Healing
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I have a friend who's been battling an illness for almost a decade. She's been to countless doctors, been through a myriad of prescriptions, yet she's remained sick and perplexed by a condition that has been cured in so many other people. If God is a loving God, why doesn't God heal everybody?
One of God's names is Jehovah-Rapha, or "the Lord who heals." In Exodus 15:26, God proclaims that he is the healer of all people: "I will not make you suffer any of the diseases I sent on the Egyptians; for I am the Lord who heals you." In the Old Testament, the Bible attests to numerous healings and similarly, in the ministry of Jesus and his disciples, healing miracles abound. So if God affirms Himself as a healer, why doesn't He heal everyone?
Maybe your own health is in jeopardy, or someone you love is in distress. You pray earnestly and often, but nothing happens. At one time or another, all of us have prayed for a healing and not received a response. We're left asking "why", but typical answers don't suffice, such as God is testing our faith, we don't possess enough faith, or we have been healed but we just need to claim it.
A reason why God doesn't heal may be expressed in 2 Corinthians 12:8-9 where the Apostle Paul proclaimed, "Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. Each time he said, 'My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.' So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me."
Oftentimes, the responsibility of healing is placed -- or blamed -- upon us for having insufficient faith. However, what if the matter at hand isn't about our faith, but about God's will? What if God is doing something different, and it's about what our suffering can impart to the world?
This may illuminate why our infirmities are actually the flip side of our gifts. One example of this is the link between mental illness and creativity. In 2002, Stanford researchers Terence Ketter and Connie Strong discovered that healthy artists and people with bipolar disorder have many personality traits in common -- more than the artists share with the population in general.
Some of the better-known creative individuals who also struggled with mental illness include Vincent Van Gogh, Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, Robert Schumann, Beethoven, Tim Burton, Francis Ford Coppola and Virginia Woolf. If healed of their infirmity, would they have also lost their creative powers?
There are numerous examples of these links. People with extraordinary sensitivity, elevated empathy and exceptional achievement have grappled with mental health disorders -- and some have changed the world. Perhaps they sought healing, and God chose not to heal them. Was He using their brokenness so that they could impart their gifts to the world?
On the other hand, what if faith does play an important role in healing? When Jesus healed the sick, on numerous occasions he said, "Your faith has made you well." In Matthew 9:20-22, Jesus healed a woman who had suffered for many years from constant bleeding. In the Bible, there appears to be a crucial link between faith and healing. In light of the many Scriptures concerning faith and its relation to healing, we can conclude that sometimes healing doesn't take place due to a lack of faith, or more specifically, the pleasing type of faith honored by God. However, we mustn't assume that every time someone lacks healing, the reason is a lack of faith.
Sometimes our suffering serves a higher purpose. At the time, it may not make sense to us, but sometimes God wants to go beyond merely healing our physical bodies in order to develop our character and aid us in spiritual growth. God may have a higher purpose in allowing someone to live for years with a painful disability. God used the circumstances to redirect them toward a complete dependence upon Him, and toward the path of purpose and destiny that were part of their life's plan.
When you hear about someone who shares your impairment, your heart instantly feels deeply for them. We desire to connect with the person who is suffering and help if we can. Suffering arouses the empathy within us.
There are those who claim that the perfect role models for people who are suffering are people who have triumphed over an affliction. There is plenty of support for this premise. Boundless evidence exists of triumph over tragedy. Even 12-step programs emphasize putting faith in a higher power as a gateway to healing.
The desire for wholeness is inherently part of our nature as human beings. In 1 Peter 5:7 God has requested us to cast our cares upon Him, and illness certainly meets the criteria of being one of those cares.
Yet, at times, God opts not to heal, for reasons we cannot fathom. If that happens to us, we may be gentler with ourselves when healing eludes us. We may also be more tolerant of our own weaknesses and pay more attention to God's will in relation to our particular circumstances. And there might be something even greater at stake -- God may be utilizing our situation to turn the world into a better place.
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