Our Church Preaches Healing. Why Aren’t We Seeing Miracles?
There are several possible reasons for this, and I’ll save the most likely one for last. You can go through this checklist and see if any of these issues apply to your church. I’ve seen cases of all the issues cited below in churches over the years.
You Aren’t Preaching Healing Quite as Much as You Think You Are
Check up on what you’re teaching and see if it really reflects Scripture. I know places that SAY that they preach healing, but what they really preach is the POSSIBILITY of healing today, not definite instructions on how to receive healing based on Christ’s finished work. There is a difference between saying “Divine healing is active today” and “Christ provided healing for all in His atoning sacrifice for us.” The former will please people who don’t believe that healing is for all, while the latter makes it clear that it is definitely for all. If your church does not preach that healing belongs to everyone without exception because Christ bore our sicknesses, your church is not really preaching divine healing at all. God can’t confirm a watered-down version of His Word. If you preach that sometimes God withholds healing in His sovereignty or some other such compromised doctrine, God can’t back your preaching, and the demons will be the ones going, “Amen! Preach it, Brother!”
You’re Ashamed of the Healing Part of the Gospel, So You’ve Backed Off
Preaching the truth about divine healing can get you labeled as a “cult” rather quickly. When we pastored our first church, two other churches in the area warned people away from us, claiming that we were a non-Christian cult because we taught healing and prosperity. Guilty as charged – we certainly did preach healing and prosperity! We walked in love toward the perpetrators, and after they got to know us a while, they quit the nasty comments and they even became quite friendly with us. They realized that we were fellow Christians after all! After a while, it got hard to deny that we were having real miracles.
It is tempting to back off when you’re attacked like that, but you can’t do it! Some preachers start soft-pedaling certain Bible truths when they start catching heat for preaching them. (This happens in the areas of abortion and homosexuality as well as healing and prosperity.) Such cowards will never see the power of God move properly in their churches. If you want healing, you have to preach healing! You can’t just leave it in your church’s “statement of faith” and expect people to pick up on it if you don’t preach it from the pulpit. You’re never going to be universally loved and appreciated any more than Jesus was, so get over yourself and preach the Word boldly! The more boldly you preach the accurate truth of divine healing, the better!
You’re Preaching Other Junk That the Holy Spirit Won’t Hook Up with
I’ve seen churches that preached divine healing accurately – but also preached plenty of fad doctrines. Paul talked about “every wind of doctrine.” Fad doctrines and unbiblical “new revelations” are an unfortunate part of the church scene. Some churches seem to jump on every fad that blows through. I knew a pastor who hopped on the latest doctrinal bandwagon every year until he got desperate and realized that what he was doing was just confusing the sheep instead of feeding them. Some churches get weird with bizarre deliverance procedures, “spiritual warfare” in the heavenlies, hyper-discipleship that seeks to control people’s lives, unbiblical concepts of apostolic authority over churches the “apostles” didn’t plant, notions that the church is the one church in the area that God has raised up to be over the other churches in the area, and other fluff. God still moves in such places to a limited degree, but the Lord confirms His Word with accompanying signs. If what you preach isn’t the Word, God can’t back it.
People Aren’t Receiving the Message
Jesus surely preached without compromising the truth at Nazareth, but He had no mighty miracles there. It wasn’t because of a fault in His preaching; the fault was with the people who did not receive His preaching. It isn’t always the pastor’s fault if there are no miracles. If people are steeped in religious tradition, they may shrug off the truth when they hear it from the pulpit and get no benefit.
