A gracEmail reader asks why God heals some people but not others, some instantly while others gradually, and some directly but others through the ministry of physicians, psychologists, naturalists, praying believers or a variety of other caregivers.
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There are many questions for which we do not have clear answers. We do know that God is sovereign in these matters, that all healing is a gift of grace, and that we do not want to go lacking simply because we do not ask. We may therefore request God’s healing with a powerful sense of expectancy, based on the atonement of Jesus Christ as mediated by the Holy Spirit. When God does not heal now, he is powerfully present nevertheless, to suffer with us and to sustain us by his grace. Our present brokenness always points us to our wholeness in God’s future. The resurrection will bring perfect healing to all of God’s people.
For its first 500 years, the Church proclaimed Jesus as Savior and healer, victor over sin and Satan and all his works, the bearer of God’s Kingdom which comes with visible power to transform lives and to heal bodies, minds and spirits as God in his kindness sees fit. Through the centuries, that vision was obscured or replaced by other perceptions of reality — institutional, sacramental, superstitious, scientific, deistic and rationalistic. As we enter these early years of the 21st century and the third Christian millennium, all human-powered, human-centered, humanly-devised worldviews are being revealed as practically powerless, spiritually bankrupt and doomed to extinction.
Today, I believe, God’s people throughout the universal Church are being renewed to proclaim and to live out the original vision brought by Jesus Christ — a vision of the Father as the all-powerful creator of the universe; of Jesus Christ as Savior, healer and redeemer of our personhood in its wholeness; and of the Holy Spirit as the personal, powerful Presence of the heavenly Father and the risen Jesus in our midst. Let us work and pray to be found in the center of that vision.
