Big Healing Book - Is It Possible for a New Testament Believer’s Prayer to Receive Healing

Is It Possible for a New Testament Believer’s Prayer to Receive Healing to Be Hindered?

Yes.

Scripture is clear on this one.

1 Peter 3:7:
Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.

If God says that your prayers can be hindered, that’s good enough for me! In this case, if you don’t treat your wife right, it can hinder your prayers. When I started pastoring, I observed that most men knew the verse about wives submitting to their husbands, but they didn’t know this verse. I kept it before them because I didn’t want their prayers to be hindered, and most men really needed to hear this verse! I can assure you that some of their prayers WERE being hindered by their “Me Tarzan, You Jane” treatment of their wives.

This verse isn’t specific to healing; it would indicate that any prayer could be hindered by ill-treatment of your spouse.

Of course, in this case, your prayers don’t HAVE to be hindered – you can treat your spouse right and avoid this particular hindrance.

Paul (who definitely preached divine healing) warned the Corinthians that some of them were sick and prematurely dead because they disrespected the Lord’s Supper. So mistreating other believers in the church (in this example, by pigging out on their communion elements and leaving none for them) and thus not regarding the Body of Christ, would be a hindrance to healing. After all, don’t you suppose that those Corinthians were trying to receive healing in prayer – yet they didn’t!

By far the biggest hindrance to healing I have seen is lack of knowledge about what Jesus did for our healing. Other hindrances covered in the Mistakes to Avoid section. (I didn’t lump lack of knowledge with the “mistakes,” as it’s hard to blame someone who has never heard the truth for not knowing the truth.)

Another hindrance that is right up there is a guilty conscience, and there are two flavors of that hindrance. If you feel guilty about past sins that you have repented of, you need to be “sprinkled from an evil conscience” (Hebrews 10:22). Those sins aren’t hindering anything anymore, but the devil wants you to think that they still demote you in God’s eyes and make you less deserving of healing. On the other hand, if you aren’t repenting of known sins, your conscience will nag you and you will lack boldness in God’s presence (1 John 3:21-22).

Along similar lines is a failure to understand your right standing with God. If you CORRECTLY see yourself as just as righteous as Jesus, you will have a much easier time receiving from God than if you see yourself as an unworthy, undeserving little worm.