This question came to me from an honest, earnest seeker.
I know God can heal me, but I don’t know if He will. He hasn’t healed my back. I’ve wondered if he’s doing this because he wants me to learn something from this- to identify with the sufferings of Christ in some way- or to find that his power is sufficient for me. But it seems in the book Authority to Heal by Dr. Ken Blue, he says something else.
Ken is trying to remove the “weeds” from the garden of our theology. One of our weeds is that sickness is good for us. If we start our discussion of healing from this assumption we will rarely pray for the sick. If we rarely pray for the sick we will rarely see healings. If we rarely see healings we will assume that they are not God’s will and we will see them as the exception rather than the rule. In the gospels healing was the rule and a failed healing was the exception. Today it is the reverse. This is not biblical, in my opinion. Ken is trying to remove the weeds so that we can find a way to take the gift of healing seriously and establish some sort of practice of prayer for healing in our churches. I think that once that practice is established each church comes to it’s own place of balance. The truth is that coping with physical sickness can lead to great sanctification – my wife Shelley is the best example I know. But, this does not mean that we don’t pray for the sick. Sickness, in my opinion, is never God’s will but he can USE it for our best – after all, He is in the redeeming business. BUT if we don’t come to believe that God wants to heal, we will rarely pray for the sick. When we fail to pray we miss much of His will regarding using His people to glorify Him through healing. I have to go to church now so I will have to finish this later today or tomorrow.
