How Can We Know the Will of God in Divine Healing?

If you are facing serious health challenges, finding a cure, or at least the best way to ameliorate your condition becomes something for serious consideration. Christians today spend a lot of money of medical practitioners and drugs because they believe these things will help them to get better, or at least, to feel better. And this is often truly the case. God can and does work through these things. It is also true that some branches of natural medicine can bring dramatic health improvements to sufferers, by providing the body with certain naturally occurring chemical compounds which speed up the body’s process of self-healing. This is not to say that all branches of alternative medicine are OK – some are inextricably tied up with occultic spiritual practices such as yoga, crystal power, astrology, reiki and so on. Nevertheless there is value in some natural remedies, as well as in traditional western science, and we need not oppose these things. God works through them.

But are medical science and natural therapies the ONLY way that God works healing and health? Can God heal by the direct action of the Holy Spirit and His Word? And if He does do this at times, has He promised anywhere to do this? Or is it something that He does totally sovereignly, not because He has promised to, but simply because it pleases Him to do it in a particular case for reasons best known to Himself? These are important questions to consider. And in determining the answer to these questions, we will take as our guide the declarations of the Holy Bible itself. Christians generally acknowledge that the Bible is the authorative Word of God by which we are to judge a matter. For a Christian, the Bible should speak with greater authority on matters concerning the will of God than does human experience or human reasoning combined with the power of observation.

Did God Ever Heal Miraculously?

If you believe the Bible to be true, it is a simple matter to see that the Scriptures contain plenty of examples of miraculous healing by Almighty God. There are a number of examples in the Old Testament where God healed miraculously – for example the healings of Naaman the Syrian through Elisha, and the healing of the people of Israel from the plague in the wilderness. In the New Testament, the four gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are full of stories of healing. A lot of attention is given to divine healing in the accounts of the ministry of Jesus Christ. The Acts of the Apostles also documents a number of reports of miraculous healings done through the hands of the apostles, most notably Peter (Acts 3:1-10; Acts 9:42-43) and Paul (Acts 14:8-10; Acts 28:8,9). But it was not only apostles who did signs and wonders. Philip the evangelist was noted for the healing and deliverance ministry he did in Samaria (Acts 8:5-8) while it is noted that Stephen, also not an apostle, “full of faith and power, did great signs and wonders among the people” (Acts 6:8). So we can see that God did heal miraculously.

Does God Still Heal Miraculously Today?

The Bible makes it very clear that God does not change. “I am the Lord, I change not” (Malachi 3:6). “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8). God identifies himself as the God of healing in Exodus 15:26 where He says, “I am the Lord who heals you (Yhwh Rapha)”. Healing is one of the redemptive names of God. It would therefore seem logical, if indeed God is NOT dead, that He has remained “the Lord who heals us”. He certainly showed Himself as the “Lord who heals” through the ministry of Jesus Christ and the apostles. If He is no longer today “The Lord who Heals You”, He has changed or He has lied. These alternatives are not acceptable to believers.

If anyone wants to say that God heals only through the best available medicine of the day, they are limiting God. Modern medical science is a relatively recent development and still faces plenty of cases where it cannot help. On the other hand, concerning God, the Scripture says in the writings of one of the prophets, “I am the God of all flesh. Is anything too difficult for me?” Some things are too difficult for medical science. If God is limiting Himself today to medical science, then His power in healing is only a matter of theological and academic speculation. It makes very little difference in the outcome of the application of modern medical science whether a person believes or acknowledges God’s role in the process or not. Antibiotics work for believers and non-believers alike. Skeptics would say we can drop the acknowledgement of God altogether, by an application of “Occam’s razor”. How this kind of thinking is considered to glorify God? Is it because we now worship a God who never shows His power in response to prayer for concrete manifestations? Does this God need an army of theologians and lawyers to represent His impotence or apparent lack of compassion for those in suffering? Or is it the theologians themselves who are guilty of destroying the very kind of faith that would bring God onto the scene in miraculous demonstration?

There is plenty of Scriptural evidence that God has promised to heal in response to faith. If the book of James, for example, is any indication, God has commanded sick believers to call the elders of the church to anoint them with oil. The Word promises that the prayer of faith will save, or heal, the sick. Actually, in the Greek the word for salvation ‘soteria’ is used for and certainly encompasses the idea of healing. In many places in the New Testament, when people were healed the word used in Greek was ‘sozo’, which is also translated ‘saved’ and derived from the same word. In any case, why would God command the elders to pray for something that He God, is often not willing to actually do?

Do Christians who doubt every report of modern day divine healing believe in the same God who did these things recorded in the Bible? Some Christians claim that miraculous divine healing stopped with the death of the apostles. It is claimed by some that we are now living in a different dispensation, where the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit have been withdrawn, where God never speaks directly to His people except as they read the pages of the Bible or hear a sound Bible teacher expound the pages of the Holy Writ.

Such Christians have been trained by their leaders to view with skepticism each and every report of the wonders of God as they occur in our day. But even if it is acknowledged that God in His sovereignty may have been pleased in such and such a case to bring healing to a sufferer in ways medical science cannot adequately account for, it is always with the caveat that these are isolated cases and we must not make theology out of such examples. Such Christians solemnly point out that many sick people have been sincerely prayed for and yet have not been healed. The conclusion is then reached that it could not have been God’s will for such and such a one to be healed. For in the minds of such Christians, to say that God willed a thing, and yet it did not happen would be a terrible affront to the glory of God. Such a thought is not seriously entertained for a moment. Every theologian knows that God is Almighty, Omnipotent and Sovereign. Therefore if God wills something, it must happen. But if some are not healed after prayer, so the thinking goes, God could not have willed their healing. Therefore it is not God’s will to heal all today. And especially since the apostles who first did miracles in the name of the Lord have long since passed away.

This latter view, known as Cessationism, is based on what I believe I can show is an incorrect interpretation of 1 Corinthians 13:8-12 which makes the claim that we know longer need any kind of miraculous gift of the Holy Spirit since the Bible is perfect and it is all we need now. This issue is important, and will be addressed in another place. What I want to focus on is the idea that everything God wills happens.
The Sovereignty of God

“God is in heaven, He does whatever he pleases”.

“having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will” (Ephesians 1:11).

God has created a Universe in which sin and disobedience is happening all the time. Human beings are not created as robots. God is working in faithfulness to the spiritual laws He himself has established. How God is working even through the rebellious acts of men and angels is something that only He understands. Yet it is happening. God has foreknowledge of all things, that is certain. Yet, it is not necessary to suppose that God is the one who is the author of the moral chaos that exists in the Universe. What God does though, is see to it that there are consequences for the choices made.

This means, if I jump off a cliff, I was free to choose to do it, but God is working through certain natural laws for want of a better term to cause my body to break when I hit the ground at high speed. Was it God’s will or my will if I commit suicide in this way? Did God cause me to jump off the cliff? Is God pushing every button to make sure that everything that happens is just what He planned? This kind of doctrine would be in line with the Islamic view of God, but it is not consistent with a God who delights in justice, something which the Bible declares of our God.

By what authority do certain preachers and teachers define the meaning of the “Sovereignty of God” in such a way as to imply that “whatever happens was predestined by God to be so”. Is it right to talk as if “everything that happens is the will of God”? Is it really an affront to God’s eternal majesty to suggest that God may have given a certain limited but nonetheless real free choice to some of His creatures? According to some preachers this is so, but I cannot see on what biblical basis this must be believed.

This idea, that whatever happens is the will of God, is a core assumption which I believe leads to much of the faith-destroying teaching which discourages people from hoping, much less believing, that God wants to make them well. But if we hold this view, we must also hold to the following:

1. Since sin happens, sin is the will of God. God planned, initiated and effected through people every single act and attitude of sin according to His Sovereign choosing. The murderous crimes of the Nazis, every kind of disgusting sexual perversion or act of callous stupidity was not merely permitted but also actively planned and effected by God. God is behind everything which He declares that He himself hates. And what does God do with the people he chose and planned to sin for His soevereign glory? Why, he sends them into everlasting burnings in hell! This conclusion is basically inescapable if you contend that everything that happens is God’s will.

2. As a minor collorary, every kind of sickness and disease is also the will of God. If it goes away for any reason, it was the will of God, but if it stays and kills, that was the will of God. This means the preachers are off the hook every time.

3. You can only know the will of God for sure after the event. You may pray for God to heal your father or wife, but only after you wait and see will you know what God planned for the situation. You can never pray with absolutely confidence for anything, unless you know that you have a supernatural revelation by the Spirit to show you that this was indeed God’s will. But if you don’t believe God speaks like that anymore, all you can do is trust that God will somehow work it out for the best, though multitudes get sick, suffer, perish and in the majority of cases are eternally lost. We are being asked to believe that all that was and is the will of God.

Many theologians teach that though these things be the case, and people have no say in their own destiny, humankind is still somehow responsible for their choices. No matter how skillfully and courageously such views are preached and put into print, they still lead to questions about the justice of God which do not go away. It seems to me to be ridiculous to claim that God finds it just to condemn people for things He himself made them do.

To find Scriptural proof that the will of God is not done in all cases, one only has to look at a passage which has become a favorite of the very preachers who delight in finding fault with those who practice and teach the ministry of divine healing. It is Matthew 7:21-23. According to this passage, only those who do the will of God the Father will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Those who do not, even though they work miracles in the name of Jesus, will not enter heaven. The reason for this is that they are workers of iniquity. It is not the healing of the sick or the prophesying in Jesus’ name that is considered by the Lord to be a work of iniquity. Otherwise Jesus Himself and the apostles would be guilty of such iniquity. No, there are plenty of scandals which prove that though a man may do many things in the name of Jesus, and results come, it does not mean that man or woman is living a holy life before the Lord.

The point I am getting at here t

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