"Confess your faults one to another, and pray for one another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervant prayer of a righteous man availeth much." James 5:16
It's true. I have see many people healed. It seems as if all the healing was preceded by prayer. But you and I know that God has everyone's best interest in mind and He has provided good nutrition and pro-active measures that anyone can apply (believer or unbeliever) to prevent some sicknesses and heal others, just through the natural processes of life.
But what I want to talk about is what happens to your faith if you are not healed of this or that.
First of all I definitely believe in divine healing and I have personally seen it occur many times. There are literally millions of people with testimony of God healing their bodies miraculously. But too often I have also heard of pastors, preachers and others who seem to deny the reality of sickness, like it doesn't exist. So when someone is really sick they tell them (not to say they are sick) as if denying the reality of your sickness is the key to healing. It is not. Denying that fact that you are sink has no efficacy, but it does give you false hope and a view of your condition that is not real.
Everyone will get sick from time to time and everyone is going to grow older, have some complications and eventually die. To deny this is silly and makes ones opinion about it superfluous. God does not miraculously heal everyone, nor does everyone recover from their sickness. Some people get sick, their conditions worsen and they die or have a long spell of having to fight their sickness. This is simply the truth. If someone does not get healed and yet they are a believer and they pray about it all the time and they have faith and others are praying for them, but they don't get healed, it does not mean that they need more faith or that they need to touch a certain hanky or send money to this or that ministry and then... No! Stop the foolishness!
Sometimes God allows someone to continue with their sickness and you know from experience that God allows everyone to die; whether early or late, whether sick or well.
The key to understanding is to recognize God's sovereignty in the whole matter.
You must trust the outcome even though it might not match what you think should happen or what your favorite TV evangelist says can happen.
You must have faith in God, not just for the healing and the many blessings, but in and through the very difficult and often perilous times also.
You must learn to trust God despite the outcome.
Faith that demands a certain outcome whether or not it is the will of God is not faith at all.
You are to trust God when all is well and when things are not well.
Sickness is real and denying the truth about it is foolishness. Telling someone that if they just had more faith they could be healed is a slap in the face of the God and creator of that person, who has, in His (God's) wisdom, allowed this thing to happen. Pray for healing and trust God.
The outcome does not determine the level of ones faith. "The effectual fervant prayer of a righteous man availeth much," but the effectual fervant prayer of a righteous man does not availeth everything. Have faith to be healed, but if God allows you or your loved one to continue in your/their condition longer than you think you/they should, keep that faith and add to it trust that God knows what He is doing.
Note: Learning to trust God in spite of the outcome is one of the hallmarks of genuine faith. You might find it refreshing to know that you have skin in the game, that you are not a marionette, but a co-creator with God; not the author of life, but the recipient of (life) the greatest gift in all creation. Try to remember this quote, "The question shouldn't be 'Why did God allow this or that to happen,' the question should be 'What am I going to with what God allowed to happen?"
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