During Sunday morning worship services, I sometimes pray for members with illnesses. I ask them to stand and place their hands on the areas that hurt and I pray for them. I don’t pray these prayers just on a whim. I do it when I get a “sense” that God is going to heal. That’s why some weeks I pray only in one service and not the other – I only get the “sense” that I should pray in one of the services.
When I obey this prompting from God, a lot of healing occurs. But I often don’t hear about the healings until someone else tells me. I ask those who have been healed to call me or let people know through the chat room on our church’s website, but most of them don’t.
Why do we hesitate in letting others know when we are healed? It may be that we are afraid of finding out later that we are not healed after all, thus making God’s healing a mockery.
This kind of cautiousness is commendable. But some people keep things private even when it’s clear that they have been healed by God. Why? Because they are afraid of recurrence, that their illness might come back and what that might mean. But this is not concern for God’s glory. On the contrary; it’s hiding God’s mercy. If one has clearly been healed by God, I believe that he or she must let others know of the healing even if there’s a chance it may recur. It is only right to give glory to God for what He has done.
We should not worry too much about recurrence because all healing is for a limited time anyway. Everyone who experiences healing will still die someday. Lazarus experienced the ultimate healing – resurrection from death. But even he died eventually. That did not keep his family members from announcing what Jesus had done. We also must celebrate even temporary healings and use that period of health to serve. God heals us to give us the opportunity to help others. We must not waste these opportunities because of doubts regarding the healing or a fear of recurrence.
The biggest reason illnesses recur is that there’s no change in life style after healing. Once we are healed, we must eliminate the root causes of the illness. If we are healed of lung cancer, we must quit smoking. If we are healed of back pain, we must change our posture. If we recover from a heart attack, we must adjust our diet and exercise. If the root cause of our illness was sin, we must avoid those sins. I am saddened when I see people who experience God’s healing but neglect to change their lifestyle and blame God when their illness returns.
Let us have the right attitude with God’s healing, giving the proper glory to God when He does heal us, and honoring the healing by serving others and changing our lifestyles.
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