*Frequently asked questions*
The Bible, the written word of God, is our sole authority in answering all questions pertaining to our spiritual life. However, in reading the Bible, we must keep in mind that the Bible is not written like a book of science where each statement is exact and complete in itself, nor like a book of law where the goal is to elaborate matters in sections and sub-sections so as to avoid loopholes. It would be many times dangerous to preach doctrines based on individual verses or a few verses without looking at what the whole Bible says about the subject. The Bible is written for the heart, and can be understood in its proper sense only by those who are spiritually minded (1Co.2:14), and who desire to do the will of God once it is revealed (Jn.7:17). Those who want to argue against the word of God can always find arguments, and those who do not want to obey what God says can appear to find words of God themselves to support their stand. Please read the following with an open heart and a willingness to know God's ways and obey them. - Jacob Ninan
On one side we have Jesus, the Son of God who gave Himself up for us so that He may redeem us from the slavery of sin, who has healed all who came to Him when He was on earth and even raised people from the dead. On the other side we have a very large number of people who need healing from sicknesses with varying levels of pain, suffering, uncertain future, financial implications, etc. These people who need healing cling on to verses like "By His stripes we are healed," and "Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today and forever" and pray for healing. There are some who believe it is the right of every believer in Christ to remain perfectly healthy, and command sickness to depart in the name of Jesus. There are some who promise to pray for healing if the sick people are willing to show their faith by sowing a seed -- an amount of money -- into the healer's ministry. Many sick people, including those from other religions, go for 'miracle healing campaigns' looking for healing because the doctors are not able to offer any hope. Some get healed, but unfortunately a large percentage of people do not get healed. As a result some turn away from whatever faith they had earlier. Some get condemned in their hearts because people tell them that they did not get healed because they did not have enough faith, did not pray properly or in the right manner, or they had some hidden sin in their lives because of which God was not answering their prayers. On the other hand there are also reports of people who have been healed through prayer and some even raised from the dead. Even though there are many mistaken and even fraudulent claims of healing, there are also many real cases of healing. There are also some people who claim that since they came to faith in Jesus' promise of health, they have not been sick for years. In the midst of all this confusion, where is truth? Faith and healing
If God can heal, won't He?
Many people, and surprisingly even many believing Christians, find it difficult to believe that God can do miraculous, supernatural things. That's just too bad, because then they have a very wrong concept of who God is. The God who created out of nothing everything that we see, who designed and implemented all the physical laws that we people are discovering, obviously can do anything He wants. Even if we haven't personally seen or experienced any miracles in our life, if we don't think that God can do anything He wants, our God is only an imaginary concept we have thought up in our mind. The real God is Almighty, All-knowing, and All-present, and infinitely bigger than and beyond our wildest imagination. We are created beings with plenty of limitations in every way, but we mustn't downsize God to fit within our own concepts.It is one thing to know that God can do anything He wants, but it should be obvious that He can choose what He will actually do. He does whatever pleases Him (Ps.115:3). He will not do any wrong thing because He is a righteous and good God, and He will not do anything that is against His nature. For example, He will not tell lies or go back on what He has promised. Such things will be against His nature of truthfulness and integrity. Being a good God (so good that in order to save us from our sins, He took the punishment on Himself, so to speak), He will always do what is good for us. Here we may have a difference of understanding about what is good for us. For example, we tend to the think of the immediate good, while He tends to keep His eyes more on our eternal good -- and these two can be very different. He does care for our immediate needs, because He knows our frame, that we are very feeble (Ps.103:14). But sometimes He may consider that some trouble in this earthly life may be good for us to prepare our character for the world to come (Ps.119:67). A good example is what Job went through. At the same time, every bad thing that happens to us is not sent to us from God because some of it is could be because of our own sins. Whatever happens to us comes with His permission, and He promises us that He will see to it that nothing will be too much for us (1Cor.10:13). He also promises to turn everything (including the evil things) around to bring something good for us (Rom.8:28,29). We must remember that our understanding is very limited, and that if He thinks that certain things are good for us, they are the best for us, even if we don't have enough understanding to think so. We think that what is good for us is to have a life without any difficulties, but He thinks that some troubles in this life are needed for us to learn mature character, and so He may allow some difficulties to come our way. This gives us a big clue to understand why some of our prayers are not getting answered. God wants to give us something better, even if we may not agree with Him at the moment!
