When Are Your Prayers For Healing Effective?
A few years ago, I wrote an article called, “How Do You Pray For Healing?”
At that time, I realized that I had been praying amiss. Not specifically for healing, but just generally speaking.
How did I come to this startling revelation?
Let me simplify it.
It’s like having diabetes or cancer, and praying for God to heal you; while you continue to visit fast food restaurants several times per week, and go on devouring sugar and carbs on a daily basis.
It’s like spending all your time talking about your dreams, without ever working towards them.
Yes, God created the magic of faith, but He also created Principles and Laws to govern that magic, as well as those who choose to put those principles into practice.
Part of those principles have to do with our will.
God gave us free will to choose.
This means that regardless of what we may pray for, if our will (ie: our actions) does not line up with what we asked for, the request cannot be fulfilled.
Prayer is not something you play with. If you are not sincere, you will not receive an answer.
If your motivation is not correct; in other words, you are making the request out of selfish reasons, you will not be answered.
Oh, and one more thing.
God will not divinely intervene on earth unless the petition lines up with His Divine will, honors His integrity, and only if we will it; because He gave us free will and dominion over the earth.
How do I know this is true?
First, let’s consider another question.
Why didn’t Jesus do a blanket healing over everyone wherever He went?
Why did he only go to certain people to heal them? Why not just heal everyone? After all, He was/is God, so why discriminate and chose to heal only certain individuals?
I believe the answer is found at Bethesda.
John 5:2 By the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there is a pool, called Bethesda in Aramaic, which has five colonnades.
The body of Christ; Christians, are referred to as sheep. Sheep are animals that are not considered to be too smart. They require a Shepherd.
This gate was a gate through which sheep were herded.
John 5:3 Within these lay a large number of the disabled — blind, lame, and paralyzed.
So clearly, there were many there that needed healing.
What made this one guy different? Why was he the one Jesus approached?
John 5:5 One man was there who had been disabled for thirty-eight years.
John 5:6 When Jesus saw him lying there and realized he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to get well? ”
It’s as if the other people had not had enough germination or gestation time with their infirmity.
It hadn’t marinated long enough for their will to be correctly aligned.
They apparently had not suffered enough to step away from acceptance, complacency, and complaining.
I’m sure that there were many then that used their infirmity to take advantage of, manipulate or seek attention from others; just like many people do today.
But, with this man, it seems that the length of time that this man had been there; and been in that infirmed condition made the difference.
You know what that tells me?
It means that it took 38 years for his will to get lined up with his prayers or even his proclaimed heart’s desire.
His thinking had to be revamped; renewed in order for his healing to come. It took 38 years of stubbornness and stupid thinking before he changed.
How long will it take you?
Complacency
This lame man had become accepting and complacent about his condition; something that typically happens as a result of hanging around other sick people (doctor’s offices and even your family/friends/environment).
You don’t hang around sick people to get well.
If you want to be healthy, you hang around healthy (thinking/acting) people.
Furthermore, this guy had numerous excuses on why he had not received his healing from the magical pool he had been laying by.
John 5:7 “Sir,” the disabled man answered, “I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I’m coming, someone goes down ahead of me.”
He sounds like many people today who want to put their faith and trust in somebody else to take care of their health for them — like doctors; so they can absolve themselves from any responsibility.
And what did Jesus tell him?
John 5:8 “Get up,” Jesus told him, “pick up your mat and walk.”
Sounds almost callous to tell a lame man to simply get up and walk.
And not only that, but to pick up his mat. That’s like telling someone to throw away their wheelchair.
Now remember, this man had been lame for 38 years. It didn’t say from birth.
However, in 38 years of lameness, muscles atrophy.
So even if this man felt a surge of magical transformation when Jesus spoke to him, getting up would be something like a foal learning to stand and walk.
It would be a bit of a gangly experience at first, like anybody who has to relearn how to walk.
It would require practice.
And no one helped him up.
My point?
It takes effort. Yes, faith is needed, but action is also needed.
Jesus told him to get up and stand on his own two feet, pick up his mat and walk.
This man was apparently sincere in his desire to be well, because he did exactly what Jesus told him to do.
The problem was not so much in his body as it was in his mind.
When he stopped his self-sabotage, ending his limited thinking; his habits changed, and he was able to get up and go on with his life.
The same is true with most people suffering from pain today. They have to be willing, first. Willing to do what, exactly?
Whatever it takes to naturally heal, including spiritual transformation; mental realignment/retraining; and habit and lifestyle changes.
There are no shortcuts.
Stop looking for drugs and surgery as your easy out, because they leave you in worse condition in the long run.
When you line up your will with Divine Laws And Principles, real healing will come.
Are you ready and willing?
