If God Hears Our Faith-Filled Prayers for Healing Immediately, Why Does Our Healing Not Manifest Immediately?
This is high on the list of theological tough questions, so I don’t blame anyone for asking it. Many preachers have wrestled with this without coming to any firm conclusion, and they probably secretly hope no one asks this question because they have no decent answer either!
One “try” in church circles is that evil entities in the heavens are blocking the answer for a season the way Daniel’s prayer was blocked for a season. But this raises more questions than it answers. Could your prayer to receive Jesus as Lord be blocked for a season by wicked spirits so that your new birth might take 21 days to reach you? NO! It’s always immediate. If wicked spirits could block any prayer, that would be their first choice of the one to block! How could wicked spirits that are ALREADY defeated after the cross (Colossians 2:15) stop your answers from getting through when you’re in faith? Are they not so defeated after all? Do you have to pray or command something special to defeat them so that they loose the healing they’re blocking? If so, why did Jesus never have to displace demonic healing blockers to get people healed? Why were the disciples never commanded to do it, and why does the New Testament never tell us to engage in that particular type of activity? If wicked spirits are blocking your healing, why can you not simply command all wicked spirits to stop blocking your healing, at which point your healing will always be immediate? As I said, this “try” creates more questions than answers.
The Bible itself doesn’t address this question head-on, but I believe it offers some clues.
While Scripture does not state why things don’t happen immediately, it IS clear from Scripture that things on earth are set up in a way where things don’t always manifest immediately. Consider seedtime and harvest. If you plant corn today and you don’t reap ears of corn tomorrow, you can’t blame wicked spirits for withholding you corn harvest. You could speak to the corn your just planted to immediately produce a harvest, but it won’t obey you. It’s not just because it doesn’t have ears (yet); it’s because corn doesn’t grow that quickly even if you do everything right as a farmer.
You can’t expect a newborn baby to do differential calculus, no matter how you pray. It takes time for babies to grow up, and no amount of faith will drastically shorten that time.
Even Jesus demonstrated that an answer is not always seen immediately. He cursed a fig tree, but it was the next day before there was any visible sign that His words had made any difference (Mark 11:13-14, Mark 11:20), though the tree had immediately withered when Jesus spoke to it (Matthew 21:19). This withering just took time to work itself out in a way that could be seen outwardly. Notice what Jesus did not say on that first day after He cursed the tree:
“No, really, I meant it when I said it; die already!”
“Wicked spirits in the heavenlies, I command you to stop blocking the manifestation of My words!”
Jesus didn’t do or say anything else to get the intended result. It seems that some things just take time.
Even Jesus did not see the full manifestation of healing the first time He laid hands on a certain blind man (Mark 8:22-25). It happened when He laid hands on Him after the man reported an incomplete healing. Did He rebuke a wicked spirit in the upper troposphere to loose the man’s healing from heaven? No. So I don’t see a precedent for us to do it either if we don’t see an immediate manifestation. The same goes for the ten lepers who were “healed as they went” as opposed to “healed on the spot” (Luke 17:12-19) and the boy who “began to amend” as opposed to “was healed instantly at the seventh hour” (John 4:46-53). There is no record that Jesus needed to take any additional spiritual action to speed up the manifestations.
Another giveaway that not every answer will be immediate is Hebrews 10:35-36 where we are told we need patience to receive the promise. If every answer were immediate, only faith, not patience, would be required, but Hebrews 6:12 confirms that it takes faith and patience to inherit the promises.
1 Thessalonians 2:13 tells us that the Word works effectively in us. If the Word has to work, that shows that even the Word does not produce immediate results all the time! It needs time to work. This confirms what Jesus said in the parable of the sower, where the Word is the seed that produces fruit, but it does not produce a finished product immediately, and in fact some things can stop it from ever bearing fruit thirtyfold, sixtyfold or a hundredfold.
Did the Word make you a full-fledged perfect Christian the moment you were saved? No, so that Word still needs to work in you.
Jesus likened the entire kingdom of God to a seedtime and harvest situation where results are not immediate:
Mark 4:26-29:
And he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground;
And should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how.
For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.
But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come.
Another kingdom analogy was the mustard seed:
Mark 4:30-32:
And he said, Whereunto shall we liken the kingdom of God? or with what comparison shall we compare it?
It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown in the earth, is less than all the seeds that be in the earth:
But when it is sown, it groweth up, and becometh greater than all herbs, and shooteth out great branches; so that the fowls of the air may lodge under the shadow of it.
God established the seedtime and harvest principle early:
Genesis 8:22:
While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
Sowing good works does not always cause you to reap an immediate harvest. If it did, the following Scripture would be meaningless:
Galatians 6:9:
And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.
So “due season” is not always immediately when you sow! And nothing indicates that you can speed up due season by forcing demons to loose your harvest from heaven to make due season be immediate.
We can see in the case of sowing money that the return is not always immediate either.
2 Corinthians 9:10:
Now he that ministereth seed to the sower both minister bread for your food, and multiply your seed sown, and increase the fruits of your righteousness;)
In this case, the seed had already been sown, but Paul prayed that God would multiply it, so the harvest (multiplication) was obviously not immediate upon sowing. Seed needs time to grow.
Churches need time to grow, too; no one starts with a megachurch where there was no church the day before (unless they’re ungodly enough to split a larger megachurch, which is “stealing” a church, not “planting” one). We call starting a new church “church planting” for a reason!
The seedtime and harvest principle is so pervasive that Jesus asked how you would know any parable if you didn’t know His parable of the sower:
Mark 4:13:
And he said unto them, Know ye not this parable? and how then will ye know all parables?
I would distill my answer to this question down to five words:
Some things just take time.