My topic for today is the question “Is Faith Required for Healing?” Whenever you talk about healing, someone will negatively talk about “faith healers.” Everyone once in a while, you will read in the news about some parent who supposedly was believing God to heal a child and didn’t take them to the doctor and something terrible happened. So, let me start off by saying that God heals through many different ways, including through doctors and medicine. As a believer, our faith is in God for healing, as we use every means that God has blessed us with for healing, which includes modern medicine. So, when someone is sick, pray and go to the doctor. God works through prayer and medicine to bring about healing.
As with many controversial topics, people and churches tend to go with extreme positions which are not biblical. We have already mentioned people who believe that if you have enough faith, God will heal you every time and you won’t even need a doctor. That position is not biblical. It leads to putting all the pressure on a sick person’s faith. On the other hand, some people take the extreme position where everything depends on God. You pray and whether you get healed or not is totally up to God, your faith plays no role at all. That position is not biblical either.
The biblical truth on healing is somewhere in the middle. As we’ll see today, faith is an important element in healing. Yet, God is also sovereign, and He decides the if, when and how of healing. Many biblical truths are in tension. In other words, two truths which logically may seem to be contradictory, as actually both true. For example, with regard to healing, the Bible teaches that God is sovereign and does whatever He wishes. The Bible also teaches that man has a responsibility to have faith in order to see God heal. Both truths are true, which causes fits for theologians.
The Bible is a practical book and through prayer, God helps us to apply the proper truth at the proper time to the situation we are facing. So, regarding healing, we’re going to see in this series, that Jesus is our healer. He has compassion and wants to heal people and bring glory to God. As our faith grows, He wants to heal many more people than He has in the past right here at and through Life Church. Yet, we don’t live in heaven yet, do we. There is an aging process, we’re all going to die unless Jesus returns before then. There is sin and Satan in the world, so for reasons, we sometimes don’t understand, everyone is not always physically healed. But I believe that God wants us concentrate, not on the exceptions, but on His general will revealed in His Word, that Jesus is our compassionate healer. Let’s grow in faith for healing with a balanced, biblical view.
Today, we’re going to look at another account of Jesus healing someone and learn principles that will help us experience more of God’s healing power.