Is There a Difference Between Having a Disease and “Just Having Its Symptoms?”

Yes, but the difference is subtle.

If you start having a scratchy throat and it looks like you’re coming down with a cold, you have the symptoms of a cold.  But if you do not believe that you RECEIVE that cold, you have only symptoms, not the cold, and the symptoms must leave as you command that cold to leave your body.  Symptoms of a disease are like temptations to sin.  You haven’t ACCEPTED or RECEIVED a disease just because you have a symptom any more than you have SINNED because you are being TEMPTED to sin.

If you’ve gone ahead and said, “Rats!  I caught that thing that’s going around church!” than you HAVE received the cold, so you have the cold as well as its symptoms.

However, you can still “believe that you receive” your healing when you pray.  Once you do this, you may have symptoms, but you no longer “have” the illness from a spiritual perspective.  This fact ensures that the symptoms will leave as your body lines up with what you have already received in your spirit.  It is no longer “your” cold or “your” depression or “your” high blood pressure or “your” diabetes, and you would never refer to it as such.  (If you do, you have not really believed that you have received your healing!)

So from that perspective, we can make a biblical distinction between having symptoms and having an illness.

The Bible does not make an explicit distinction between just having symptoms of a disease and actually having a disease in any accounts of illnesses that were healed. There is no explicit teaching about dealing with symptoms of an illness as opposed to an actual illness.  Jesus didn’t say that we would lay hands on people who only have symptoms as well as those who are actually sick.  He said to heal the sick, not to remove symptoms from those who only have symptoms but to heal those who are actually sick.  Jesus carried our diseases; there is no distinction made about Him carrying “symptoms” of diseases.  However, when He took our diseases, He had to take the symptoms.

If you have symptoms, an illness is attacking you.  However, once you believe that you receive healing (if you think you already came down with something) or you speak to the condition in faith (if you haven’t accepted it as yours), there is a sense in which you don’t “have” the illness because you no longer acknowledge its right to continue in your body, even though its symptoms may remain for a while.  The healing you received on the inside is working its way out, just as the curse on the fig tree started invisibly and then started to manifest on the outside.  The tree was as good as dead when Jesus cursed it, but it took some time for the “symptoms” of life to disappear.

As far as your public life is concerned, there is little to be gained by trying to theologize to the unsaved: “I don’t have a cold.  I just have the symptoms of a cold.”  You may get a cold reaction from them.  They may think that you’re weird.

Sometimes if you clear your throat even once, some well-meaning person may say, “Oh, you poor thing, you’re coming down with that new flu strain that has been making the rounds!”  NEVER agree with such a statement unless you really want the illness.  You may have to be socially awkward to avoid agreeing that you’re coming down with something, but actually getting the flu is even more socially awkward because it will make everyone want to avoid contact with you.  You can tell people that you are trusting Jesus to keep you free from the latest flu strain.  They may think you’re unusual, but I’d rather have them think I’m unusual and think I’m staying well, too!  Don’t accept sickness just to be polite!

There is another angle to cover here, too.  After you receive your healing and it manifests in your body, there may be a time when the devil attempts to get you to take your sickness back.  You may feel a twinge and say, “Oh, no, I guess I was never really healed after all!”  That is just what the devil wants you to say, since it authorizes him to put the disease back on you again.  Instead, stand against it and refuse to take it back.  You have authority over it.  This may happen a few times, but if you will continue resisting the devil, he will have to quit.  At this point, you can legitimately see yourself has “having” symptoms but not “having” the disease anymore.

I remember a night that I started having symptoms of heart trouble.  It honestly felt like I would not survive the night.  I had no history of anything like that.  I made the choice not to call an ambulance but to just stand on the Word, as I discerned that this was an attack of Satan trying to get me to accept something that was not mine.  I rebuked the symptoms in the name of Jesus and they left.  I have never experienced anything like that since then, and that was about 40 years ago at this writing.  If I had any real issues, they would have surfaced by now.  My point was that these were symptoms unrelated to any real physical problem and I believe to this day that the attack was demonic.  I also believe that if I had panicked and accepted the symptoms as authentic, I would have authorized Satan to continue to operate that way.  So I believe that you can have a “symptom” due to a demonic attack that does not relate to any condition you actually have.  Such symptoms will leave as quickly as they showed up when you refuse to accept what the devil is trying to give you.

Regardless of whether you consider something a “symptom” or the real thing, the sooner you hop on it in faith to get rid of it, the better.