Divine Healing

I’ve mentioned the childhood game of Mousetrap before in this blog… I’m reminded of it again as I write this entry.

For me, the tension in that game wasn’t in the gradual assembling of all the pieces necessary to beating your opponent. It wasn’t in rolling higher numbers so you could stay ahead of your fellow mice. It was when it all came together and you got the opportunity to turn that crank and set the little steel ball in motion.

Oh, the drama that ensued! Would the ball get stuck on the stairs? Would it roll down the red chute too weakly to trip the spring that sent the ball through the bathtub to launch the poised plastic diver? Would some misalignment, some inherent flaw in the setup, sabotage the entire chain reaction? Had I held my mouth just right when I turned that crank?

Maybe we approach this idea of divine healing the same way. If it’s not happening, there must be something wrong in our setup. We’ve forgotten a promise we need to claim, we haven’t prayed enough or the right way, our faith is flawed, our motives aren’t right… we can think of many potential reasons for the “failure.” And it often leads to guilt and dismay. We aren’t doing something right, and we don’t know what it is.

Let’s simplify. Let’s let go of guilt – even of trying to figure out what God’s doing – and pray the simple prayer spoken by Pastor Dave in Sunday’s second service:

“While we lay our petitions before You, we bind You to nothing, except to glorify Your name.”

That’s the spirit in which Jesus faced the pain of the cross and the anguish of bearing our sin (which He was not spared); that’s the attitude with which Paul accepted the thorn in the flesh (which he was not delivered from - 2 Cor. 12:1-10): “Here’s what we’d prefer, Lord… but Your will be done, not ours. Our only requirement, the only thing we insist upon, is that Your name be glorified."

In Jesus’ case, that Name was glorified in the cross and death, because it led to resurrection and life for countless sinners. In Paul’s case, that Name was glorified in the thorn because it preserved Paul as a humble showcase for God’s power and glory.

At allianceacademicreview.com., Paul L. King writes, “Modern faith teaching has often put a guilt trip on people, saying that it is absolutely God's will for all to be healed, and if a person isn't healed, it is man's fault. While sin or lack of faith could be causes for lack of healing, [in his book The Lord for the Body] Simpson listed a variety of reasons, asserting that while it is generally God's will to heal all who believe, God in His sovereignty may not always grant healing.”

I do believe God wants to miraculously heal His sick children far more often than He’s given opportunity to. But it’s not a blanket provision for everyone all the time. And when He doesn’t, it’s not because we haven’t held our mouth the right way when we prayed. Divine healing isn’t about having all our ducks in a row. It’s not about us; it’s about Him. It’s about commitment to whatever God is doing, whatever brings Him glory, so that whether He is giving or taking away we can say,

“Blessed be the name of the Lord.”