When God Does Not Heal
Introduction: Several years ago, a middle-aged woman stood up in a church service and gave her testimony as to how she had been afflicted with back pain during the preceding week. It interfered with her work and her sleep and made her life generally miserable. She made the problem a matter of prayer and the pain disappeared. The Lord had wonderfully healed her.
In the same congregation another woman, a little younger, had been troubled for years with her back. As she stood to sing, an obvious curvature of the spine could be observed. She too had prayed much for healing, but no cure came. As a Christian she was cheerful, she was never heard to grumble about the pain, and she refused to limit her activities.
These two women were personal acquaintances of Dr. C. Gordon Scorer, an English doctor who has examined the biblical teaching on healing. He asks the following questions: “Would it be right to say that God honored the first woman while ignoring the second? Can the one take credit for her faith and the other bemoan the lack of hers? Is the one a better Christian than the other?” I believe these questions are legitimate and we will seek to answer them this morning.
Last Sunday we looked at two miracles in Acts 9 and compared them to many “faith healing” ministries today. We stated that God can and does heal in our day, usually through natural means, but even occasionally through miraculous means. There are some in this room who have experienced miraculous healing. All of us need to be open to God’s working miracles of healing in our day, but we also need to be discerning, for there are many possible explanations for any alleged healing, as we saw last Sunday.
My goal today is to examine some of the reasons why God sometimes does not choose to heal. But first a word about the danger of overemphasizing physical healing.
Overemphasizing physical healing has certain inherent dangers.
It can alter the content of the Gospel. There are many today who are preaching the Gospel of the healing of the whole man—body, mind, and spirit—as though those three were of equal priority to the Church. I believe that’s a mistake, and those who look toward the “healing Church” may find themselves shortchanging the “redeeming cross.”
Once spiritual healing takes place, of course, there is often an enhanced basis for healing in other areas of life, like the emotional and psychological. Furthermore, a Christian lifestyle will generally be more conducive to good health. But we must never put physical healing on a par with spiritual healing, as though Jesus guaranteed healing through His cross in the same way He guaranteed us salvation. Let me quote one who has made this mistake (This is a quote from a faith healer you would all know):
“Sin and sickness come from the same source. They came into the world by Adam’s transgression …. Recognize that your disease is the devil’s oppression. God hates sickness as much as sin. He wants you to be whole and well. He wants to save and heal you. Healing is your right and inheritance once you are a committed Christian ….”
Let me focus on one sentence in that quote: “God wants to save and heal you.” I would say that’s where the problem lies, for it implies that saving and healing are of equal priority to God. I would put it this way: He always wants to save; He may not always will to heal someone, for reasons we shall see.
A second danger in overemphasizing physical healing is that …
It can divide the attention of the Church. A heavy emphasis on physical healing can cause a church or individual Christian searching for sensational experiences. It can shift the center of interest away from holiness through obedience to wholeness through health and prosperity.
Temperamentally introspective and eager souls are always on the lookout for a fresh manifestation of God’s presence with them. They hunger for visible and tangible signs and are in danger of making the same mistake which first-century Jews made—following Jesus because they ate the loaves and were filled.
This is certainly not to say that healing should be ignored by the church. I believe it should be sought and prayed for, and it should be publicly acknowledged with thanksgiving when God answers. But, generally speaking, where healing is strongly emphasized, the church is weak on doctrine and discipleship. The healing emphasis so often diverts the attention of the Church from those things that are most important.
A third danger is that …
It can create false guilt for those who aren’t healed. The stronger the emphasis upon physical healing, the greater the possibility of producing spiritual defeat in the lives of those whom God chooses not to heal. When the Church teaches that infirmity is never God’s will and that lack of faith is the only thing standing in the way of health, then those who don’t find healing are left with inevitable guilt, often illegitimately. But if healing has been sought and denied, then one needs to spend his energies elsewhere, just as Paul did in the case of his thorn in the flesh: “Most gladly,” he declared, “will I glory in my infirmity that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” (2 Cor. 12:9)
Now, having examined some of the dangers of overemphasizing physical healing, I want us to look at three different categories of reasons why a particular believer might not experience healing at a particular time.
