Can “Sin in the Camp” Stop Me from Getting Healed?

That depends on whether you want to receive your healing through the gifts of the Spirit (never guaranteed) or through faith in the Word (always guaranteed).  If you want to receive through a special manifestation of the Spirit, YES, it can be a hindrance.  If you are receiving by your own faith, NO, it will not be a hindrance.

This will shock those of you who have been taught that “sin in the camp” is strictly an Old Testament idea or a legalistic Law of Moses idea.  The same idea carries through into the New Testament in Ephesians 4:30, where we are told not to grieve the Holy Spirit.  The clear context in the surrounding verses is the avoidance of certain sins.  In other words, if you deliberately allow blatant, unrepentant sin in your church and the leadership won’t address it, the Holy Spirit will be grieved, and if He is grieved, He won’t move the way that He would if He were not grieved.

I am shocked at how many churches allow shacked-up musicians and singers on the platform.  The current record where I’ve been personally is four such people on the same worship team, but that church no longer exists, to no surprise on my part.  Many churches allow this foolishness in the name of grace, love, forgiveness, tolerance, and so on.  We run a “tight ship.”  While we don’t chase sinners out the door, we don’t tolerate hypocrites who one minute tell of their extreme love for the Lord and another minute are fornicating with their cohabitants.  We’ve always seen a lot of miracles.  The churches that ran sloppy operations where Bobby Badmorals and Sally Shackup were leading worship didn’t have miracles through the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and they couldn’t seem to understand why we had lots of them and they didn’t have many (or any).  Some people are taught that because of grace, God just winks at and overlooks such blatant hypocrisy.  But if you think that God overlooks hypocrisy under grace, you should read what happened to Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11).  God is still holy, and while He does not demand perfection from us, He does not want those in front of the congregation to be modeling un-Christian lifestyles for the world to see, making a mockery of His life-transforming gospel.  Shack-ups on worship teams should all be replaced with Christians.

So if your goal is to receive through a minister’s anointing in a service and the Holy Spirit is grieved, you may not see Him move the way He needs to in order to get your healing to you.

However, if you “believe you receive when you pray,” that is another matter entirely.  Someone else’s sin, and even a whole church’s sin for that matter, cannot stop you from receiving healing by faith in God’s Word.  That would not be fair.  God will not withhold healing from you because of what other people around you are doing.  If there is sin around and someone called on Jesus to be saved from his sins and become a new person in Christ, would God honor his prayer and do it for him?  Absolutely!  It is a transaction between you and God that does not depend on the faith or conduct of anyone but you.  So if your basis for receiving healing is the more reliable “believe you receive” approach, “sin in the camp” cannot stop you from receiving the healing that is already legally yours because of what Jesus did for you.