BLOCKS TO HEALING
Why isn't everyone healed when we ask God? Didn't Jesus heal everyone who was brought to Him? Anyone who has put a tentative foot into the water of Christian Healing knows that healing does not always occur the way we ask for it.
I am sure that there are some circumstances that we shall never understand, but there seem to be some blocks to healing that we might both see and remove. Since healing is the manifestation of God's unconditional love poured out for us in Jesus Christ, anything that opposes God's love will be found to be a block to healing.
If we see love as an act of will to commit our lives into the hands of a living God, we look for blocks in areas where unforgiveness opposes love, the will has not decided to receive and give love, or faith does not ask and trust God's love to be sufficient to meet any need that causes dis ease.
UNFORGIVENESS
Perhaps the greatest block to healing is unforgiveness. When we live in unforgiveness, we block the flow of God's love that is the necessary ingredient for all healing. The need to forgive is central to the teaching of Jesus. We are to forgive not seven, but seventy times seven times.
Our failure to forgive blocks our being forgiven. We pray, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." It is one of the needs that we face as we seek to live in the freedom of God's love rather than in the bondage to those persons we fail to forgive.
Unforgiveness or resentment will block healing whether it resides in the intercessor or the one receiving. I cannot pray effectively as long as I willingly hold unforgiveness of any kind in my heart. I cannot receive the healing love of God until I am willing to release the blocks unforgiveness brings into my relationship with God.
We are to seek God's love, and healing power for those places and persons in need. We may remove one of the great blocks by committing ourselves to forgive our enemies that we might be free from bondage to receive God's gift of love.
THE WILL
Another block to healing is the will. Many people are not willing to be made whole on God's terms. If they are healed, they might have to do something they don't want to do, or don't believe they can do. They may like the attention they receive as invalids. It invites the question that Jesus asked the man at the sheep gate in Jerusalem. "Do you want to be healed?" Jn 5:6
God will not heal us against our will. That would not be love, for love does not impose. Love offers. Love does not indulge. It is not something that we talk God into doing that He does not want to do. We must ask God, and be willing to receive what He seeks to give us.
If we are to receive God's love, we must make the decision that we will to receive what He wills to give. It is the decision to pray the prayer that Jesus taught us, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven - nothing more , nothing less, nothing else." When we can pray that prayer with all of our heart, we are open to receive the love that God wills to pour out into our lives.
When we are willing to acknowledge that God's wisdom is greater than our own, we are open to His love. When we are aware of the fact that He loves us more than we love ourselves and wants to give us more than we either desire or deserve, we are ready to make that decision to will God's will and receive from Him the love that heals and makes whole.
FAITH
Another block to healing is that we don't ask. We lack the faith to ask God for the healing. It does not take a great deal of faith. It takes the faith as small as a grain of mustard seed, but it must fall into the ground. It must be planted if it is going to grow. We need enough faith to reach out, trusting God in His faithfulness to reach us.
Someone once asked, "How do I know when I have faith enough to lay hands on someone and ask God to heal them?" The answer is simple. It is when you lay your hands on some person and pray for them. It is not my faith that heals me. It is God that heals. Faith simply says, "I will to receive what you have prepared for me, Lord. I trust you to love me. I trust you to give me not what I deserve, but what your love intends for me in your Kingdom which is at hand.
Faith is the trust that opens the door to invite God into our lives, knowing that He will always bring us that which will lead us out of darkness into light, and manifest in us that wholeness He prepared for us before the world began. Our faith need only be enough to reach God's faithfulness
PRAYING AMISS
When we pray for healing, and we do not see any clear answer to the prayers, we turn back to God, and ask Him what He wants. We ask Him how to pray for the healing that He has in mind for the person, and we follow His direction.
Prayer must be more than a well articulated request for God to do what we ask. It must include the will to pursue His direction in whatever He wants to give us as an expression of His love for us. Prayer must be the continuing dialog that enables us to pursue God's will until we have found His way to
the healing He has for us.
There are times when healing does not occur because we are praying for the healing of symptoms and miss the disease. There was a woman who had an issue of blood who received a great deal of prayer for her healing. She was not healed through the prayer.
When she asked the Lord what to do, He told her to make a confession. When she finally made her confession, the issue of blood was healed before she walked out of the church.
I recall a sore knee that I had that made kneeling hard. I asked for healing, nothing happened. I asked others to pray for me, nothing happened. I even had it exorcised, nothing happened. When I asked the Lord what to do, He said to go and pray for someone else's knee. When I was obedient to what He asked, my knee was healed.
A lady with narcolepsy came for prayer. When we prayed for the healing of the narcolepsy, nothing seemed to happen. When we found that it began during her last pregnancy about which she was angry, we prayed for the healing of the memories and cast out a spirit of anger. The narcolepsy was healed.
LOVE
God answers every prayer out of His love. He cannot impose that love, and He cannot love and indulge us at the same time. He listens for His children to respond to Jesus, the Word He has spoken into the flesh of Mary as He said, "I love you." When we are ready to respond, He hears, and answers us out of that love.
If we, like so many children, turn away believing He does not hear because He does not give us what we ask, we miss the love that He is seeking to bestow upon us. As we pursue the relationship in prayer and obedience, He leads us into the full expression of that love, and we begin to see the unfolding revelation that He has given us in Jesus Christ, the Embodiment of His eternal love for us. When we receive that love, we know the blocks to healing have been removed.