Objection: Getting “Healed by Faith” Is Too Difficult
It wasn’t too difficult for the people who were healed in Jesus’s ministry. It wasn’t too difficult for the multitudes who were healed in Jerusalem in Peter’s ministry. It wasn’t too difficult for the people on the island of Melita who were healed in Paul’s ministry. The truth is that it is not “difficult” to believe that you receive something that is freely offered. Receiving healing is just as easy as receiving the new birth – once you see that you can. The biggest challenge we face today is renewing our minds to the Word so that we can see what has already been freely granted to us. The truth is that WE are the ones who make it difficult to get healed by faith with our wrong thinking.
In fact, part of this wrong thinking is the very objection itself that it is difficult to receive healing by faith! If you’re convinced that it is difficult, you will probably struggle and strive and get frustrated. If you are convinced that only those who reach some lofty pinnacle of faith can ever be healed, you will assume that healing takes more faith than you will ever muster and you’ll probably not even try to get healed God’s way. Or else you will put unreasonable demands on yourself, thinking that only extreme efforts to read the Word and pray will produce results, and even then maybe it would take years. However, the people in the Bible did not have years to “build their faith.” A man crippled from birth in Lystra listened to Paul preach and he got “faith to be healed” right away (Acts 14:7-10). So we must be missing something here. It can’t be that hard!
One wrong thought that can hinder you is, “Healing was easier back in Bible days. God just doesn’t make it that easy today.” If you believe that lie, you will think healing is hard today, and you will act on what you believe – and struggle! GOD certainly never said that healing would be harder in the day when people could be born again and baptized with the Holy Spirit than it was in the day when neither was possible!
How Serious Are You?
Most people will put forth far more time and effort to be healed through natural means than through divine means. If a doctor says that someone needs to take a certain pill six times a day, the person makes sure that he keeps doing it – even if he doesn’t see any instant results. He understands that man’s medicine can take time to work. Yet if he doesn’t see immediate results after praying, he’s willing to scrap the whole idea of being healed by faith. God’s Word is the ultimate medicine – it is health to ALL your flesh (Proverbs 4:20-22). But like natural medicine, it’s no good to you on the shelf! You have to get it inside you before you get any results. You must take it diligently, not just “try” it once or twice. Imagine how the doctor would glare at you if you told him that you "tried" the pills he prescribed once or twice and then quit because they didn’t seem to be helping. Faith is a lifestyle, not a Band-Aid.
Under the Old Covenant, God told Joshua to meditate (think on and speak to himself) the Word day and night (Joshua 1:7-8). People were commanded to write the Word in places around their houses where they would see it (Deuteronomy 6:9). God made it clear that the blessings only came when people ACTED on the Word.
For some reason, some Christians think that they can just coast along, skip church, ignore their Bibles, not pray, and then claim healing for anything when the need arises. It doesn’t work that way, folks, even under the New Covenant! If you are unwilling to take the time to read the Word and think about it and say it out of your mouth, your faith will be too weak to accomplish much. Under what conditions did Jesus say that you would ask what you will and it would be done for you? There were conditions, you know. He said it would happen if you abide in Him and His words abide in you (John 15:7). You have to abide in Christ and give His Word a prominent place in your life to satisfy this condition. Otherwise, you don’t qualify to ask what you will and have it be done for you!
So you may think some of us are nuts when we spend a lot of time in the Bible when we could be watching send-someone-home-this-week reality TV shows and talent competitions. You may think we’re nuts when we pray or listen to Scripture in the car instead of just vegging out or listening to worldly music every time we get behind the wheel. But when it comes time to get healed, guess what? You will be the one with the two-bit virus that everyone else is getting and we will be the ones who rebuke it and get rid of it. We have a saying in the computer business: “Garbage In, Garbage Out.” If all you listen to is daytime TV self-help shows, all you’ll have to fall back on in a pinch is their worldly self-help, which has no spiritual clout. Fortunately, it works just as well the other way – Word In, Word Out. Put the Word in and it will come out when the pressure is on. When Satan squeezes you, all that comes out of you will be a barrage of Scripture, and he will take off running because he has no defense against God’s Word.
