Lesson 6. Christ the Healer. F. F. Bosworth. A Classic in Divine Healing.
In his Epistle to the Galatians, the Apostle Paul tells us in detail how God works miracles. “Does He who supplies you with the Spirit (the Spirit is the Creator of miracles) and works miracles among you do this by the works of the law, or by hearing with faith? Thus Abraham believed God” (Galatians 3:5). Moffatt translates this passage as follows: “When He gives you the Spirit and works miracles among you, is it because you do what the law requires, or because you believe the message of the Gospel? It is the same as with Abraham: he had faith.”
Here God tells us that He works miracles in our bodies exactly as He does in our souls—that is, at the moment when we hear and believe the “message of the Gospel.” In fact, God does everything this way: He gives promises and then fulfills them wherever they produce faith. He says that everything will be the same for us as it was for Abraham. And what was it like for Abraham? Read carefully!
He simply believed the Word of God; he had faith that God would do everything exactly as He had promised.
He was “fully persuaded” by the Word of God alone.
He held firmly to the source of his confidence when his faith was tested.
He was completely focused on the Word of God.
He did not give up his confidence when God, commanding him to offer Isaac as a sacrifice, seemed to deprive him of any visible encouragement for his faith.
He did not dwell on his own body or on the fact that he was nearly one hundred years old, nor on “the deadness of Sarah’s womb”; he did not allow any other reason to shake his confidence that Isaac would be born (Romans 4:19). Abraham did not accept any of these natural reasons that made Isaac’s birth impossible as the slightest cause for doubt. He knew his age, he was aware of Sarah’s barrenness, he considered all the difficulties, and yet he believed God.
“In completely hopeless circumstances,” looking to God’s promise, he did not “waver in faith,” being “fully convinced” that God would fulfill His promise. Note: it was precisely by “looking to God’s promise” that Abraham did not waver in faith. Everyone who looks to Him (God’s remedy and God’s promise)—and this was also the condition God required for the healing of the Israelites dying from snake bites (Num. 21:8)—will be healed. When you come to God for healing, make sure that this is your attitude, because healing was promised only on this condition.
If our faith is based on our achievements, or if we are influenced by the symptoms of our illness or by what we see and feel instead of being influenced solely by the Word of God, then our faith is not genuine. Being concerned about what we see and feel is completely contrary to the condition God has set for us. “Everyone who looks at Him will live” means that everyone who, like Abraham, is so occupied with God’s promise that they are no longer influenced by the symptoms of illness will be well. This means that the Word of God—not what we see and feel—will be the foundation of our faith. When we look to God’s promise, this is good reason to expect mercy from God and not stop looking until God takes back His word.
Note that it was by continuing to look to God’s promise that Abraham experienced a miracle. To be preoccupied with the symptoms of your illness and influenced by them instead of by the Word of God means questioning God’s truthfulness. Rather than calling God a liar while inside the fish, Jonah called the reasons and circumstances that, as he thought, prevented him from experiencing God’s mercy “lying vanities.” Realizing that the circumstances, not God, were false, he said: “Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the mercy that could be theirs.” God never withholds mercy, but many “forfeit” it by observing their symptoms, which are real but are “lying vanities” telling us that God is not “abundant in mercy to all who call upon Him.”
Abraham’s faith was not based on anything he saw; make sure that this is also true of you. Everything Abraham saw contradicted what he expected. After Isaac was born, Abraham had support for his faith that through Isaac “all the nations of the earth would be blessed.” Looking at Isaac—the means through which God was to fulfill the remainder of the promise—it was easy to believe. Then God tested his faith by requiring him to offer Isaac as a sacrifice, thereby destroying that means. But this did not frighten Abraham. Genuine faith flourishes through trials. Since he still had the Word of God, he was ready to remove every visible support for his expectations and nevertheless remain “fully convinced.” God stopped him; otherwise, he would have sacrificed Isaac. Through this test, God perfected his faith rather than destroying it.
If you come to God for healing and afterward He sees that an improvement in your condition inspires you more than His Word does, He may consider it necessary to test your faith in order to teach you this glorious lesson of believing His Word when all your feelings speak of the opposite. Faith has to do only with the Word of God.
In Hebrews 10:35–36, God says to all whose faith is founded on His Word: “Do not cast away your confidence, which has a great reward. You need perseverance so that, after doing the will of God, you may receive what was promised.” “For we have become partakers… if indeed we hold firmly to the life we began, steadfast to the end” (Heb. 3:14).
