If I Lay Hands on Someone and Nothing Happens, Should I Apologize to That Person for My Lack of Faith?

I wouldn’t recommend it, though I’ve seen it advocated.  The premise is that you don’t want to act like you’re pointing the finger at the person and saying, “Nothing happened, so it must be because of your lack of faith – the problem obviously isn’t on God’s end or on my end!”  So you put the blame on yourself, thus making the sick person feel better about it, I suppose.  This defuses the common gripe that faith healers put the blame on the people who don’t get healed.

However, I have quite a few good reasons for NOT recommending this practice.

First, you can end up offering a false apology when it WAS the person’s lack of exercise of his faith.  Jesus offered no apology to the people at Nazareth, because of whose unbelief He Himself could do no mighty work (Mark 6:1-6).  He offered no apology to the religious people in the house where the paralytic was lowered through the roof; while the power of the Lord was present to heal them, not one of those religious leaders got healed (Luke 5:17-26).  He wasn’t the problem.  If Jesus did not apologize when healings didn’t occur even though God’s power was present to do it, we don’t need to apologize either.

Second, even if it WAS your unbelief that hindered things, nothing in the Word tells you to apologize for it.  Even when the disciples failed to cast out a demon because of THEIR unbelief (Jesus plainly labeled it as THEIR fault), Jesus did not demand that the disciples apologize for their lack of faith to the man and to his demonized son.  Paul left Trophimus sick at Miletum, but he did not apologize to Trophimus (as far as the Bible records) for failing to get him healed faster.

Third, you could short-circuit a healing that is actually in progress though it is unseen so far.  You end up being the one putting a stopwatch on God, determining that if the healing does not manifest within “x” units of time, nothing happened.  Thus, you could apologize for a “failure” that wouldn’t have been a failure if everyone had stayed in faith.  I would prefer to encourage the person to stay in faith than to say, “Oh, it didn’t work, so turn your faith off now and blame me for the failure.”

Fourth, you are teaching people to do the very thing that you are trying to avoid!  If people who watch you minister see you apologize, they will feel compelled to apologize every time they don’t see results when THEY minister to a sick person within whatever time limit you’ve shown them, and they will be tempted to beat themselves up for their lack of faith – which is what you were trying to prevent in the first place.

Fifth, lack of faith is not necessarily the culprit anyway but rather lack of EXERCISING the faith that you already have.  “My faith must have been too small” does not make sense given that if you had faith as tiny as a mustard seed and USED it, you could command a tree to be uprooted and cast into the sea.  The devil would prefer that you engage in endless introspection about the size of your faith, because he knows that he will probably get you to conclude that your faith is too small to get the job done.  Yet when the disciples asked Jesus to give them more faith, He answered by describing what could be done with even the tiniest amount of faith if they would act on it (Luke 17:5-6).  He certainly didn’t say, “Oh, I see that you do need more faith; here’s another helping of it.”

Sixth, while it may seem humble to put yourself down to avoid the prospect of someone else’s feelings getting hurt, putting yourself down will only reinforce a failure mentality in the future.  If you lay hands on a sick person and the person does not recover, God does not see you as a failure who needs to apologize, and neither should you.  God would rather than you do your best to obey Christ’s commission and not see results in a certain case than to just back off and never lay hands on anyone for fear of failure.  Someone asked a famous healing evangelist what would happen if he laid hands on a person and the person died.  He replied that EVERYONE he laid hands on was going to die sooner or later!

Seventh, you could wreck any confidence people might want to put in you, as they will think, “Why go to him?  He doesn’t have enough faith.  Nothing will happen, and he will just apologize for his lack of faith.  What a waste of time.”  By emphasizing the negative, you miss a chance to be a positive encourager who exhorts people to trust God and not let go of what they’re received.

Eighth, you could actually discourage other people from laying hands on the sick if they think that they will have to “eat crow” by offering an apology for their lack of faith if no results are immediately forthcoming.

Ninth, blaming yourself for an apparent failure only reinforces the wrong mentality that many people already have that everything is up to the preacher! “Preacher, do my believing for me and make something happen!  Wave your magic faith wand!” is an all-too-common attitude.  When you “take the fall,” you are sending a very clear message that if nothing happens, it’s your fault because it was all up to YOUR faith!  Do you want everyone to come up for ministry with that mindset?  I certainly don’t!

Tenth, when people were healed in Jesus’ ministry, He said that it was THEIR faith, not HIS faith, that had healed them.  If it was up to THEIR faith and not HIS faith then, it is still up to other people’s faith today.  It helps if you are believing too, as you can really encourage the other person, but the bottom line is that you can’t receive a healing for someone else any more than you can receive the new birth for someone else.

Eleventh, if you shared the plan of salvation with someone, and that person did not immediately receive Jesus, would you owe that person an apology because your “lack of faith” caused him to not receive the new birth?  It doesn’t make any sense when you put it that way, does it?  If you wouldn’t do that with that aspect of salvation, why would you do it with ANY aspect of salvation, including healing?

Teaching people not to blame themselves for their lack of faith by blaming YOURSELF for YOUR lack of faith doesn’t make logical sense to me.  The Bible doesn’t forbid such apologies, and you can do whatever you’re comfortable doing.  However, by apologizing for your lack of faith, you really aren’t avoiding finger-pointing for lack of faith – the only difference is which direction your finger is pointing.