Sometimes God does not heal because of obstacles in our lives.
In other words, sometimes lack of healing is our fault. I mention this possibility first, not necessarily because it’s the most frequent reason, but because this is where we must start in dealing with physical calamities in our lives. These are the areas for which we are personally responsible. Several possibilities fall under this category.
Perhaps there is unconfessed sin in our lives. Let’s take an obvious example. Let’s suppose someone has consumed alcohol to a sinful excess and has developed cirrhosis of the liver. Do you think God would heal that person while he continued in his sinful habit? I doubt it seriously. I wouldn’t necessarily expect that God would heal him even after he quit, especially if his drinking were a willful sin.
There are many Scriptural examples in which sickness is a judgment for sinful behavior. For example, in 1 Cor. 11 the Apostle Paul claimed that many of the Corinthians were sick because they had sinned by coming to the Lord’s Table in an unworthy manner. And in James 5:16 in that well-known passage on the healing prayers of the elders in the church it says, “Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.” In other words, in both passages unconfessed sin was apparently standing directly in the way of healing.
Certainly not all sickness is the direct result of personal sin, but some is, and that’s probably the first possibility we should explore when infirmity strikes.
We may not have prayed in faith for healing. There are times when healing has not come because it has not been prayed for or because the prayers were not offered in faith. Isn’t it amazing how often we can desire something sincerely and yet fail to ever ask God for it? James 4:2 says, “We do not have because we do not ask.” Now that’s not the only reason we do not have, but it is one reason. The old favorite hymn is true,
O what peace we often forfeit,
O what needless pain we bear.
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer.
But it’s not just the verbalization of a request which results in healing—it’s the faith behind that prayer. James 5:15 says, “It is the prayer offered in faith that will restore the one who is sick.” Heb. 11:6 adds, “Without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” If we’re going to ask God for healing, He doesn’t want us muttering under our breath, “But I doubt if He’s going to do it.”
Our motives in seeking healing might be wrong. James 4:3 says, “You ask and do not receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.” How might this apply to a prayer for healing?
Let’s suppose a person was in the habit of spending nearly every Lord’s Day playing golf to the extent that it kept him away from the Lord’s House regularly. Then suppose this person was in an auto accident and the prognosis for walking again was uncertain. Would it be legitimate for him to pray for healing, and would God answer that prayer in the affirmative? I’d say it depended largely upon what the motive was behind the request for healing. Does the man want to be healed so he can play golf and continue to ignore God’s claim on his life? Or does he want to be healed with the intention of serving God and living in obedience to Him. I think the motive would make a big difference in the result.
A good question to ask whenever we are inclined to go to God and ask for healing is, “What is my motive in seeking relief from my disability? Have I learned the lessons God is trying to teach me? Will I keep the promises so brashly made on my hospital bed?”
So far we have looked at reasons or obstacles in our lives which prevent God’s healing. But now I want us to see that …
Sometimes God does not heal because of what He wants to accomplish in our lives.
The premise behind this section is that calamity is not always a sign of judgment. Sometimes it is a sign of ownership. By that I mean sickness and infirmity is sometimes God’s way of showing His Fatherly love. The reasons here are the same reasons why we as human parents discipline our children.
Sickness and infirmity can warn about the consequences of sin. When I discipline my young son for going into the street by himself, it’s because I want to reinforce the dangerous consequences of going into the street. The discipline is unpleasant but not nearly as serious as the alternative of being hit by a car. When you have a natural gas leak in your home, the smell is strong and very unpleasant. Did you know that natural gas doesn’t smell at all—it’s odorless. But the gas company puts the rotten egg smell into it so that when it’s leaking, we’ll notice it. God also attaches foul smells to certain actions to warn us that they can be fatal. And one of the smells He uses is physical malady.