I have heard many people, quite contrary to this, say disappointedly after being anointed and prayed for, instead of rejoicing: “I thought I would definitely be healed.” At that moment, I understood that they had never known what faith was. In their understanding, they first had to receive something from God and then believe that God had heard their prayers. If the Word of God had been the only foundation for their expectations, they would have firmly held on to their initial confidence. It is wrong and unreasonable to cast away your confidence when the Word of God can become the firm foundation of your faith. We are promised that we will be partakers only on the condition that we “hold firmly to the beginning of our confidence to the end.” During the time between God’s promise and its fulfillment, instead of watching the circumstances and abandoning his confidence because he had no visible support, Abraham acted in precisely the opposite way. He “did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God” (Rom. 4:20). When Jonah, inside the fish, prayed for mercy, he did not abandon his confidence, although he had no visible evidence that his prayer had been heard. He remained firm in his confidence and added to it in advance “the sacrifice of thanksgiving.” After marching around the walls of Jericho, Joshua and the children of Israel did not abandon their confidence when they saw that the city walls were still intact. Their faith was founded on the Word of God: “I have given Jericho into your hand.” If none of these people abandoned their confidence, why should you?
The state of your mind should be the same as Noah’s when he built the ark on dry ground and sealed its cracks so that water could not enter it. In his mind, the question of the coming flood was completely settled, and the Word of God was the only foundation for his way of thinking. Your thoughts should be like Abraham’s. The question of Isaac’s birth was completely settled in his mind, although the circumstances indicated the opposite. The Word of God concerning your healing is just as clear and simple as it was for Abraham.
In the Gospel of Mark (11:24), Jesus mentions the conditions we must fulfill in order to receive any of the blessings He has promised. He says: “Whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them—and you will have them.” In other words, you will receive when you believe that He has heard your prayer. As Jesus said, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me,” when Lazarus was still dead, we should also say, “Thank You that You have heard me,” while you are still sick. “And you will have them”—this is Jesus’ answer, and it is also proof that your prayer has been heard. To faith, the Word of God is the voice of God. He did not promise that our healing would begin unless we believed that He had heard us. “If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.” If this is true, then believe that when you truly pray, your prayer is heard. We must be able to say, “We know what request we are waiting for Him to answer”—not because we see the answer, but because “God is faithful, and He will do it.”
It would be wrong to base your faith on improvements after prayer. I have heard some people say enthusiastically, “Oh, I feel much better after they prayed for me; now I know I will definitely be healed!” This means that instead of God’s promise, they have another basis for expecting healing. There is no better foundation for faith than the Word of God. Suppose that as soon as I prayed for someone, their condition improved by fifty percent. God’s promise is a much better foundation for faith than this improvement, even if they had felt fifty percent worse after prayer. Imagine that you promised your child something, and the next day you discovered that they were expecting exactly what you had promised, but not because you had promised it—they had found hope in some other source. Of course, this would upset you, because you would realize that they did not trust your word.
To believe God even when all our feelings contradict His promise is to honor Him, and He honors those who honor Him. God promised to answer only the faith that comes from Him and is founded on His Word, or promise. Some are ready to believe that God hears them as soon as they feel better. He did not say that He sent better feelings to produce faith in them and then heal them—He sent His Word and healed them. God Himself sent His Word; we did not draw it out of Him. Is it not absurd, then, to doubt the Word? Does it not seem more reasonable to expect God to keep His promise than to expect Him to break it? In fact, nothing could be more ridiculous and absurd than believing symptoms or feelings and doubting the fulfillment of God’s promises. Imagine that you promised your daughter a new dress, but afterward she sprained a ligament in her leg and, because her leg hurt, refused to believe that she would have a new dress. You say to her, “My dear girl, I promise to buy you a new dress. Do you believe me?” She replies, “But my leg still hurts and won’t stop hurting.” Such reasoning is absurd.
Learning to believe that God hears us when we pray is a far greater blessing than healing itself, because then the prayer of faith can be repeated thousands of times for ourselves and others, enabling us to spend our entire lives seeing divine promises fulfilled.
Thus, we have seen that Abraham experienced a genuine miracle; God says that the same will happen with us. We too can see God’s promises fulfilled—those of us who walk “in the footsteps of the faith of our father Abraham” (Rom. 4:12).
Author: F. F. Bosworth
