Interferences To Healing

Sin

When you pray for healing and do not see results, it could be the sin issue hasn't been thoroughly addressed. Let me just say this: God heals sinners -- you don't have to be free from sin to be healed. That's good news for most of us, if not all of us here. However, things like rebellion can push you out of the grace flow and then keep you out of grace. And most healing is a result of God's grace. So if rebellion is blocking the flow of God's healing grace, you need to deal with whatever rebellion is there. But, just to let you know, if there is sin in your life, God heals sinners! Look at all the people in the Bible that got healed. Did Jesus say, "Well, you qualify and you don't?" No, He healed everybody. He had these crowds come to Him and He healed them, and most of them were sinners.

Healing is not something you can earn, it's not something you deserve. Healing is not something you qualify for. God heals sinners and we need to understand that. However, there are a couple of things you need to know about sin.

First, sin hinders praying. It's like static on the phone line -- your ability to pray is greatly hindered in sin and there are some sicknesses caused by sin. Let's look at a few verses along these lines. James 5:15-16 says, "The prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well, the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man avails much."

It is kind of a catch-all clause. If you are praying for the sick person and if there is sin involved, then we need to take care of that too. So you confess your sins to each other and then when you get rid of the sin, the process is now cleared up and there's healing. The last phrase of verse 16 talks about the relationship of prayer and sin. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and very effective.

Jesus healed a man at the pool of Bethesda. This man was sitting by the pool waiting for the waters to get stirred up so he could get in. And he kept trying. But every time he got there someone else would get there before him, so he couldn't get healed. Jesus healed this man. Now, of course, Jesus did this on the Sabbath and made a few people mad when He did. But later on Jesus found this man and said something very interesting to him. It is recorded in John 5:14, "Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and told him, 'Now you are well, stop sinning or something even worse may happen to you.'"

So, you see, there is a relationship between sin and infirmity. I am not saying every sickness is caused by sin. I'm not saying just because you are sick, that there is sin in your life. Job's three friends were basically accusing Job of hidden sin when there wasn't any in his life. And we don't want to do that to people. But the truth is, some sickness is related to sin. So, you at least have to ask the question.

Mark chapter 2 records Jesus healing a man who was paralyzed and his friends brought him to Jesus and let him down an opening in the roof. Before Jesus healed his body, Jesus forgave the man's sin. So there is a relationship.

The most dangerous sin you have to address is the hidden sin, the sin that the person is covering over, the sin that they are in denial about. Scripture says this in Proverbs 28:13, "He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy."

Healing isn't something you earn or deserve by walking in some level of exceptional holiness. However, when we pray for the sick, we must look at the role of sin. And it might not even be the sick person who has sin; it may be the sin of somebody else. In fact, the sins of the fathers can be transferred to the generations. In the Ten Commandments, Exodus 20, it says, "I do not leave unpunished the sins of those who hate Me, but I punish the children for the sins of their parents to the third and fourth generations." So God is basically saying that because of our sin other generations are affected.

And we do know this about our adversary: he's a liar, he's a thief, he's a cheater. If he can find an open door, he will use it. For some people, sickness is the open door he uses to take them out. That's why when you look at the Bible you find these children who are demonized. What did they do to get that way? I'm sure much of it just came down from generation to generation. The remedy is asking God to put a wall of separation between our parents and us and between us and our children and their children. It's asking God to put a wall around us and to cut off any right of demonic access or infirmity thorugh generational sin, because it may be something that gets transferred down. If you see something that is in a family line, like "my grandfather had this and my father had it and I have it," or "my mother and grandmother both had it," it may not be a genetic weakness. It might just be an open door that needs to be cut off.

You need to cut it off and break the generational right for sickness to come. We find this illustrated in David. You know David really messed up with Bathsheba and she became pregnant after their affair. In 2 Samuel 12:13-14 David confessed his sins to Nathan and said, "I have sinned against the Lord." And Nathan replied, "Yes, but the Lord has forgiven you and you won't die for your sin. But you have given the enemies of the Lord great opportunity to despise and blaspheme Him, so your child will die." Now that child didn't do anything. That child was just innocent. But David's sin was passed down to him and effected his health in a very negative way. You find the same thing in 1 Kings 14 about Jeroboam, another situation very similar because of sin.

Wrong expectations

Another hinderance to healing is a wrong focus or false expectations. This would be like the story of Naaman in 2 Kings 5. Naaman was a general and the head of the kings' army in Syria, but he had a problem -- he had leprosy. He was a great general, great warrior, but he had leprosy. Naaman wanted to get healed and a maidservant told him if he went down to Judah, there was a prophet who could heal him. So Naaman took a bunch of people, a bunch of money, a bunch of things and he went Judah to buy his healing.

They arrived and came to find Elisha. He had an expectation of what the encounter would be like. Elisha was going to come out, they would negotiate a trade because he had brought all these sets of clothes and gold and silver and camels. He would give these things to Elisha in exchange for his healing. But things did not go the way he expected. First, Elijah did not even come out when he arrived. Instead Elijah sent a servant out with instructions. The servant told Naaman he was to go down to the Jordan and wash seven times. Naaman couldn't believe it and was highly offended. Elisha didn't even come out himself and he didn't negotiate a price. He just instructed Naaman to go wash in the Jordan River. There were cleaner rivers back where Naamen came from and he wasn't going to follow these instructions. Naaman was mad and was about to leave in a huff.

If he had left he would not have been healed. He had a wrong expectation.

One of Naaman's companions suggested that since they had traveled so far, he might as well try what he had been instructed to do and see if it would work. Naaman conceded and went down to the river, washed and on the seventh time he was healed. He almost walked away without his healing because he had a false expectation; he had a presumption of what it would be like, of what would happen there.

Sometimes people have an expectation of how God should heal. Some people think it's only God if it's an instant healing. That's not true, but some people presume that to be true. Sometimes, God does heal over a period of time and sometimes it is instantaneously. You can't demand that God do it a certain way and refuse to receive it if he does it another way.

People have a perception of how they think God should heal and when He doesn't meet their expectations, they get discouraged. People chase after an instant miracle, they want to be healed and they want it to be quick. We have this microwave society and many of us are a product of that. The thinking is along the lines of, "Let's just put ourselves in the microwave and zap -- we'll be done." And that is how we think God ought to do things. Perhaps what you have is something you need to work at and labor over and expend some energy. We don't want to do that because it's too much work, we would rather just get "zapped".

It doesn't always come like that. But that is our expectation, and it is a false expectation -- we want the quick fix. Some people chase after the healers instead of The Healer, they chase after man. Please understand, I do not have a problem with somebody who's going to one healing meeting after another. If they are tenacious in pursuing it that's fine. However, some people are pursuing healers and not The Healer; they're not pursuing Jesus. They are going to someone expecting they are the only one who can fix them. They just know if they go to a meeting and are touched by a particular healer, they will be healed. What if they're denied? Sometimes people don't want God, they just want the healer, the person. They are chasing after a man not after God, and that is a dangerous thing. People want to get fixed, but they don't realize maybe the part of getting fixed may draw you to God and the ultimate end is fellowship with God. They don't want God, they don't want Jesus, they don't want the Holy Spirit. They just don't like the physical problem they have. So they just want the fix and that is a false expectation or a wrong focus.