According to YOUR FAITH Be It Done unto You!
One of the biggest barriers to receiving healing from God is the wrong idea that your healing is totally up to God. That is no different from saying that your salvation from hell is totally up to God. In both cases, God has made a provision for you through Christ’s atonement, and in both cases, it is up to you to believe this and receive what Jesus paid for you to have.
Suppose that you thought your salvation were up to God. “If God wants me to be saved, He will save me; if not, it must be His good pleasure that I remain unsaved.” This is no less absurd than saying, “If God wants me to be healed, He will heal me; if not, it must be His good pleasure that I remain sick.” God’s will for you concerning both your salvation and your healing are clear from His Word. He wants you to have both, and you receive them both the same way – through your faith.
Many who are prayed over think that the preacher’s faith is supposed to get them healed. This is not what Jesus taught. He never said, “My faith has made you whole.” In many cases, He told the healed person, “Your faith has made you whole.” It was up to the person receiving the healing.
Take the case of the woman with the issue of blood. Jesus was not conducting any kind of healing service when she touched Him. He was on His way to take care of another healing matter at the time. He had no idea that this woman was coming to Him for healing. He had to ask who had touched Him! The disciples were amazed because everyone was bumping against Him, but Jesus wanted to know who had touched Him in faith. He felt power go out of Him and He knew that someone had touched Him in faith, but He did not know who it was.
Therefore, this healing could not have had anything to do with Jesus’ faith. This healing was brought about solely by the woman’s faith. Jesus told her that her faith had healed her.
Where did she get this faith for the particular blessing of healing? The same way you do – by hearing the gospel. The woman went and got her healing “when she had heard of Jesus.” Someone must have told her the good news. Like anyone else, she had a general God-given capacity to believe, but she was not able to believe for this miracle specifically until she had heard of Jesus.
You will find the following statements in the New Testament (the Scripture references in context are below):
“As thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee.”
“And Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy...”
“Thy faith hath made thee whole.” (This phrase appears 5 times!)
“According to your faith be it unto you.”
“Great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt.”
“And perceiving that he had faith to be healed, said with a loud voice, Stand upright on thy feet.”
For your clicking-and-reading enjoyment, here are the passages of Scripture where Jesus (or in one case, Luke, who wrote Acts) said that the person’s faith (or a household member’s faith or a group of friends’ faith) was responsible for the healing:
The centurion’s son – Matthew 8:5-13
The paralytic – Matthew 9:2-8, Mark 2:2-12, Luke 5:17-26
The woman with the issue of blood – Matthew 9:18-25, Mark 5:25-34, Luke 8:43-48
Two blind men – Matthew 9:27-30
The Canaanite woman – Matthew 15:22-28
Blind Bartimaeus – Mark 10:46-52, Luke 18:35-43
A leper – Luke 17:12-19
The lame man at Lystra – Acts 14:7-10
There is also a case unrelated to healing where Jesus told a woman that her faith had saved her (Luke 7:50).
Now let’s look at what happened in a place where the people did not exercise any faith:
Matthew 13:54-58:
And when he was come into his own country, he taught them in their synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished, and said, Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works?
Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?
And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things?
And they were offended in him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house.
And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief.
Mark 6:1-6:
And he went out from thence, and came into his own country; and his disciples follow him.
And when the sabbath day was come, he began to teach in the synagogue: and many hearing him were astonished, saying, From whence hath this man these things? and what wisdom is this which is given unto him, that even such mighty works are wrought by his hands?
Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him.
But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.
And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them.
And he marvelled because of their unbelief. And he went round about the villages, teaching.
The Bible does not say that Jesus refused to do many mighty works. It says that Jesus could not do them at Nazareth, and that He marveled at their unbelief. Consider this: Jesus Himself, the best preacher ever to walk the earth, could not get many people at Nazareth healed because of their unbelief. Here we see the opposite side of the cases where people’s faith got them healed.
How unfair it is for unbelieving congregations today to point the finger at the preacher when no signs and wonders occur. Yes, the preacher must believe also, but even if he does, not much will happen in a congregation with a hostile and unbelieving attitude. If Jesus Himself could not get results where there was such unbelief, no other preacher can, because the servant is not greater than his master.
It is not that God did not want to heal every disease at Nazareth. We know that healing was God’s will from Psalm 103:1-5 and elsewhere. The same preacher (Jesus) was healing multitudes in other cities. Jesus did not change from one place to another. What the people received depended more upon their faith or their unbelief than it did on Jesus!
If that was true then, that is still true today. It is not all up to Jesus. It’s not up to God who gets saved or healed; it’s up to us. “Whosoever will” can receive salvation and healing.
It is worth noting that the faith these people exercised was not just faith in a vacuum but rather faith in Jesus. The account of the blind men in Matthew 9:27-30 makes it clear that they trusted in Jesus’ ability to perform the miracles, not in their own ability to believe something.
There is an account of a man with the demon-possessed boy in these passages:
Jesus attributed the disciples’ failure to cast out the demon to their unbelief. He had already given them power and authority over all devils (Luke 9:1-2), so power was not the issue. They already had the power! The issue was not what Jesus could do, but what they could believe.
Then the man asked Jesus to do something “if you can do anything.” Jesus again made it clear that the issue was not what Jesus could do, but what the man could believe. His answer was: “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.”
We know that with God nothing shall be impossible (Luke 1:36-37), but it’s not solely an issue of what God or Jesus can do. It’s also an issue of what you can believe.
In Mark 11:24, Jesus made it clear that you can have whatsoever you ask for if you believe that you receive it when you pray. It depends upon your faith, not Jesus’ faith.
This is not a popular teaching these days because many people are lazy and do not want to take responsibility for anything. It’s so easy just to say that whatever happens must be the will of God, and to let the will of Satan be done in your body while saying that it must be God’s will. If it’s solely up to God’s will, you have no responsibility. Yet Jesus made it clear throughout His ministry that it is up to you, not Him, to do something. God is not responsible for any man’s failure to receive something that is available to all.
This is especially true now that healing has been permanently provided “by His stripes” (1 Peter 2:24). Jesus has done everything He needs to do about your healing. Whether you receive the healing He paid for in His atonement is completely up to you. God can heal you, and God wants to heal you. The only issue is, can you believe it?
Many teach that Jesus healed people because He was God, but that can’t be true, as He would have healed people from the time that He was very young if the only reason He did things was His deity. He was just as divine during the first 30 years of His life when He did no miracles as during His relatively short earthly ministry when He did all His miracles. It was the faith of the sick people that made them well, not Jesus’ faith. If the faith of the sick people made them well back then, YOUR faith can make you well today.
You can be healed in God’s mercy by the manifestations of the Spirit operating through another believer. But the best way (and only sure way) to get healed and stay healed is to believe for yourself. Ultimately, it is according to your faith that it will be done unto you!
See also: