12 Reasons Why Healing Doesn’t Happen (Part 1: Reasons 1 – 6)
You didn’t believe. You didn’t have enough faith. That’s what so many people are told when they go up for healing during a prayer service and nothing happens. They’re told it was their fault. Sometimes by a friend or other church member – and sometimes by the minister! Besides being sad and offensive, it’s a short-sighted answer to something that isn’t quite that simple.
I thought it might be nice to provide a better answer to those who may have wondered why they or someone they know didn’t receive healing. So, what follows is a list of twelve possible reasons taken from a book I read a number of years ago. The author is Francis MacNutt and this is taken verbatim from his book “Healing”.
I found this book to be the most balanced teaching on healing that I had encountered. I should disclaim, however, that this is not an official promotion for this book. All too often people pay bloggers to write something nice about them or their product. This is not the case. I just hope this helps a few people. While most of this is taken verbatim. Any italicized writings are mine.
1) Lack of faith
When the disciples could not cure the epileptic demoniac, Jesus upbraided them for their lack of faith (Mt 17:14-20). I believe that this is still the reason we do not have more healings taking place in our churches today; there is a general skepticism about healing as being anything more than a natural psychological process.
But even for those of us who do believe, we need to grow in faith. I find I have more faith than I did a few years ago. We need to grow in faith – even those of us who have seen miracles of healing – in order that God may use us still more.
2) Redemptive suffering
Physical healing is not in itself the highest value in the world. At times God uses sickness for a higher purpose. There has been a long history of saints whom God has called to suffer redemptively in union with the suffering of Jesus on the cross. “It makes me happy to suffer for you, as I am suffering now, and in my own body to do what I can to make up all that has still to be undergone by Christ for the sake of his body, the Church.” ( Col 1:24). If a person is called to suffer for the sake of the kingdom, or to learn a lesson, or as punishment, or for some other reason, then clearly we should not pray for healing.
Allow me to interrupt for a second. This is one that I take issue with. I’m not 100% in agreement with the idea of God SENDING someone an illness or tragedy. The author makes a good case, I will admit. But particularly the idea of a PUNISHING God is contrary to my thinking. I do believe that if we are disobedient we have effectively told God that we choose our own way and we’ll be fine on our own thank you very much. So God steps back. When he does we lose a little of His protection and some things get past our shield of faith. One of those things might be sickness. While I’m not sure God sends it exactly, I do believe God can use it in a redemptive way. Let us continue:
I remember in 1969 when Agnes Sanford was visiting the Trappist Monastery in Dubuque, Iowa, to give some lectures on healing to the Trappist Monks. It was just then that an epidemic of Hong Kong flu struck the monks down. On the second day of the seminar Agnes herself, the renowned expert on healing, came down with flu and had to be taken to the Franciscan Sisters hospital. But a higher purpose seemed to be served by this as it gave Agnes a chance to talk to many sisters and nurses and, as a result, she was asked to give a workshop to the Franciscan Sisters and in this way, influence an entire community prominent in nursing. Paul recognizes the higher purpose that sickness sometimes serves when he says, “…even at the beginning, when that illness gave me the opportunity to preach the Good News to you, you never showed the least sign of being revolted or disgusted by my disease that was such a trial to you” (Gal 4:13-14).
3) A false value attached to suffering
Having said that some suffering is redemptive and is for a higher purpose, we must balance that statement by saying that most sickness does not appear to be redemptive. I have been asked to pray for persons who didn’t really want to be free of their suffering; it seemed to me that their sickness was destructive and was not a blessing sent by God, but they had been so conditioned by their training that they felt guilty about asking God to take away their suffering. When you see a person depressed and unhappy under the weight of disease you can be fairly sure that he is not being blessed by God. But if he believes that God has sent the sickness, he often feels guilty about asking for healing. Nor should we pray for a person contrary to his wishes. Even if someone talks him into praying, there will be a strong subconscious resistance that may block the healing.
4) Sin
If there is sin connected with the physical ailment (especially resentment), no healing is likely to take place unless the sin is dealt with first. At one conference we were praying for a woman with a truly destructive illness, but nothing was happening. The whole group remained in prayer filled with an expectancy that something should happen. Then someone sensed that the disease was hooked up with a deep resentment of authority and a number of angry relationships. When this was brought up, she agreed that this was very true, and so she asked forgiveness for her bitterness. Immediately the healing began to take effect.
5) Not praying specifically
Especially in praying for inner healing, it seems important to get to the root cause of emotional suffering, the initial harmful memory. Several times I have prayed for inner healing. And I thought we were praying about the right problem but nothing happened. It was only when we went back and found the root incident, which had been forgotten, and prayed for Jesus to enter into that moment and heal it, that the healing finally took place. Why can’t God answer our general prayer and heal the person without our having to discover all these specific roots? I know He can and that He does. But experience also indicates (this is not only my experience but that of others who pray extensively for inner healing) that there a few people who do not seemed to be healed until you touch specifically on the root incident that initiated the problem.
The author then goes on to give an illustration by way of a lengthy story, too long to include here. This blog post is long enough. However, I will say the truth of the above statement is made clear to me when I reflect on those I have seen overcome addictive lifestyles only when the recovery process went past the behaviors themselves, and addressed the painful things from long ago that led to those choices in the first place.
Not getting to the specific root cause of sickness is also one of the reasons people do not “keep their healing”. Some evangelists teach that the reason why people who have been healed and later regress is that they lack the faith to hold on to their healing. True, that is one possible reason. But another reason for the failure is not in the sick person, but in the minister of healing who has only prayed for the healing of symptoms. These symptoms improved as a result of prayer, but because the underlying cause remained, the symptoms later reasserted themselves. Let us not be too hasty in accusing people of lacking faith
I must admit I have found this one to be true. When Someone approaches me for healing I try to get as many of the specifics as I can. For example if somebody has back or neck pain I usually ask if they’ve had it looked at, do they know what is causing it etc. If they answer, for example that the chiropractor told them they have a disk out of alignment, then rather than pray for the abatement of pain, I will pray for the realignment of the disk. To take it even further, I will try to visualize the process in detail. Much the way an athlete will use visualization techniques. If it’s cancer and they’re in treatment I might visualize the drug reaching the cancerous cells, attaching to them, killing them, the tumor dying off and shrinking, etc., etc. Not being a medical professional there is only so much I can grasp, but every detail helps. Most importantly, as I visualize, I am speaking out in prayer what I am visualizing.
6) Faulty diagnosis
Just as physicians sometimes fail to correctly diagnose diseases and consequently fail to prescribe the right medicine and treatment, so the minister of healing, if he lacks discernment, is bound to fail from time to time. To be specific, the most common failures I have found are:
Praying for physical healing when inner healing is the basic need;
Praying for deliverance from evil spirits when inner healing is the real need;
Praying for inner healing when deliverance is the real need;
For example, our team prayed for a young woman in Peru for inner healing for depression. She never knew her father and was sexually abused in her childhood, so it seemed clear that inner healing was needed. But after prayer she remained as depressed as ever. Upon further inquiry we discovered that her mother had called in a witch doctor to cure her of an abdominal infection. This doctor had prayed over her and given her a potion; immediately afterwards she fell to the floor in a trance and woke up cured. We suspected then that deliverance was needed, and that we had missed it. When our team prayed for her deliverance, then she was freed. The inner healing was free to take place and her depression lifted.
I have left out the author’s second example for the sake of brevity.
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