When Jesus was on earth, many times He was moved with compassion when He saw the sufferings of people, and intervened to help them. He is the same yesterday, today and forever (Heb.13:8). He is the same compassionate person. But that doesn't mean that He will always act in the same way in all situations. We cannot generalise from the willingness He showed to heal a leper (Mt.8:2,3), and assume that He is always going to heal everyone.
So, many people confuse faith with believing that God can, while not looking at the possibility that God may not want to do for us what we pray for. In terms of healing, maybe God wants us to go for medical help which is available, rather than to foolishly avoid it, like jumping off from the pinnacle of the temple and expecting the angels to catch us. Jesus called this, testing God (Mt.4:5-7).
What is faith?
When we know someone well enough we will know whether we can trust him to be our well wisher, whether he will keep his word to us, that he will not turn against us, etc. We may know him and trust him to such an extent that even if someone brings us a bad report about him we will not believe it because we know what kind of a person he is. Our trust in God is like that. We know He is on our side, He has loved us not because we are good in His sight but simply because that is His nature. We know He will never leave us, never do us any harm, He will always keep His promises, etc. Then, even when we can't understand something He does or doesn't do, we know He still loves us, and that whatever He does will turn out for our good. That is to trust Him. Actually, that is what it means to have faith in Him.Unfortunately, many people think that 'faith' is some state of mind that they need to come to in order to be pleasing to God or to qualify for getting certain things they want from Him. For this they try to repeat His promises again and again, and try to remove every thought of doubt or fear from their mind. This is totally wrong, because this kind of concept assumes essentially that we will have to 'earn' God's pleasure by creating this faith. No. God gives us everything that we need out of the goodness of His heart. Nothing that we can do can be enough to demand a response from Him.
The most well known example of the true kind of faith (trust) in God is seen in the Bible through the lives of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. When King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon asked these three Jewish men to bow down before a golden statue which he had made, they refused to do it, at the risk of losing their lives. They said, "If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire; and He will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But even if He does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up" (Dan.3:17,18). These men knew the difference between 'can' and 'will'. They were sure God was able to save them from the fire, but they were not sure if He would. But they trusted Him nevertheless. That is true faith.
When we have this kind of faith in God, we know He is able to do whatever we ask for, but then we leave it to Him to decide what exactly He will.
The Bible talks about two kinds of faith. The first is what everyone should have, a trust and confidence in God, knowing who He is and what He has promised for us. Without this kind of faith we can't be pleasing to God (Heb.11:6). The second type of faith is a gift from God in special situations (cf.1Cor.12:9). Imagine when we sick God speaks to us in our heart saying that we are going to be healed, we get faith! Then we are sure that we are going to be healed (cf.Heb.11:1). And then we will be healed. But 1) we can't use this faith to apply equally well to another time when we are sick, and 2) somebody who sees us getting healed by faith cannot try to imitate that (Heb.11:29). That was a gift of faith for that occasion. On the other hand, a person to whom God has given a 'gift of healing' (1Cor.12:9) has that faith on a more continuous basis (even such a person may not succeed all the time, because he may not hear God clearly all the time). This kind of faith is specially related to hearing specifically from God in different situations (Rom.10:17).
On the other hand, faith for healing is a special faith given to people when they are sick that gives them an assurance that they are going to be healed. This comes from hearing God personally (Rom.10:17). This is not something others can imitate.
Mark 11:23,24 is a passage commonly quoted by people to talk about 'creating' this kind of faith. "Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be taken up and cast into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him. Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you." How can one have this kind of faith, unless God gives it to him? But when that happens, such a man will have an assurance that does not have any doubts. (We must realise that unless we receive this faith, we cannot work it up by trying to cast out every doubt, repeating promises, etc.)
Can God heal miraculously?
Of course, He can. There is no doubt. He is God, and He can do whatever He chooses. At one point in history He made a dry road through the middle of the sea for His people to walk on. Another time He delayed the sunset so that His people could have enough time to win a battle with their enemies. When Jesus was on earth, He walked on the water, stopped a raging storm, multiplied a few loaves of bread to feed thousands of people, made blind men see, lame men walk, paralysed men get up and walk, brought people back from the dead, and so on. Jesus is still the same Person. He still heals people miraculously, in answer to prayer, without the use of medicines or doctors.Has the age of miracles ceased?
