Healing - the very nature of God

When you get a headache, what is the first thing you do? When your nose starts to run or the doctors give an unthinkable diagnosis, what is your first response? Is it to pray and ask God for healing?

Even if we don’t voice them, many of us have questions and doubts about whether God is able and willing to still heal. It is God’s desire that we should be healed. However, many of us do not look at God that way.

Healing is in the very nature of God. So why is it that we are more likely to draw for aspirin or suffer before we approach the throne of grace to find help in time of need?

One reason is that we lack the faith. This, however, isn’t the end of the world. God has made a provision for when we lack faith. It is the Word of God. “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” Romans 10:17 (NKJV).

By reading and believing the Word of God, our faith in who God is and what He says is strengthened and increased. So what does God’s Word say about healing?

King David praised God, saying: “Praise the Lord, my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits – who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases … .” Psalms 103:1-3 (NIV)

Prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 58:6 and 8 (NIV) declared: “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? ... Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear… .”

Proverbs 4: 20-22 says: “My son, pay attention to what I say; turn your ear to my words. Do not let them out of your sight, keep them within your heart; for they are life to those who find them and health to one’s whole body.” Another version of the Bible says, “… and medicine to all their flesh”.

There is living, healing power in the Word of God, and our new covenant with God through Jesus Christ has allowed for healing. We see Jesus in action in the gospels.

Did you know: one out of every seven verses in the Gospel is about healing? Two-thirds of Jesus’ ministry was devoted to ministering to the sick – all kinds of sicknesses ranging from spiritual leprosy, which is sin, to physical sicknesses. Jesus never turned away anyone who asked for healing. Since Jesus only did what God the Father told Him to do, we can see that healing is God’s will.

For some of us, we have never heard that before, and this is because many of us were taught an incomplete salvation. Salvation was taught to equal the forgiveness of sins only. Let me just say that the forgiveness of sins is absolutely essential for our salvation. Sin caused a fracture in the relationship with God and man, and because of His great love for us, Jesus sacrificed Himself to repair the breach and offer total forgiveness of our sin. This allows us to be reconciled to God. This is great,and if there was nothing more than this, it would be worth it all. Forgiveness is still the ultimate miracle.

But God intended more. “For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.” (Luke 9:56). The word save in the original Greek language is the word sozo which means the forgiveness of sin, the healing of disease, and the deliverance from torment.

That is salvation. Jesus made the provision needed to save the whole person – spirit, soul, and body – and that includes healing.