Objection: “Faith Healing” Is Simply Mind over Matter.  Unbelievers Can and Do Get Healed Just by Having a Positive Mental Attitude, and It Has Nothing to Do with Jesus.

This is a half-truth.  It is true that some unbelievers can and do get healed just by having a positive mental attitude, and it does in fact have nothing to do with Jesus.  Given that having a negative mental attitude can make you sick (a fact attested to by Scripture), it should come as no surprise that a positive attitude can make you well – sometimes.  However, the doctrine of divine healing has nothing to do with a mere positive attitude.  You should have a positive attitude toward your healing, but there is more to it than that.  Divine healing is not received with your mind or with your attitude.  You receive it with your spirit.  Recall that 1 Thessalonians 5:23 says that you consist of a spirit, a soul and a body.  You can do mental things to promote healing in your body just as you can do physical things (changing your diet, for example).  These things are good, but they are not what “faith healing,” if you want to use that term, is about.

People get the mistaken idea that you just have to believe hard enough that you are healed and you will be healed.  Trying to believe something with no basis for it is frustrating.  As a Christian, you are called to put your faith in God and in His Word.  You count Him faithful, as Abraham did.  You are not trying to “psych” yourself into thinking that you are healed when you are actually sick.  You are putting a spiritual practice into operation that overrides natural conditions like sickness.

You are commanded to renew your mind with the Word (Romans 12:2).  But this is not brainwashing, mind-control, or “mind over matter.”  You are simply casting out thoughts that do not line up with the Bible and replacing them with ones that do.  Then your mind will side with your born-again spirit instead of against your spirit when you pray in faith.

The fact that some unbeliever got healed using only mental methods does not mean that divine healing is mental.  It is not.  Furthermore, having a positive attitude will not necessarily stop you from dying of a fatal disease, but believing God will!  If you’re so smart and you’ve got it figured out that this is mind over matter, let’s see you go get some cripples healed using mind over matter.  We’ll use the gospel instead, and we’ll see who gets more people healed.