Some Christians have been taught to believe that miracles ceased when the last apostle died. They believe that miracles were performed by Jesus and the apostles only as 'signs' -- by Jesus to establish the fact that He was the Son of God, and by the apostles to show that God was with them as they started churches -- and that after the Bible became available and the apostles were no longer present, miracles stopped. The Bible does not teach this, and these are only some conclusions that some people have arrived at by their own thinking. It is true that some of the miracles of Jesus were signs (e.g., Jn.2:11). But there were other miracles which He did because He was moved with compassion for the people (Mt.20:34). His compassion has not stopped! We also see that the Bible promises that signs will follow people who believe in Jesus (Mk.16:17,18). And for a fact, down through the centuries of Christianity, even when mainline churches have become formal and ritualistic, many who believed have experienced miracles through prayer. People often misquote from 1 Corinthians 13 to show that spiritual gifts of prophecies, tongues and knowledge would cease when the perfect comes (referring to the availability of the complete canon of the Bible). But if we read it carefully we can see that such miraculous gifts will become unnecessary only when we see Jesus face to face (vv.12,13).God being the Almighty God that He is, and Jesus being the same compassionate Son of God that He is, it is unreasonable to imagine that God will stop doing miracles for us when we need them the most in the troublesome period of the end times. And we do see them happening to us or around us. Let's not be those who cannot imagine God doing anything miraculous or who will only do what they can understand and explain.
If God is loving and compassionate, and He is almighty to do whatever He wants, why doesn't He do miracles for us when we ask Him?
This is a question that has troubled people from time immemorial. We don't know all the explanations for this that are in God's mind. Yet, let us try to understand the answer as much as God has revealed to us in His word.The answer has to do with the sovereignty of God existing along with the free will that God has given to man. It is not correct, as some Christians try to do, to exalt the sovereignty of God to such an extent as to think that He does everything that happens or that whatever happens is from God. This is to attribute to God the responsibility for all the evil there is in this world. That would be blasphemy, when we know about the love of God and the goodness of His heart. On the other hand, it is not right to assume that after God created things He has left everything to us to the extent that only we are responsible for everything that happens. No. God still does whatever He pleases (Ps.115:3), and He is the one who is ultimately in control of everything -- not us, nor Satan. But there is a part which we too play in this big picture. What we need to do is to understand the big picture.
When God created the angels and human beings, He created us with a certain limited amount of free will. This means that God is not the one who is manipulating us as if we were robots, but we make a lot of decisions ourselves about our own life. That is why God is able to ask us to give an account to Him for our lives (Rom.14:12), which He couldn't have done if He was the one responsible for what we do. We can see what happened with this free will. Lucifer, the leader of the angels, decided to exalt himself above God (Is.14:13), and so he was thrown out from the presence of God along with a third of the angels who ganged up with him (Rev.12:9,4). These fallen angels became demons or evil spirits that now attack the people of God and try to turn them away from God. Adam and Eve chose to disobey God and as a result they lost fellowship with God (Gen.2:17). God made life difficult for them on the earth, and everything on earth began to go wrong (Gen.3:16-19). This is the explanation for the sufferings we have in this life on earth.
We suffer sometimes when we do wrong and suffer the consequences. Sometimes we suffer unjustly when other people do wrong to us. Sometimes we suffer just because we are living in this world. Looking at the suffering due to sickness, again we can see these three components -- our suffering when we don't take care of ourselves, when others do wrong (e.g., adulterate food stuff) and because we are living in this world with all kinds of germs and chaotic weather conditions.
When we are born again and become children of God through repentance and faith in Jesus, these sufferings don't go away. We are still in this world that is suffering from the consequences of sin. God is able to protect us or heal us when we get sick. Sometimes He heals us miraculously in answer to prayer, and sometimes He heals us through medical services (which He has encouraged to develop). Sometimes we don't get healed but die as a result of sickness (ultimately everyone does, before the time of the rapture!).
