Objection: We Had 24/7 Prayer Asking God to Heal So-and-So and He Chose Not to Do It

This very objection shows why the prayers were not answered.  Everyone was praying 24/7 in unbelief.  It doesn’t matter if you pray a lot, and even have people pray 24/7.  If you do it in unbelief, nothing will happen.  James said that if you doubt, you must not think that you will receive anything from the Lord (James 1:5-8).

The very fact that everyone was asking God to heal So-and-So means that the people doing the praying didn’t understand how divine healing works to begin with.  You don’t beg God to do something that He’s already done!  Yet that is what so many people do, and like the heathen, they think they will be heard for their much speaking.  They reason that if they can get a big enough crowd doing the much speaking, maybe God will give in to the pressure or something.  (It wouldn’t be peer pressure, at least, because God has no peers.)

Their prayers are based on the mistaken “courtroom” mindset – they think when they pray, God reviews the case and decides to answer Yes, answer No, answer Wait, or just not answer at all.  Thus, if there is no healing, it must be (according to this twisted logic) something other than a Yes decision from heaven’s Prayer Resolution Panel.  But that is a flawed mindset.  If you pray according to God’s will, He hears you, and you have the petition that you asked of Him (1 John 5:14-15).  But first, you must know for sure what His will is.  If you don’t know His will about healing, it is impossible to pray in faith.  Instead, you will be doubting when you pray, and you will receive nothing from the Lord, as James said (James 1:5-8).  You need to know His will before you start praying.  That does NOT mean that you ask God for a revelation of whether it is His will to heal a particular person.  You learn His will from the many Scriptures cited in this book.  Jesus would not have paid for everyone’s sicknesses and pains to be healed if it were not God’s will to heal everyone.

The sad part is that people publish sad stories to the masses about God “choosing” not to heal a loved one, but that makes no more sense than saying that God “chooses” not to save a loved one if there is 24/7 prayer for that person.  God isn’t the one who needs to make a choice; He’s made His choice.  It is up to man to believe and receive what God has already chosen to provide.  These blame-God stories (which usually emphasize God’s “sovereignty” in a wrong way) paint the wrong picture of God to the world – a God who holds back healing for mysterious reasons.  Fortunately, the real God is much more compassionate than that.

The greatest need that a sick person has is knowledge of the Word for himself, not prayer!  Yet almost everyone’s knee-jerk reaction is “He needs prayer!”  Yet hardly ever does someone go share the Word about healing with that person so that he can cooperate with God and receive what’s his in Christ, which would be a far better approach.  You can receive the healing that Jesus paid for even if NO ONE prays for you when you know what the Word says.  I was born again in Room 419 in Bailey Hall at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan on February 8, 1979 with no one else around at the time!  I received the new birth from the Lord because someone (originally from the bush in Kenya, of all places) told me how to do it.  Healing works the same way – when you know what to do, you can receive it yourself.