To the sin of sexual immorality is attached the physical consequence of venereal disease. To the sin of drunkenness is attached the physical consequence of liver damage, loss of control, arterial damage, etc. To the habit of worry are attached such physical consequences as ulcers, colitis, psoriasis, etc. To the habit of anger are attached such physical consequences as high blood pressure, shortness of breath, headaches, etc.
God uses these physical consequences because the spiritual consequences of sin (like, for example, loss of fellowship with God, guilt, broken relationships or even hell) are so intangible that we would tend to ignore them if we weren’t reminded. The physical consequences are so much easier to see and come to grips with than spiritual consequences, though the latter are far more serious.
As unpleasant as such experiences are, just stop and think for a moment what the effect would be on our behavior if there were no physical consequences to sin or if God always healed such consequences as soon as we asked Him to. They wouldn’t be a warning then, would they? And they wouldn’t serve to deter sinful behavior. And society would be in greater chaos than it is.
So, the first thing God may want us to learn through not healing is the serious consequences of sin.
Sickness and infirmity get our attention and can draw us closer to God. There is no question but that physical calamities which come upon us get our attention. C. S. Lewis once wrote, “Pain is the megaphone God uses to get our attention.” Of course, once God gets our attention, we can exhibit several different responses. We can get bitter and accuse God of not caring. Or, on the other hand, we can draw closer to Him and trust Him more in the midst of our pain.
Consider the small child who is taken by his father to the doctor for a shot. He perhaps doesn’t understand why his father had to do this, but his response, more often than not, is to throw his arms around the one he knows and loves—his father. And the more it hurts the harder he squeezes. It’s that kind of child-like faith God would like to see from us.
Job, the man who suffered more physical calamity than perhaps any other person in history, said, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” (Job 13:15) And in 1 Peter 4:19 we read, “Therefore, let those also who suffer according to the will of God entrust their souls to a faithful Creator in doing what is right.” Rightly handled, pain and illness draw us closer to God and cause us to trust Him more.
Sickness and infirmity can mold character. Calamity has a way of sanding off the rough edges from our character. In our Scripture reading today Paul related a unique experience he had in being the only mortal man ever to visit the third heaven and return. He then comments, “Because these experiences I had were so tremendous, God was afraid I might be puffed up by them; so I was given a physical condition which has been a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to hurt and bother me, and prick my pride.” In Paul’s case a physical disability was used to remove pride from his character.
Other kinds of character molding also employ the sandpaper of suffering. Joni Eareckson Tada has been an inspiration to so many. Only eternity will tell for sure all the reasons why God allowed a lovely teenager like Joni to suffer the tragedy of quadriplegia. But the result of character molding is clearly seen in her radiant spirit. God has made of her a rare and precious jewel, chiseled and burnished by pain, through which the riches of His grace are being displayed to hundreds of thousands of people. Joni herself has written, “I sometimes shudder to think where I’d be today if I had not broken my neck. I couldn’t see at first why God would possibly allow it, but I sure do now.”
A poem of unknown authorship goes like this:
I walked a mile with pleasure
She chattered all the way,
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.
I walked a mile with sorrow,
And ne’er a word said she;
But, O, the things I learned from her
When sorrow walked with me.
Sickness and infirmity can help produce a sympathetic heart for others. In Heb. 2:17 we read that Jesus “had to be made like His brethren in all things, that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest.” And in chapter 4 we are told that He was tried in all points as we are so that He could sympathize with our weaknesses.
If that principle is true in regard to Jesus, how much more would it be true for us? Sometimes it’s only after suffering greatly ourselves that we develop a sympathetic heart for others. I’ve known people who were totally unsympathetic and judgmental toward divorced people, and whose attitudes didn’t change until their own homes broke up. That’s a high price to pay for sympathy.
I have heard it said that “It is doubtful God can use you greatly until He has hurt you deeply.” And I believe that’s true. There’s nothing like pain to cause a person to have compassion on others who are in similar straits. Unfortunately, we easily forget that lesson. After suffering ourselves, we may for a few weeks or months show great compassion on others, but then we forget and return quickly to our selfish ways. When we do so, we may be inviting more suffering.
