gaze.
Moses endured everything by continually looking at the Invisible One.
It was steadfast faith that brought Abraham the fulfillment of God's promises. Abraham was steadfast in faith, continually looking to God's promise.
If we allow our trust to become passive, it will grow weaker; if it remains active, it will become stronger and stronger.
22. Some people hinder God by basing their faith on an improvement in their condition after prayer rather than on His promise
They do not realize that there is no other reason to believe as good as the Word of God, and that God wants to train every Christian to believe Him when everything they see, except His promise, contradicts it. Amen and amen!
Author: F. F. Bosworth
