How Does Healing Work?

This week I witnessed a miracle.

Our second grandchild was born last Sunday, a little girl. She’s as beautiful as her older sister, who was born only a year ago now. 

God is in the miracle business, just like he was back in Enoch’s day, and Noah’s day, and Moses’, and King David’s, and Hannah’s, and Ruth’s, and Daniel’s, and Peter’s, and all the 2000 years since then. 

A Healing Miracle

We believe the birth of this child was a miracle-maker in another way as well. My daughter, her mother, started getting sick during this pregnancy. They had not planned a second baby so close after their first – she’d been sick a lot during her first pregnancy as well.  This time though, the doctors finally found a cyst on one of her glands – something they would not have been looking for if the pregnancy had not caused it to impact her health. There was much debate about whether removing it during the pregnancy would be too risky for the baby, but eventually under her OB’s advice, they did the surgery and the cyst was removed. It turns out, this was the sort of cyst that can become cancer. We believe this child of theirs likely saved her mother’s life.

Yes, I know God heals. Yes, I know God is the same today as He has always been. Yes, I know God knows we are dust and He understands our frailties. 

But what about those times when God does not heal? 

How Does Healing Work?

Sometimes I hear people talking about God’s healing, and it seems as if they’re saying that all we need to do is have enough faith, and then God heals. 

But wait. Is healing from God based on our faith? Is it based on God’s goodness? Is it based on His desire to bless His children? Or is God’s healing based on His own plan for us? 

First, does God mean the same thing we do when we use the word “heal”? 

So often, we think only of our physical maladies. On so many issues in the Bible, we see people thinking first of the physical when God was referring to the spiritual first. 

I looked up Bible passages on healing, and over and over, the thought of healing is paired with being wounded in order to bring about repentance, and that repentance brought that healing with it. The repentance was spiritual – the healing then was also spiritual.

We can see in the Bible that God absolutely does heal physically.

Related Post: Seriously, I Don’t Need A Miracle, I Just Need Jesus

Healing the Blind Man

There are many examples of Jesus healing people in the gospels, but let’s look at one for now. In John 9, Jesus heals a blind man. But when the disciples first see the blind man, they ask Jesus why this man was blind in the first place. 

“And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. 2And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?”

Jesus answers: 

“Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.”  

Jesus goes on to describe the need for everyone to understand that He is the light of the world, and healing this man was an illustration of who He really was, and what He was bringing into the world through His life and death and resurrection.

This man was healed because it was part of God’s plan. 

God is Faithful

God’s work in our life is to reveal Himself to us, to draw us closer to Him, to help us believe on Him more every day. His spiritual healing is no less healing just because it isn’t always physical. Sometimes it does come with a physical healing, but even if it doesn’t, God remains faithful. 

God’s plan is always the best.