The simple answer to the above question is that it is a part of the consequences of sin. There is a combination of God's sovereignty and the consequences of man's free will, about which we don't have the full understanding at this time.
Why does God heal miraculously at times and not at other times?
We don't know. It is better to be honest here and give this answer, than to adopt approaches such as "You don't have enough faith," "You have not prayed in the right way," or "There must be some sin in your life." The fact is that even when our heart is clear before God, we trust in Him and have prayed sincerely from our heart, we may still not get healed. That is the plain fact of life, and we will be looking at different verses people quote to deny this. As a human being I wish God would always heal miraculously, or better still, that He will not allow us to get sick in the first place. But we must not live in a world of imagination but we must be willing to face the realities of life. This kind of article is not going to be very popular, especially with those who are looking for healing. But nevertheless we must see the truth.We don't understand why God allowed the apostle James to be killed by Herod but sent an angel to deliver Peter from the prison. Let's not try to say that James didn't have faith, he didn't know how to pray or he must have had some sin in his life. Some may object saying that in this example it was not a matter of healing. Yes, but it is a similar difficult situation to explain. We can't explain why a godly man suffers from a sickness like cancer, or dies in an accident. When we sit comfortably in our armchair and try to pass on judgments about others who are going through pain, let's not forget that if we 'stand' it is only due to God's grace and not due to our godliness (1Cor.10:12).
Aren't we eligible to get healed because Jesus has suffered for us?
"By His stripes we are healed," is a well-known quotation for those who preach miraculous healing as a right for Christians who have been born again through faith in Jesus. This is from verse 5 of Isaiah 53 which talks about the suffering and death of the Messiah on our behalf so that we could be delivered from the bondage to sin. If we read the chapter we can see that the whole chapter deals with deliverance (or salvation) from sin, and what Jesus had to go through to make it possible for us. It is 'healing from sin' that this verse is talking about. When we read the verse in its context, we should be able to see that the passage does not suddenly switch from spiritual healing to physical healing and back to spiritual healing for the rest of the passage. In fact, this verse is also talking about spiritual healing.Many people claim that this verse shows that healing is a right for a Christian because it is a part of the atonement that Jesus made on the cross. Therefore they do not see any need for medical treatment when they become sick, and expect God to heal them in answer to prayer. You may have come across some people who have died as a result of this belief, and you may have also come across others who have been healed. How can we explain this?
There is a lot of focus in the New Testament on giving explanations about deliverance from sin which Jesus has paid for. But the Bible does not mention that physical health is a part of the atonement made by Jesus. "Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved" is a promise from God, but there is no similar promise given which implies that whoever prays to God for healing in Jesus' name will be healed. And the fact of the matter is that many people who seek God for healing do not get healed.
As a part of salvation which Jesus has paid for, we can receive forgiveness of sins and justification before God, we can get free from the power of sin slowly as we deny ourselves, take up our cross daily and follow Jesus (sanctification), and we can be totally free from the presence of sin once we are glorified with Him in eternity. But many other consequences of sin, such as pain and sickness, having to struggle for our livelihood, having to face many problems on the earth, etc., have not been not taken away at this time. All such things are only going to be removed in the new earth and new heaven which Jesus is making ready. Actually Jesus tells His disciples that in this world we would have trouble (Jn.16:33). So to expect that we will not face sickness, poverty or any other trouble now because we have come to Jesus has no basis in the Bible.
But Matthew and Peter both refer to Jesus carrying away our sicknesses!
Matthew says (8:16,17), "When evening came, they brought to Him many who were demon-possessed; and He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were ill. This was to fulfil what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet: 'He Himself took our infirmities and carried away our diseases.'" This was a loose reference to Isaiah 53:4, "Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried," where the Hebrew word used for 'griefs' could also mean 'disease'. Matthew is not saying that when Jesus died on the cross He carried away our sicknesses so that we need not be sick any more. The context is when Jesus was healing the sick even when He had not died. The point is to say that this Jesus is the same one referred to by Isaiah the prophet, and that Jesus was fulfilling a part of that prophecy. It is not linking the death of Jesus on the cross as an atonement for our sicknesses.Peter, on the other hand, is writing clearly on spiritual healing when he quoted, "By His stripes we are healed." "And He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed" (1Pet.2:24).
