Breaking Expectation Barriers In Healing

God heals today through things like doctors, medicine, hospitals, physical therapy, vitamins, operations and the like. It may come as a surprise to some believers, but these type of healing resources are not the enemy of faith. The two things (faith and medicine) can go hand in hand.

I used to think that if you went to a doctor, then God was not involved in healing you, and the doctor did it all on his own. There are, in fact times when this is true--there are times when God does not get involved in a medical treatment and the person either gets well or dies based solely on the treatment they get. But there are also times when God will come into the medical process. He adds His anointing to the medical professional's skill so that we can get well. At times He heals us through medicine.

I didn't always know that. There was a time when I thought that God would not work through medicine. I believed that you either went the faith route or you went the medical route, and the two were incompatible.

I remember this one lady from a church I attended. She got a type of cancer that people usually die from. She underwent chemotherapy and radiation therapy, both of which made her very sick. She got so thin that her arms literally looked like twigs covered by skin. After months of this painful treatment, her doctor pronounced her "in remission." We were all very happy for her. She began to gain some of her strength back and she began to put on a little bit of weight. After some number of months, she became healthy enough to resume her position as choir director at church. One day at choir rehearsal, she shocked me by telling us, "I used to have cancer, but God healed me."

I did not say anything out loud, but I thought, "How can you say that God healed you? God didn't heal you, the doctors did. You did not have a miracle, you had medicine." I wrongly believed that God did not heal through medicine, and I was not alone in my thinking. There are many believers who consider divine healing and medicine to be mutually exclusive.

One day a visiting preacher told me that the Bible said that God used herbal medicine to heal people. I searched the Bible for them, expecting to prove him wrong. But to my surprise, I found two references to herbal medicine, and I also found references to healing balm, using splints to set broken arms, and medicine for upset stomachs. God really is not opposed to healing through medicine. Let's look at some of these passages that I found.

Let's start with herbal medicine, since that was the subject that sent me on My Bible search. Both the Old and New Testaments have passages about the leaves on the tree of life being used for healing. (That is the basic definition of herbal medicine by the way--using leaves and herbs to help heal the body). Ezekiel 47:12 says, "Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river. Their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail. Every month they will bear, because the water from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing." Revelation 22:2 says, "In the middle of its street on either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations." Both of those are pretty strong arguments that God heals through herbal medicine.

The Bible also mentions healing balm in 2 Chronicles 28:15 (where the Israelites used it to treat prisoners of war) and in Jeremiah 51:8. Let's look briefly at the Jeremiah verse, because it is interesting. It says, "Babylon will suddenly fall and be broken. Wail over her! Get balm for her pain; perhaps she can be healed" (Jeremiah 51:8) God is being a bit sarcastic in this prophecy. He was really saying that His judgment was going to come and no amount of natural medicine could make them well because they were under His judgment. But notice that God does acknowledge the healing properties of the balm.

There is even a verse where God refers to medical procedures (setting a broken arm in a splint so it can heal properly). That is found in Ezekiel 30:21.

The three verses about healing balm and medical procedures are not a particularly strong argument that God healing through medicine. God merely acknowledges the natural healing process (doctors and medicine) in these verses; He does not say that He is the one doing the healing through them. The are still relevant because He does not object in any way to the practice of medicine and He does not condemn it. Instead, the Bible says that medicine works.

Have you ever wondered why medicine works? It works because God, the creator of all things, created it to work that way.

We see aspects of God's nature in all of creation. That is why the psalmist said "the Heavens declare the glory of God." Part of God's nature is to heal the sick, and that is why He created medicine, so that His creation would have things to help them get well when they get sick. God is a healing God and it is His very nature to heal people, even those who don't know Him personally.

You might say that healing is one of God's personality traits. Yes, God has certain personality traits, and He tells us about them in the Bible. One of His personality traits is love--God is love. Another is truth--God cannot lie. And another of His traits is that it is His very nature to heal the sick. We saw a manifestation of that when Jesus walked among us. Every time He saw sick people, He was moved with compassion for them and He healed them.

In fact, God built healing into our bodies when He created us. He made us to be as resilient to sickness and self-healing as possible. He gave us immune systems to fight off germs. When we get cuts, our body heals itself. Broken bones grow back to form a solid piece. Our skin and organs constantly refresh themselves by producing new cells to replace damaged ones. God created our bodies to self-heal as much as possible because healing is part of His very nature, and we are created in His image.

I believe He created medicine for the same reason, because healing is part of Who He is.

By the way, the New Testament is very positive towards doctors and medicine. Luke was a doctor, and God selected him to write two important books in the New Testament, both of which detailed a lot of miraculous healings.

Paul was an apostle who healed the sick and raised the dead. But when his dear friend Timothy had recurring stomach problems, Paul encouraged him to take some medicine for it (see 1 Timothy 5:23). If you think about it, that is very interesting. Paul moved in the supernatural and in miraculous power (1 Corinthians 2:4). Acts 20:8 records him healing Publius's father, who was deathly ill (probably with Malaria). Acts 20:9-12 records Paul raising a young man named Eutychus from the dead. That guy has got to have faith for divine healing. Yet he tells Timothy take medicine for a chronic problem. I am guessing that Paul laid hands on Timothy and prayed for healing. But when Timothy did not appear to get better, Paul wrote, "No longer drink water exclusively, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments" (1 Timothy 5:23).

Paul's instruction to Timothy reminds me of a famous quote by John Wimber, "When I have a headache I pray and I take an aspirin. Which ever one works first is fine with me!"

We have been talking about God healing through medicine as well as healing miraculously. Some people will consider the verses about healing balm and splints and stomach medicine as circumstantial arguments and not be convinced. But there is a passage that clearly shows God healing through medicine. That is found in 2 Kings 20 and also in Isaiah 38. It is the story of King Hezekiah got a boil which made him sick and near to death. God sent Isaiah to prophesy to him and instruct him to set his house in order because he was going to die. Hezekiah responding by crying out to God and petitioning Him for his life. God responded to Hezekiah's prayer. Isaiah was leaving the palace after delivering his "you are going to die word." when God sent him back to Hezekiah with an "Ok, since you ask Me, I will heal you" word.

Look at 2 Kings 20:4-5, "4 And it happened, before Isaiah had gone out into the middle court, that the word of the Lord came to him, saying, 5 'Return and tell Hezekiah the leader of My people, "Thus says the Lord, the God of David your father: I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; surely I will heal you."'"

How did God accomplish this healing that He promised? He did it through medicine. Look at Isaiah 38:21. It says, "Now Isaiah had said, 'Let them take a lump of figs, and apply it as a poultice on the boil, and he shall recover.'" 2 Kings 20:7 records it this way: "Then Isaiah said, 'Take a lump of figs.' So they took and laid it on the boil, and he recovered."

That Bible story is pretty strong evidence that God does indeed heal through medicine!

Some of you are thinking, "Ok, God heals through medicine. So what? What does that mean to us when we pray for the sick?"

Actually, it has a lot to do with us. It means that we must never discount the medical route in the healing process. We should not advise people to go off their medicine unless God gives a prophetic direction to do so. We must honor and respect doctors and other members of the medical profession. We want to build a good relationship with them, where they will ask us to pray for the ones who they can't heal. At the same time, we should be comfortable in sending those who we pray to the doctor if the prayer doesn't heal them.