You’re Grieving the Spirit by Tolerating Brazen Sin
I visited a church that knew the truth about divine healing but had a shack-up on the worship team and a cross-dresser running sound. That is NOT a recipe for miracles! The Holy Spirit has only imperfect people available to Him, but when the people who serve in the church won’t repent of ungodly lifestyles and the church leadership won’t deal with them, not much Holy Spirit activity is going to happen. Do you suppose that Jesus would say, “Congratulations! You’re truly a grace church that affirms, welcomes and celebrates people as they are without judgment?” No, He is the same yesterday, today and forever, so He would say what He said to the pastor at Thyatira concerning the immoral woman who was seducing other saints – “I have something against you – you’re putting up with them!” He would say to those in sin, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.” Some churches are good with the “neither do I condemn you” part of that but not good at all with the “go and sin no more” part of it. Please understand that we want ungodly people who do all kinds of things to come get saved, but we shouldn’t put them in visible positions of service in the church before they repent of certain things. It sends a message to the congregation that sloppy living is fine. People will reason, “If it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me, too.” You can’t shy away from dealing with issues with church workers if you want the Holy Spirit to manifest His presence.
Now let’s get to what I consider the biggest reason that churches can preach healing properly and still not see miracles.
You’re Not Allowing the Holy Spirit to Be Lord of Your Services
Many churches are so schedule-bound and clock-bound that the Holy Spirit has no opportunity to get a word in edgewise! Everything is planned in advance and has to follow the schedule that allows so many minutes for praise and worship, so many minutes for the offering, so many minutes for the message, and so on. This can absolutely stifle the Holy Spirit!
I am not against TV ministry. I have been on TV. But I am convinced that TV (or streaming internet broadcasts) can be the worst thing that can happen to many churches due to the broadcast time limitations and the necessity to fit everything into a fixed time slot. The leaders always have to keep one eye on the clock, and it’s obvious to the congregation that they’re doing it. What if the Holy Spirit wants to move in an unusual way and have an unusually long service? I suppose He just had to be told “no.” What if He’s done before the time slot is done? Then you can fill up the time with things the Holy Spirit isn’t involved with, I suppose.
My wife and I once attended a service with a well-known evangelist where it was known that a famous international Christian network would “pick up” the service at a certain time. It did, at which point the preacher backtracked and started his message over. The whole thing was “played to the cameras.” That wasn’t fair to the people who were there for the whole live service, and I believe it hurt the anointing that night and might have helped lead to an embarrassing incident I’ll not describe in detail.
I realize that some churches have rental or lease arrangements and even police presence arrangements that require them to finish services by a particular time. God can still work with that even though it isn’t ideal – as long as you let the Holy Spirit be in control during the time that you DO have. Many pastors want to be “in control” of everything, but if you really want to see God move, you have to allow the miracle-working Holy Spirit to run His church! The only admonition repeated to each of the 7 pastors in Revelation 2 and 3 was, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” If you don’t bother listening for His instructions, you won’t see His miracle-working power in demonstration the way that you should.
There are times when the Holy Spirit wants the whole service to be worship. At other times, He wants the whole service to be a succession of special manifestations mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:8-11. If you cut off the moving of the Spirit, you cut off the flow of miracles. Sometimes you might get through one worship song and the anointing just “falls” and you need to cooperate with it and scrap the rest of the song set and possibly the prepared message. Sometimes you have regular worship but you have to scrap the message and say things that the Holy Spirit wants preached on the spot for the rest of the service. You cannot enjoy the benefits of such services if you feel that you need to be in control of everything.
I knew a preacher who used to lament to the Lord that He was not moving in the services in any special way. The Lord brought cases to his remembrance where He was trying to get that preacher to change the order of the service in the middle of the service, but he just barreled ahead with his preplanned, accurate Word messages. This is what can make some accurate teachers as dry as toast. It’s good to be accurate, but your church needs to embrace the Holy Spirit as well as the Word. Otherwise, your accurate teaching will result in some people being healed by faith, but you won’t see the spectacular manifestations you wish you’d see. Some people won’t get healed (unfortunately) without such a manifestation because they just don’t “get it” (yet at least) when it comes to the Word. The problem wasn’t that the Holy Spirit needed to be coaxed into moving – it was that the preacher needed to be coaxed into allowing Him to move! Once he allowed the Holy Spirit to have His way in his services, he started seeing some marvelous and unusual manifestations of the Holy Spirit. He hasn’t been the same since – and he remained an accurate Word teacher! You don’t have to choose between good teaching and a good flow of the Holy Spirit – you can have both, and that’s what God wants.
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