Sickness and infirmity prepare us for Heaven. I’m indebted to Joni Eareckson’s brilliant book, A Step Further, for the insights on this point.
God has told us in His Word to set our hearts on Heaven (Col. 3:2, 1 Peter 1:13). The pleasures of this life were never meant to bring us perfect fulfillment. They are merely to whet our appetite for what it to come. As C. S. Lewis said, “Our Father refreshes us on our journey with some pleasant inns, but He will not encourage us to mistake them for home.” [i]
The trouble is, we do mistake them for home. It’s hard to think about heaven when it seems so far away. And so God gives us a little help to get our minds on the hereafter—He troubles us with sickness and infirmity which prepare us for Heaven by (1) making us want to go there, (2) preparing us to meet God when we get there, and (3) providing rewards for pain handled rightly. Listen as Joni writes about how suffering can make us want to go there:
“Broken necks, broken arms, broken homes, broken hearts—these things crush our illusions that earth can ‘keep its promises.’ When we come to know that the hopes we cherished will never come true, that our dead loved one is gone from this life forever, that we will never be as pretty, popular, successful or famous as we had once imagined, it lifts our sights. It moves our eyes from this world, which God knows could never satisfy us anyway, and sets them on the life to come. Heaven becomes our passion.”
But suffering does more than make us want to go to Heaven. It also prepares us to meet God when we get there. Joni says,
“Think for a moment. Suppose you had never in your life known any physical pain. How could you at all appreciate the scarred hands with which Christ will greet you? What if no one had ever hurt you deeply? How could you adequately express your gratefulness when you approach the throne of the Man of Sorrows who was acquainted with grief? If you had never been embarrassed, if you had never felt ashamed, you could never begin to know just how much He loved you when He took your shameful sins and made them His.”
And suffering does one thing more. If in our trials we are faithful, they win for us rich rewards in Heaven. 2 Cor. 4:17 says, “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.” It’s not merely that Heaven will be a wonderful place in spite ofall our suffering while on earth; it will be that way because of them. Yes, sickness and infirmity also prepare us for Heaven.
There is yet one more category of reason as to why God does not heal.
Sometimes God does not heal for reasons related only to Himself.
There are times when there don’t seem to be any obstacles to healing on our part, and we are aware of all the things that God wants to accomplish in our life and are cooperating with Him. But still the suffering comes. At such a time we need to consider that perhaps the reasons don’t relate to us at all, reasons which we may never know.
Sickness and infirmity can bring glory to God. I remind you of the man born blind, spoke of in John 9. When Jesus healed the man, He declared that his blindness was not due to sin in his own life or anyone else’s, but rather happened in order that the works of God might be displayed in him. Why didn’t God heal Him at age 18 instead of 35? Because the length of the infirmity contributed to the eventual glory that God received from the healing when it did come.
I appeal to Joni’s testimony once more:
“God has gotten so much more glory through my paralysis than through my health! And believe me, you’ll never know how rich that makes me feel. If God chooses to heal you in answer to your prayers, that’s great. Thank Him for it. But if He chooses not to, thank Him anyway. You can be sure that He has His reasons.”[ii]
Sickness and infirmity can also accomplish His perfect plan. I guess I’ve included this point as a kind of catch-all for situations where we don’t see God getting any particular glory. In other words, there seems to be no rhyme or reason for the illness or disability or for the enormous amount of pain. Even then I believe we can count upon the fact that God allowed it to accomplish His perfect plan.
I think of the Frank C. Wheeler family of Odell, Texas. They lost their eldest son in the Viet Nam War, but that was just a harbinger of the trouble that was to strike them in 1985. In February, their grandson, Aaron, 19, was killed in a car accident. Three months later their son Randy, 22, was killed in an accidental shooting. The very next month, June, their son Ronnie, 17, was killed in a grain elevator accident. And, almost unbelievably, their fourth and final son was on board the Army charter jetliner that crashed in Newfoundland last Fall. I wouldn’t even begin to try to explain this family’s plight to you.
