If you’ve lived at all as a Christian for any significant amount of time you know there are many times that prayer for healing is needed. We get sick for whatever reason. Sometimes the reason is genetic, other times it is environmental, other times dietary, other times it’s brought about by terrible medical treatment. Other times it’s brought about intentionally by war. And other times it’s just old age and our time in the flesh is up.

But what about an average young healthy Christian who suffers from an illness? They pray and pray yet stay sick.

How can that be reconciled with Jesus Christ who apparently never turned people down when asking for healing?

This post will attempt to answer this question.

I’ve been part of church movements that taught we just need more faith to get our healing. It belongs to us and it’s there to take by faith. When we would teach this we would define faith as “confident expectation in the promises of God.”

But having more confident expectation in Gods promises is not what it takes to receive physical healing that doesn’t seem to come. Or at minimum it’s not something we can turn off and on internally by effort and trying to.

To think this way is to underestimate Jesus Christ himself. My expectations surrounding Gods promises are not enough. For example; I genuinely and confidently expect, based on bible verses, God to heal my relative that I pray with to receive healing, and he dies anyhow.

How great is my discouragement and disillusionment when this happens.

What I think we misunderstand is that Jesus Christ is not only the promisor but he is also and more importantly the doing itself of the healing. It’s not a matter of him just doing it already…as much as it is a matter of seeking him personally with constant pursuit. Then following him however and wherever he leads us daily.

I know what it’s like to seek healing for extended periods. We get into a rut wondering why it never seems to happen so we start to obsess over it, I know I have done that.

Sometimes the answer for healing is something simple that we need to do or stop doing. We must hear him for instruction, if we are being stubborn and will only accept a miracle and are not willing to change our lifestyle if he leads us to we probably won’t ever get healed.

Maybe he will lead you to something practical like a water fast which is powerful in healing or a major change in diet. Or maybe something else.

If we look closely we can see that people in the Bible were not just seeking him to heal them …because they were seeking him individually. It was easier to seek him then because he was physically present, but we cannot do that now so we pray and it’s all by faith. It’s all spiritual and we must hear and see in the spirit that affects the physical.

We must be constantly just seeking him, to know him, to understand him, that alone will heal.

Also furthermore:

Seeking breakthrough from our problems (even if Jesus is the supply of it) is not the same as seeking first the kingdom. Therefore it’s a major distraction from him.

For example group singing at church can be a lot like group praying. Recently in a Christian meeting at a church we were singing together several beautiful Jesus songs. Then casually, with little notice, with just as beautiful tempos and the same exact great looking stage crew, we started singing about receiving breakthrough and seeing miracles.

The song itself was about us getting breakthrough. Feeling the need to sing that way or pray that way is evidence we barely understand Jesus Christ and the importance of pursuing him.