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November 2001, Page 8.
Index of articles.
Questions:
index,
Sick visiting,
Who made God,
Harry Potter,
God after 11.9,
Healing,
Special needs.
Healing:
index,
A time to heal,
Homeopathy?
Joy's reply,
Sick visiting,
Not always.
In this issue:
(November 2001)
Vicar's Letter,
Tithing,
CW Books,
Question.
In our "Questions to the clergy" slot, John will try to answer any query you throw at him, without hesitation, deviation or repetition...
Why doesn't God heal?
Q. Why doesn’t God answer when we pray for committed Christians to be healed?
A. I don’t know. I have some ideas about the answer to this question, but I’d be lying if I said I had the complete answer.
The bible does say that God is a God of healing (Ex 15:26), that when Jesus was on the earth he healed many people, and that those who follow Jesus will pray for sick people and they will be healed (Mark 16:18, James 5:15).
During my time as a clergyman, I have seen quite a lot of people healed following prayer. In 1992 I prayed for five people who were very seriously ill. Two died. I was very discouraged. It was only later I realized that three had got better.
The bible does says God answers prayer. But it doesn’t say we always get the answer we wanted when we started praying. Jesus says “If you remain in me ... ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you” (John 15:7). This says we get what we want if we remain in Jesus - remaining in Jesus includes praying in line with what he wants. Likewise, James 5:15 is followed by “the prayer of a righteous man is powerful in its effects”. “Righteous” means in a right relationship with God, which means we wouldn’t be praying for something unless God wanted it to happen.
So the bible’s view of prayer is us putting ourselves in line with what God wants, not vice versa. I don’t believe prayer twists God’s arm - in that sense I don’t believe in the “power of prayer”, but I do believe in the power of God. I think God has the sovereign right to decide what he will do. Often, in prayer, he lets us in on his vision of what he wants.
In his book “Power Healing”, John Wimber wrote “I have come to see that it is better for me to pray for 100 people, and one of them to be healed, than for me never to pray at all and none to be healed.” I agree with that. It is up to us to pray. As we do so, God might answer us in healing the sick. Or he might answer us by telling us to pray for something else. Prayer is for bringing about God’s will, not ours.
Finally, God is not bribed in prayer. We sometimes think that God needs a particular person to do a particular job, so if he/she dies God will be shooting himself in the foot. But actually God can always find other ways of getting jobs done. There is no indispensible Christian.
John Hartley