Healing and Effort
“I’m discouraged! I know that the Bible says I’m healed, but I prayed to receive my healing and nothing happened, and I don’t understand why. I don’t have much time to get into Scripture, but healing is free so it shouldn’t depend on how much I read my Bible. My understanding is that my life should be changing effortlessly as a Christian. So I shouldn’t have to put forth any effort to take what’s free anyway. What’s wrong?”
What’s wrong is your assumption that everything in your Christian life should be effortless! That is not what Paul taught.
Consider that Paul urged us to run in such a way as to win the race. That’s talking about putting forth plenty of effort, not just “coasting” through life.
Consider that Paul pressed toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:13-14). Pressing involves effort!
Consider that Paul had to keep his flesh under so that he himself would not be a castaway after preaching the gospel to others (1 Corinthians 9:27). Keeping your flesh under definitely takes effort, though the correct effort for that is to walk in the Spirit so that you don’t indulge the flesh (Galatians 5:16).
Consider that Paul urged Christians to be constant in prayer (1 Thessalonians 5:17). Prayer takes effort too!
Healing is not received based on your merits or your efforts to be godly. But that does not mean that you will not have to exercise any effort to walk in divine health.
You want to get to the place of rest, but sometimes you need to strive to enter that rest – where rest is the lack of strife! Isn’t that a contradiction? No, it’s the Bible, and the Bible doesn’t contradict itself.
Hebrews 4:11:
Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.
Healing is free, but faith for healing comes by hearing the Word (Romans 10:17). If you are too busy to hear the Word, you are too busy to build your faith in the area of healing, or any other area for that matter. You will struggle until you stop being “too busy” to hear the Word.
People might think that they needn’t put forth any effort because they’ve heard that there is teaching about “effortless change,” but I think many people misunderstand how that works because they’ve never really listened to those who teach that. If you will meditate in the Word, you will change for the better – possibly without feeling that you exerted effort to change in certain areas. But you have to put forth the effort to study the Word to have it produce effortless change in you! That takes diligence on your part. The good news is that if you abide in Jesus and His words abide in you, you will ask what you will and it will be done for you. Unfortunately, many Christians do not have His words abiding in them. They’re saved but they don’t know much about God’s Word, so they miss out on a lot the benefits that are legally theirs.
The multitudes healed in Jesus’ ministry (and later Peter’s ministry) were not healed effortlessly! They had to travel to wherever Jesus (or Peter) was, and in many cases, they carried the sick on beds or stretchers whatever distance they had to. They didn’t have vehicles with internal combustion engines back then! Don’t you suppose that carrying these people took some effort? The people who were healed on the island of Melita still had to make the effort to go to where Paul was; Paul didn’t go around making “house calls” any more than Peter and Jesus went around making “house calls.”
Consider what God told Joshua in Joshua 1:7-8. It takes effort to meditate in the Word day and night. Yet that was the way that Joshua was supposed to make his way prosperous.
Consider what God told all of us in Psalm 1:1-3. You’re blessed when you meditate in the Word day and night – everything you do will prosper. But that takes effort! You have to be serious about studying your Bible!
Consider that you are told to resist the devil (James 4:7, 1 Peter 5:8-9). That takes effort! You can’t just sit there and let Satan yack at you all day and not run him off with the Word and then expect things to go well. You are supposed to stand your ground with your armor on (Ephesians 6:10-18). You are supposed to fight the good fight of faith (1 Timothy 6:12). This is a fight that you WIN when you’re in faith, but it is still a fight, nonetheless, and any fight takes effort. When your body is screaming at you, “You’re SICK! You’re SICK! You’re SICK!” it takes effort to walk by faith and not by sight and keep agreeing with the Word that says that you were healed and that no sickness has the right to lodge in your body, which is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19).
You should see a theme here. The prosperous, successful Christian life is far from effortless. If you think that everything is just going to be fall on you like snow in Alaska, you are in for a rude awakening. You have an adversary who will do anything he can to talk you out of everything Jesus paid for you to have. Unless you can respond, “It is written” and know what is written, you will not have the success that Jesus did.
We live in a culture where many people want other people to exert effort and then hand over the fruit of those efforts to those who exert no effort. But that is not a Christian mindset, except that you get every blessing handed to you through the efforts of Jesus. But you can’t live off the faith of people who DO read their Bibles and expect them to get the job done for you every time you're sick. Grace provided everything for you, but YOUR faith needs to receive what grace gave you. “For by faith we have access into this grace” (Romans 5:2). Don’t freeload off others. Develop your own faith by studying your own Bible. If you’re young in the Lord, by all means get those who are more mature to stand with you in agreement. But don’t stay a baby. Aim to be one of the more mature believers who can in turn help younger believers.
The good news is that when you put forth the needed effort, you’ll see things change without feeling that it took a lot of effort! In fact, you’ll see that things like receiving healing when you need to do it seem to take less effort if you’ve already made the effort to fill yourself with the Word. It can become just as natural to believe and receive healing as it used to be to just resign yourself to being sick. You’ll surprise yourself sometimes when your reaction to a situation is very different than it would have been years ago. It may seem that your new reaction was automatic and effortless! But you only got to that point because you exerted some effort to grow as a believer.
Please understand that I am not trying to put you into bondage by making you introspective, thinking that everything depends on your efforts. You don’t have to move God (He’s fine the way He is) or change His mind about anything, and you certainly don’t have to waste your time nagging Him for what’s already yours. Most Christians’ prayer efforts are a waste of time because they don’t understand that God’s grace has already provided everything they’ll ever need. Effort and progress are not always synonymous! Many Christians who don’t know the Word put forth a lot of effort but make no progress.
Your effort is not to make something happen or to move God; it is to walk in the revelation of what is already yours. You should now read Crossing the Bridge from Head Knowledge to Revelation Knowledge for some more thoughts on this matter.