Does Teaching That There are Hindrances Hinder People from Getting Healed?

One might ask, if we preach hindrances, won’t people be hindered, whereas if we just preach healing without preaching hindrances, people will just get healed and pay no attention to hindrances?  That sounds nice, but it’s like saying that if I never warn you that there are potholes that will blow out your tires on the route you are currently taking to church, you will not blow out your tires because I didn’t preach it to you.  Your tires will still blow out!  If I warn you and you take a different route, it won’t happen.  At any rate, I could not in good conscience preach that there are no hindrances in prayer when the Word clearly says otherwise.  Part of my job as a preacher is to warn you.  (Scripture talks about warning and exhorting people and rebuking them with all authority.  If you as a preacher, particularly a pastor, never do this, preferring to preach feel-good messages that don’t get anyone upset, you aren’t doing your full job.  If I didn’t warn you, I wouldn’t be doing my job.)

On the other hand, I don’t major on hindrances; I major on the truth of divine healing – that Jesus paid for your healing and you can just take it by faith right now.

I would certainly not want you, five seconds after you believed you received healing, to feverishly start going through a hindrance checklist (including the Mistakes to Avoid section of this book) to try to find your hindrance!  Just as plants don’t spout up 5 seconds after you plant seeds, there will be times that you have to allow the Word to work in your body when you don’t see an instant result.  This doesn’t mean that you have let some hindrance in!

I understand the appeal of just saying, “There are no hindrances to healing!  So be healed!”  But if Paul could state that your prayers will be hindered if you don’t treat your wife right (see 1 Peter 3:7 and the discussion, Is It Possible for a New Testament Believer’s Prayer to Receive Healing to Be Hindered?), obviously there CAN be hindrances that we will have to identify and avoid.

Of course, if you say that there are no hindrances to healing, that is tantamount to saying that EVERYONE you lay hands on will be healed.  That would be the case if there were no hindrances, wouldn't it?  Is that what will happen?  Probably not.  Even Jesus could not do mighty miracles at Nazareth because the people’s unbelief hindered it.  So of course there are hindrances.  But you don’t have to be involved with any of them.

By far the #1 “hindrance” I’ve seen is not knowing what the Word says about healing.  Fortunately, that hindrance can be removed by studying what the Word says about the subject.