I repeat, there is no mention anywhere in the new covenant part of the Bible about Jesus dying on the cross for our sicknesses. That is a wrong extrapolation that some people have brought in. "By His stripes we are healed" refers in the context in Isaiah 53, to spiritual healing.
Then on what basis can we go to God and ask for healing?
We can go boldly because we know His power and His heart that it is full of compassion and kindness. Jesus healed many people because of His compassion, and we can expect that He might heal us if we go to Him in our times of sickness. But we don't have any guarantee that He will heal, unless He has given us such a faith for healing.Didn't Jesus say that we can ask Him for anything and He will do it?
Yes. See John 14:13,14. To understand this properly, we must understand the context. Jesus was trying to explain to the disciples His love for them as well as the love of the God the Father to them. In that context He said that He would do for us whatever we asked. But think for a moment about the implications. Do you think that if we asked Him to tell everybody that some particular sin that we have done is OK, He will do it? No. This example is just to show that when Jesus said 'anything' it had its own boundaries. If we ask Him anything within those boundaries, He will do it for us, but not if we ask Him anything outside those boundaries. What are these boundaries? The will of God. The Bible clarifies this in 1 John 5:14,15, "This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him." Then God gives us an example of something He will not do even if we ask Him, "If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask and God will for him give life to those who commit sin not leading to death. There is a sin leading to death; I do not say that he should make request for this" (v.16). Whatever we ask God according to His will, He will do for us. So John 14:13,14 is not a blanket promise for us to ask anything we like and demand that God should do it.Doesn't James say so clearly that the 'prayer offered in faith' will restore the sick?
James says, "Is anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him. Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much" (5:13-16). This encourages us to seek God for healing from God. However, as we have seen from other parts of the Bible, God does not heal everyone in a miraculous way. So, this has to be understood as a general promise of healing (with emphasis on spiritual healing), but not as a guarantee for miraculous healing. How God answers this prayer is something we will have to leave to God. If the person does not get healed miraculously after anointing with oil and praying, we should seek healing through medical services.So what shall we pray when we need healing?
We can go boldly before God in the name of Jesus (not using His name as a magic word but depending on the authority that Jesus has granted to us), and request God to heal us from our sickness (Php.4:6). We can be bold about this because we know He has the power to heal and that He is compassionate towards us. But we make our 'request' (not as a right), submitting to His will and pleasure and seeking to glorify His name. If He gives us an assurance in our heart (the gift of faith), we know He is going to heal us. If there is no word from Him even after waiting on Him, we can assume that He may want us to try medical means of healing. After all, God is the one who has equipped doctors and scientists to discover and use these means to heal our bodies.If we become sick, it would also be an occasion for us to examine our life, confess our sins to God and ask Him to teach us whatever valuable lessons He wants to give us through that experience. In this way we can cooperate with God as He causes even our sickness to work for our good (Rom.8:28).
Are you saying that we need not battle in prayer with God?
No. The apostle Paul asked God three times to remove the thorn from his flesh (2Cor.12:7-9), and then God told him he would have to live with it, with the grace (help) that He would give him. God can take take our sickness away, or He can help us to go through the sickness. It would be wrong for us to demand healing from God stubbornly, as if it is our right. The Bible also mentions about Timothy suffering from stomach trouble (1Tim.5:23) and Epaphroditus coming nearly to death because of his sickness (Php.2:25-27). If perfect health had been purchased for us by Jesus on the cross, such examples would not have been there at all.Isn't it unbelief to use medicines when we believe God can heal?
It's one part of faith in God to believe that He is able to heal without medicines. But in cases where He doesn't choose to heal miraculously, wouldn't it be sinful not to make use of the medical facilities that God has made available? Of course God can send angels to catch us if we jump off from the pinnacle of the temple. But if God hasn't told us to do that, but jump anyway because we believe He will, Jesus called it 'testing God' (Mt.4:5-7).Isn't it possible that we may be stopping Jesus from healing us because of our unbelief?
We must make a difference between lack of small faith and unbelief. Jesus accepts even a tiny faith as big as a mustard seed as enough to do miracles (Mt.17:20). He accepted a man's faith even though this man thought that he was unbelieving when he felt that his faith was not perfect (Mk.9:24). Jesus healed everyone who was brought to Him. Just the fact that they went to Him for healing showed that they had faith. It was His power that healed them, and not their faith. But unbelief is a deliberate attitude of mind that disdains trusting in Jesus, which doesn't value Him, doesn't recognise Him for who He is, etc. Once when He came to His hometown, it was this kind of unbelief that met Him, and there He could not do many miracles (Mk.6:5,6). Obviously this would not apply to anyone who is eagerly coming to Jesus for healing.What did Jesus mean when He said, "Your faith has healed you"?
When a woman who had a problem with bleeding for 12 years came and touched Jesus' garment hoping for healing, she was healed instantaneously. Jesus told her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your affliction" (Mk.5:34). Can we interpret this to mean that it is our faith that actually does the healing? That would be preposterous! It was Jesus who did the healing, entirely in His power. What He was telling the woman in a colloquial way was that it was because she trusted in Him that she was able to get healed. We must understand the different verses in the Bible in the right way, in their context, and understanding their literary style so that we wouldn't come to foolish conclusions. The Bible is the inspired word of God, but every verse in it has its own context and style, and they have to be understood in the right way.It is very important to understand this particular word in the right way because false teachings have come into the church that imply that it is we people who create faith in our mind by manipulating it, and then it is we who apply that faith to make God do what we want. This is a false doctrine that has come up from new age (eastern religious) beliefs that we are all gods (or a part of God), and all we need to do is tap into (or release) the energy of healing that is around us everywhere. Not power belongs to God, and we are only created beings who need to submit to God. We have no power to heal, and neither does our 'faith'.
"According to our faith be it unto us"?
Two blind men wanted Jesus to heal them and give them sight. So Jesus said to them, "It shall be done to you according to your faith" (Mt.9:29). Like in the earlier section, this is a colloquial way of saying, "OK, I'll do what you want." It would be wrong for us to interpret this to mean that what we receive from God will be in proportion to the quantity of faith. Jesus was interested in the quality of our faith, rather than the quantity. Didn't He say that a tiny bit of faith like a mustard seed was enough to ask a mountain to be cast into the sea (Lk.17:6)? It is who we trust in that is more important. This kind of misinterpretation about the quantity of faith comes again from new age teachings that assume that faith is some kind of a trigger that we manufacture, that when we have enough of it, it can 'release' the power of healing from around us.What about people who claim that they have never been sick since the time they believed in healing from Jesus?
It is possible that some of these people are hiding their sicknesses, or calling them by some other name. Isn't it true that all of these people finally die from some malfunction (sickness) of the body? On the other hand, I also believe that God does raise up some special people at certain times to demonstrate to the people around that He can and does heal miraculously. But we must (and they too must) recognise that these are very exceptional cases, and that they cannot be used to form doctrines for all people.Isn't this a very discouraging message that you are bringing?
I know it looks like that because I am not guaranteeing miraculous healing as some people do. But I do say that God can heal miraculously and it is good for us to go and ask Him, expecting Him to do it. I say Jesus is able to heal miraculously, and He does that now and then. So whenever we are sick, that is the first thing that we should ask for. But if He doesn't heal us like that, then we need to go for medical help. But I am also thinking specially of those who are struggling with sickness and who know Jesus has the power to heal. I wouldn't want them to be discouraged if healing doesn't come in answer to prayer. Personally, as a human being, I wish that in the name of Jesus I could bring healing to every suffering person I come across! But God's wisdom is far above ours. We really don't know always what is best for us. We tend to think more about the life on this earth than the life that is to come in eternity with Jesus. If we trust in Him, we will be content to leave the matter to Him to decide whether He wants to heal us at this time or strengthen us with grace in the time of sickness and mould us better for the life to come. One day when we stand there, there will be no more sickness, pain, sorrow or death. We will be rejoicing with Him forever.At the same time I recognise that many people are being given a false hope that Jesus is going to heal every sickness miraculously provided they have enough faith, or that perfect health is a right for believers because Jesus died on the cross. This is leading many people to frustration, and many are even turning away from the faith. That is the reason why I have tried to bring out the truth so that we can know what to believe, expect and do.
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