Someone objected to me that I was preaching works by talking this way. Yes, you must do certain works to build yourself up in the Lord. You can’t do God’s part and God won’t do your part. He has given you His Word, but it’s up to you to do something with it. The person was upset because it sounded like you could take credit for your healing. Well, Jesus gave credit to people! He said that their faith had made them whole. If their faith could make them whole, my faith can make me whole. I’m not boasting in myself. It was God’s idea. He put the laws into motion. But I have to do something myself. If I sit around watching TV and neglecting prayer and the Word, I will have myself to thank when I get sick and stay sick because I’m firing blanks at the devil and he knows it. If I regularly take in the Word that is health to all my flesh, I will have greater health in my body because of what I did. I didn’t bear my illnesses on the cross; Jesus did that. But my decisions do affect my health, and so do yours. You can’t just say that it’s all up to God.
How much do you want to be healed? Demonstrate it by pursuing the Word and prayer with that amount of dedication, and you will conclude that healing is not quite so hard after all!
Walking in Love Can Be Difficult, Too – But It’s Still God’s Will
Here is an elaboration of the objection we are dealing with as it is usually presented:
“Do you know anyone who walks in health 100% of the time? No, you don’t, and neither do I. See, that proves that walking in health is just too difficult and God can’t really expect that of us. To preach walking in health all the time sets the standard too high. No one ever does it all the time, so walking in health must not be the will of God in every case.”
Let’s extend this bad argument to the area of walking in love:
“Do you know anyone who walks in love 100% of the time? No, you don’t, and neither do I. See, that proves that walking in love is just too difficult and God can’t really expect that of us. To preach walking in love all the time sets the standard too high. No one ever does it all the time, so walking in love must not be the will of God in every case.”
Get the idea? God never said that everything in your Christian walk would come easily, whether health or walking in love. Yet, substitute the word health for the word love in the paragraph above, which applies exactly the same illogic, and most people swallow it. You would be laughed out of any Christian event for preaching the paragraph on love, but they might give you your own “Mr. Expose-It-All” radio show if you preached the paragraph with health substituted for love.
The Bible is full of sayings that are not easy for your flesh to accept. Denying yourself and taking up your cross daily are God’s commands even if they challenge you every day of your life. These things must all be possible, seeing as Jesus never said, “TRY to deny yourself and TRY to take up your cross daily.”
You have the love of God shed abroad in your heart (Romans 5:5) even if you never walk in the fullness of it. You were healed by the stripes of Jesus and possess healing as part of your inheritance in Christ whether or not you ever walk in the fullness of it.
Is God Unfair?
God has a right to expect faith from believers. Is it too much to believe that God can and will heal your sick body based on the finished provision of Christ? Even under a worse covenant based upon worse promises, look at the faith that God demanded from men who weren’t even born again! He expected that the Israelites would believe that they could go possess Canaan and kill the giants in the land. Two of the spies believed it and the other ten let the natural impossibilities mean more to them than what God said. God was furious with the ten and they died of sickness as punishment for their unbelief. Was God being unfair? If you want to be the clay telling the potter that He’s unfair, that’s your privilege – and risk. God is just. He has a right to demand that people believe His words.
God expected Joshua to believe that He would deliver the fortress of Jericho to Israel. That’s a more impossible mission than you’d even make a movie about! God expected the singers to go ahead of Jehoshaphat’s army into a battlefield! What would you have done under those circumstances? Protest that God was expecting too much of you? Is God unfair? No. God has a right to expect that you will believe and act on His words, no matter how much they may contradict natural circumstances. That is not asking too much. Is your sickness as difficult or as hopeless as the situations just mentioned? I doubt it. God has a right to expect you to believe that He is who He says He is – The Lord Who Heals You (Exodus 15:26), who doesn’t change (Malachi 3:6). God still places a high premium on faith. If you don’t walk in faith, you can’t please God. It doesn’t matter how “good” you are if you don’t exercise faith. Hebrews 11:6 tells us something that really is impossible – pleasing God without faith! If you want to please God more, walk in faith more!
You can either be like the Israelites in the wilderness, complaining that God has asked something too hard from you, or you can be like Joshua and Caleb, believe God’s words, and possess what God has promised you.