Healing Prayers

Healing Prayers – Can I receive healing from God?
Perhaps you are faced with a disease or terminal illness and you are looking for healing prayers. You desire to cry out to God for healing! It is usually our hopelessness that compels us to seek a supernatural source to alleviate our serious illness or disease. For most, it is a pattern of self-sufficiency, medical technology, and ultimately a cry for God to heal us miraculously.

God heals because that is His pattern for revealing His nature through His Son. With compassion, Jesus chose to touch the festering sores of the leper (Matthew 8:3). He showed mercy as He touched the crusted lids of blinded eyes (Matthew 9:29). In receiving healing from God, we must earnestly desire to touch Him as well. “People brought all their sick to him and begged him to let the sick just touch the edge of his cloak, and all who touched him were healed” (Matthew 14:35–36).

Healing Prayers – Can I receive healing from God if my faith is great enough?
Every individual has the ability, through healing prayers, to express faith -- the belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing. You express faith in the car manufacturer who installs your brakes, faith in the architect who designs your office building, and faith in intangibles like gravity, solar heat, or a promise. “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1). Biblical faith is determined by 1) reliance upon God rather than man and 2) confidence in the unseen power of God.

Exercising our faith in the area of healing may involve unconventional behavior. The Bible tells of a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years (Mark 5:25–34). She knew that her condition would cause Jesus to be unclean under Jewish law if she touched Him. Yet she reached out in faith and was healed immediately as “Jesus realized that power had gone out from him” (Mark 5:30). Genuine faith requires action. However, faith is not something we must “conjure up” enough of in hopes that God will heal us. Ultimately, it is God who chooses whether or not we will be healed.

For most people facing pain and possible death dramatically changes their lives. For some, dreams are shattered, relationships broken, and despair consumes their hearts. For others, new dreams are found, relationships strengthened, and hope takes over their hearts. A grieving and pleading father fell at the feet of Jesus. Jarius’ 12-year-old daughter had just died. Why bother Jesus now? Jesus tells the father not to be afraid . . . to just believe. With compassion, Jesus takes the dead girl by the hand and restores her to life (Mark 5:35–43). We must place our faith in the person of Jesus, the source of all hope and His promise of everlasting life. God knows best.

Healing Prayers – Can I receive healing from God every time?
The answer is definitely “Yes!” God can heal every sickness that leads to our ultimate death. But does God choose to heal us every time? No. He may heal us as a result of prayer. He may heal through simple procedures, through a surgeon’s trained hand, or He may heal us in a way that we can’t explain medically. God’s healing for each of our lives transcends our temporal perspective of pain and death. His will, or divine plan, for our lives is for this earthly tent to be exchanged for an eternal heavenly dwelling that never suffers the effects of sin’s decay (2 Corinthians 5:1–2). For children of God, there is ultimate healing for each of us.

As children of God, our healing prayer can be:

“Heavenly Father, You are intimately aware of the struggle I am experiencing -- the pain and the despair. You know the desire of my heart to be healed of this illness. I ask now for Your healing touch. I know that You are able and that just like in Bible times, You can heal me.

“I also understand that You will chose what is best for me. I pray that through this trial, I will draw close to You -- that You will be my comfort and strength. I pray that ultimately, whatever happens, You will be glorified through me. I pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.”