It is possible you have been praying for a long time for God to heal you and you are yet to get the healing you need. 

And then you may have reached the seemingly logical conclusion that it is God’s will for you to be sick. Or why else will he not answer your prayers?

There are several people in the body of Christ that may agree with you – that sometimes, God puts sickness on us to teach us a lesson.

There can never be anything further from the truth – the truth of the gospel I mean.

Firstly, we do not understand God’s will by our own experiences. We understand God’s will by His Word.

Anybody that teaches that sickness can be God’s will definitely did not get that from God’s Word. I can assure you of that.

I believe Christians come up with this as an easy escape when things don’t work as planned. Rather than putting the focus on our own actions to see if we may not be approaching it in faith, we choose to reach the premature conclusion that it may be God’s will.

Here is the problem. If you go into a prayer project with a preconception that it may not be God’s will to answer you, you are already giving the devil a footstool to use against you.

In other words, if you can believe it is not God’s will to answer your prayer, then the devil will make sure that is the eventual outcome.

On the other hand, if before you pray, you are more than convinced that it is God’s will to answer you, then you are much closer to your answer before you have even said a word of prayer.

What does this mean?

It means you need to know God’s will concerning a matter before you pray about it.

And what is God’s will concerning healing? Is it to heal us sometimes and not to heal us some other times? Let’s look at God’s word to find out.

What was Jesus’ attitude towards Healing

More than anything else Jesus did, he taught and he healed.

How do you know what someone values? You know it by what he does.

What you spend your time the most on paints a picture of what you value. 

Acts 10:38
How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.

Jesus spent a lot of his time healing the sick and thankfully we can read about all those stories in the gospels. Was there ever a time that Jesus declined to heal because it was not his will?

There was never anyone that came to Jesus with sickness and went back the same.

But here is the most profound proof of healing being God’s will.

Jesus has already done everything he needs to do about your healing.

Your prayer, or the lack of it, won’t undo what Jesus has already done.
Your faith, or the lack of it, won’t undo the complete work of Jesus.

There are at least two important things we know Jesus did to solve the problem of sickness once and for all. These were prophesied way before Jesus was born.

1Pt 2:24

Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.
Jesus was severely beaten leading up to his crucifixion.

We read in John 19:1 (TPT)
Then Pilate ordered Jesus to be brutally beaten with a whip of leather straps embedded with metal.

What people didn’t know on that day was that there was a spiritual transaction taking place while Jesus was being beaten. Our sicknesses were being exchanged for our healing.

Secondly, we read in Matthew 8:17,

This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: “He took up our infirmities and bore our diseases.”

This was prophesied in Isaiah 53:4. It was another spiritual transaction that happened on the cross. Jesus took all our infirmities and diseases.

Let’s put this into perspective.
Jesus spent his time on earth healing every sick person that came his way. And then he thought of you and me that will walk this earth after he had left. He made sure we also would be healed so he endured the stripes and also took our diseases and infirmities on himself.

So here is the question. Will it be consistent with the Jesus I just described to refuse healing to anyone that came his way.

There was never a man or woman that came to him that Jesus turned down. Jesus never said the sickness had to stay because God was “punishing” for what a man had done.

We read of the paralysed man in Matt 2. Jesus said to him “your sins are forgiven”. If this man’s sin was not enough to stop Jesus from healing him, why would you think God is punishing you by putting sickness on you?

But here is the most important thing to learn from this that can finally set you free.

The two events that I have highlighted – the stripe and the cross – are things that have already happened.

It is therefore out of place to ask if it is God’s will to heal you when he has already done everything he needs to do to make sure of it.

Jesus won’t have to come take those stripes anymore to get you your healing. He has taken them once and for all.
Jesus won’t have to be crucified a second time to bear your sicknesses and diseases. He has borne them once and for all.

In the days when Jesus walked on earth, he had not done anything on a general basis to solve the sickness problem. So the sick had to physically seek him to get their healing. You could not get your healing on your own.

However, once Jesus completed these two spiritual transactions, everyone can access healing on their own without physically needing to see Jesus like it was before.

So someone says, why am I still sick if what you are saying is true?

Even though Jesus has done all he needs to do to heal you, you still have a responsibility to play. That responsibility is a responsibility of faith.

Faith is how we gain access to what God has already done for us.

It is the same way we got salvation, isn’t it.

Through this same death of Jesus, God has completed the work of salvation of everyone in the whole world. So why is everyone not saved? Is it because it is not God’s will for them to be saved? 

1 Timothy 2:4 says it is God’s will for every man to be saved.

They are not saved because they have not accepted the free gift of God.

They have a part to play and if they do not play their part, they will remain unsaved till Jesus comes even though it is His will for them to be saved.

It is therefore clear that God’s will does not automatically come to pass if people are not willing to play their part.

God’s will is for you to live all your days in perfect health (3 John 1:2). However, we can only see God’s will come to pass in our health if we are willing and committed to walk in faith.

Faith is what can give you the conviction, in the midst of the symptoms you may have, that God wants you well and he has done everything to make sure of it.

If you are sick, I believe the spiritual understanding to be convinced beyond every reasonable doubt that God wants you well is your first step to walking in divine health.