Healing is ALWAYS God’s Will: Dispelling Common Myths & Misconceptions
If we are going to walk in God’s promises of divine healing, we need to know once and for all that His will is, and always has been, to heal.
God wants us well! Now, many believers know this in theory, but fewer stand on this promise firmly—it is always God’s will for us to be healed. Some have never heard this, and others quickly think of a reason to doubt that statement because of an experience they feel disproves it.
For the first group, you may have grown up in a church that doesn’t believe the gifts of the Spirit are for today and taught that things such as miracles and healings passed away with the early Church. Countless people are in this category, and I too attended a Christian school growing up with those who believed this way—but God showed me in His Word that the truth is the gifts of God are without repentance. They’re irrevocable and can never be withdrawn, and they don’t change because He doesn’t change. God is still the Healer and is still in the healing business!
For the others, those who have perhaps lost someone, who prayed but didn’t see healing manifest, or those who have doubts, the Lord wants to build your faith afresh. He wants to show you His heart as the Healer in a supernatural way that will dispel any doubts that have arisen through life’s difficult circumstances. It is my prayer that as you read this book, God is going to reset your heart with a fresh and innocent faith again, to see His faithfulness beyond your own hardship.
In these chapters, we certainly are going to look at some of the conditions for being healed, that are found in Scripture; and we’re also going to see the role our faith plays and how incredibly important our words are. But before we dive into that, I believe the most important point God wants to build up within you is first to know beyond any shadow of doubt that God’s will is always healing.
God wants you to know that it’s His will for you to be healed, even though sometimes there are those who either aren’t or weren’t healed. Knowing this, I urge you to set aside whatever you think you know or have experienced, to get a divine reset and fresh take, not from my opinions but from what God says in the Bible.
Starting with the Old Testament, we’re going to walk through some of the most powerful healing Scriptures. In fact, I ended this book with a long list of healing Scriptures that point to the fact that God’s will is healing. This way you can meditate on these verses and absorb them down into your heart.
The Lord Who Heals You
What we must know without a shadow of a doubt is that the Lord has always made a healing provision for His people!
Consider that there was no sickness in the Garden of Eden before the Fall; we were not created to get sick and die. Death and disease entered the world with sin.
Our first Scripture comes at a time when God’s people were oppressed by the Egyptians. Notably they had experienced hardship, not unlike us today. They needed to know God’s will toward them, and we read it in a powerful verse in Exodus 15:26 (NKJV):
If you diligently heed the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in His sight, give ear to His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have brought on the Egyptians. For I am the Lord who heals you.
Let’s key in on the last sentence of this Scripture, because God is telling us who He is—the Lord who heals us. This is how God described His character, and He wanted people to know this attribute about Him. He didn’t describe Himself as the God who might heal sometimes, or at other times for no clear reason decide not to heal. No, He wanted His people to know Him as the Lord who heals!
I want you to notice something else from this passage that’s very important. God tells them that He will not put any of the diseases on His people that He put on the Egyptians. This is backed up in Deuteronomy 7:15 (NKJV), which says, “And the Lord will take away from you all sickness, and will afflict you with none of the terrible diseases of Egypt which you have known, but will lay them on all those who hate you.” Go back and read that again. How much sickness? Some of it? No, the promise is that He will take away all sickness from His people.
Sickness and disease came with the curse, but I am so thankful to be part of the family of God who is redeemed from the curse! We are not subject to the curse, and when God brought the plagues on the Egyptians, we read that those things did not afflict the land of Goshen where God’s people lived. While the world may experience the curse, we as children of God are not subject to those things. God has always held His people apart, and that will never change.
God proved His healing character even in the greatest of the plagues, when the angel of death moved throughout Egypt. In the land of Goshen, the people marked their door- posts with lamb’s blood (representing the blood of Jesus), and the curse of death passed over. God gave His people this promise: “So you shall serve the Lord your God, and He will bless your bread and your water. And I will take sickness away from the midst of you” (Exodus 23:25 NKJV).
The people who say healing is not for today might as well chop these passages out of their Bibles! We don’t serve the God of former promises or who He was yesterday—we serve the God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever! (Hebrews 13:8) And if He tells me that He is the Lord who heals me, and He tells me He will bless my bread and water and take sickness away, I believe Him and I know you do too!
If you’re still struggling however, take heart—I am convinced God is going to rebuild your faith today. Jesus once prayed for Peter that his faith would not fail (Luke 22:32), and that is my prayer for you. Jesus went on to tell Peter that after he was comforted and strengthened in his own faith to then go strengthen the faith of others. Consider the fact that someone needs you to be their lifter and to help pray for them that their faith to be healed would not fail. This is why we need to strengthen ourselves in God’s healing promises because someone out there needs us to support them!