Sometimes the best we can do is what my little Andy does when I ask him why he committed some particularly rascally deed, “Because.” And when I ask, “Because why?” I inevitably get the profound response, “Just because.”
Think for a moment about Job. The great physical tragedies that came upon him were not because of sin in His life, nor did they seem to have as their primary purpose accomplishing anything particular in his life. Rather the infirmities he experienced were all brought about because of a heavenly battle. God’s plan was to prove to Satan that He had some faithful servants who weren’t believers just because it pays to be one. And, amazingly, God never did tell Job why he went through it all!
If such a thing has happened to you, I will at least offer you this consolation: if you have to suffer for reasons unrelated to you, God will reward you for it later, as He did Job. Don’t assume that He’s not fair until you’ve read the last chapter of the Book.
Points to Ponder:
1. God has not guaranteed healing to anyone.
I don’t know where a person could go in the Scriptures to find proof for the view that God has guaranteed healing to everyone. And I’m not sure we realize what people are asking for when they imply that healing is available to all. If we assume God has offered carte blanche removal of the health consequences of a Fallen world, then to be consistent we must hold that He offered removal of other consequences of the Fall, like earthquakes and tornados and floods and weeds and thistles and drought.
But He hasn’t and He won’t until Jesus returns. As long as there is sin in the world, there are going to have to be consequences for sin. And one of those is physical sickness and disability.
2. It is legitimate to seek divine healing provided one’s motives are pure.
I believe God is pleased when we come to Him and ask for supernatural healing. Ask for, not demand. And I don’t see much of a concerted effort in that direction in the evangelical church. I wonder if there isn’t a certain fear of it. There shouldn’t be.
Listen to J. Sidlow Baxter and a challenge he lays before our conservative churches. After stressing some of the weaknesses in charismatic circles, where belief in faith healing is the norm, he says,
“I ask my brethren in the evangelical ministry, Are you living in the experience of the Holy Spirit’s infilling? Are your public services of worship and witness evidently in the ‘demonstration and power’ of the Spirit? Is the seal of the Spirit manifest in continual conversions and in a continual soul-winning outreach of your church members? If so, should you not be asking for heavenly guidance in the matter of the Holy Spirit’s ‘gifts of healings’? What a blessing it could be to your dear flock!
Have you half-a-dozen elders or deacons or spiritual seniors who are Spirit-taught brethren and who wholeheartedly believe in the Scripturalness of ‘gifts of healings’ and who would be willing, under your own pastoral leadership, to give themselves to prayer with a view to becoming available to the sick and afflicted among you? Ought you not to pray and pray and pray again that God will give you such a group, that the Holy Spirit will ‘clothe’ you in a new way so that special healings or special intelligence may be communicated through you and your specially consecrated group to your membership?”[iii]
That’s quite a challenge. Never would I want such a thing to become the dominant drawing card of the Church or the focus of attention. But I would be a fool to say that I wouldn’t want to see God’s power more evident than it is. Nevertheless, my final point is important, and that is that …
3. The focus of suffering should be upon what God wants to accomplish through the infirmity rather than upon finding a quick escape from it.
Andrae Crouch has written a beautiful song entitled, “Through It All.” Listen to the words:
I thank God for the mountains
And I thank Him for the valleys
I thank Him for the storms He brought me through
For if I’d never had a problem
I wouldn’t know that He could solve them
I’d never know what faith in God could do.
There are times when it’s not God’s will to heal us physically, but it is always His desire to heal us spiritually. God is not willing that any should perish. And that includes you.
Benediction:
“After you have suffered for a little, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To Him be dominion forever and ever. Amen.” (1 Peter 5:10)
Tags:
Healing
False guilt
Unconfessed sin
Heaven
[i] C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 115.
[ii] Joni Eareckson and Steve Estes, A Step Further, 155.
[iii] J. Sidlow Baxter, Divine Healing of the Body, 279.
Note: I apologize for the lack of thorough footnoting on this sermon. When I preached this sermon 35 years ago I had no idea it would ever be published, and since that time I have given away many of the reference books I used.