Psalms also tells us that during the exodus from Egypt, God’s people had bread and water and He sent the wealth of Egypt with them! We read, “He also brought them out with silver and gold, and there was none feeble among His tribes” (Psalm 105:37 NKJV). This means they were walking in God’s promise—right out of Egypt and into God’s strength! They were loaded with the silver and gold of the world, and they did not stumble or falter, because there was no sickness among them.
A few chapters later, Psalm 107:20 (NKJV) says, “He sent His word and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions.” The New Living Translation ends that verse by saying, “snatching them from the door of death.”
So what was the Word sent to do? Heal us!
These are just a few of the passages from the Old Testament. We haven’t even looked at the Scriptures surrounding Jesus’ ministry and all the times He healed people. Take a moment to think on this: John tells us that Jesus was the Word made flesh, and here in Psalms God is telling us that God sent His Word and healed us. Do you see the heart of the Father here? Hundreds of years before Jesus was born, God was already foreshadowing what Jesus would come to do, which was to heal and so much more. Let’s quickly look at some prophecies about Jesus’ earthly ministry that point to God’s will for healing.
Surely
Jesus fulfilled hundreds of prophecies during His earthly ministry, but some of the most powerful are regarding our healing. Hundreds of years before He was born, Isaiah 53:4-5 (NKJV) prophesied:
Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.
When you see the word surely, you know it to be true. If I told you that surely I was going to give you $100, do you expect to get the money? Yes, because I didn’t say, “maybe” I’ll give it to you or, “possibly.” I told you surely—you can be sure of it. When God gives you a sure promise, you can take it to the bank!
Let’s go back and look at this passage in more detail, because I want you to understand a few of these words could be translated differently. When it says griefs here, that can also be translated as “sicknesses,” and the word for sorrows can be rendered as “pains.” This passage is laying out that Jesus carried our sicknesses and even our pains. If you’re reading this, and something hurts in your body right now, read that pas- sage again for yourself—“Surely He has borne your sicknesses and carried your pains.” Don’t be shy to ask Him to touch you even now and deliver you from your pain.
Everything our sin deserves Jesus took on Himself. He was stricken and afflicted, not randomly or just because the Romans decided to, but because it was part of fulfilling promises just like this one. So many readily accept that Jesus died for our sins and that we have salvation through the finished work of the Cross, but some people forget that as He was paying for our sins, He was also paying the price for our healing!
“By His stripes we are healed,” the Bible tells us. Not “might be” healed, or “if God’s in a good mood” we’ll be healed. By His stripes, we are healed!
I mentioned that I attended a Christian school growing up that didn’t believe in healing. They would tell me this passage in Isaiah meant emotional healing or spiritual healing only. Let’s unpack that idea for a moment. This Scripture specifies that Jesus was wounded for our transgressions and was bruised for our iniquities—our sins. This definitely points to the spiritual and emotional side of us that needs to be healed.
However, it goes on to say that the physical stripes on His back paid for our healing. I believe the Bible here is emphasizing healing for the whole person—spiritual, emotional, and physical. Nothing about these verses indicate that physical healing is omitted, and that wouldn’t even hold up if you compare it to God’s healing promises throughout the rest of Scripture. Physical healing was always included!
We can further back up the fact that the stripes laid on Jesus’ back were specifically to fulfill God’s promise for physical healing because later the Bible clearly says that Jesus healed the sick and cast out demons as a direct fulfillment of the passage in Isaiah 53:4-5! Look for a moment at this passage in Matthew 8:16-17 (KJV):
When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick: That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.
Jesus healing physically sick individuals was how the passage in Isaiah was fulfilled. Then notably it says Jesus healed all that were sick, not a select few. Healing was offered to all equally, just as salvation and forgiveness of sin are offered to all.
Jeremiah 30:17 (NKJV) gives us another wonderful promise: “‘For I will restore health to you and heal you of your wounds,’ says the Lord….” Every word in the Bible is import- ant, so read that again carefully and see the words “I will.” What is God’s will, according to the Bible? This very verse tells you God’s will is to heal! It paints a picture of the God who loves to heal His people. He does not heal us grudgingly; He does so as a loving Father who sent Jesus on assignment for our healing.
The entire Old Testament is a type and shadow of promises that Jesus fulfilled. This is why throughout the Old Testament, God always made a healing provision for His people. Jesus came to simply carry on God’s heart regarding healing and is why He healed people everywhere He went. Jesus was doing the will of God!
This is why you must never doubt if it’s God’s will to heal you. Jesus came to do the will of the Father. God’s will is obvious and has already been established. His will is healing!
