Objection: We Should Use Our Faith for Souls Rather Than Selfishly Seeking Our Own Healing

In the general sense, why not do both?  Why do one to the exclusion of the other?  Wouldn’t you be in a better position to evangelize lost souls if you’re healed than if you’re sick?  Wouldn’t the lost be more likely to want to know Jesus if they saw Him miraculously heal your body?

In a strictly technical sense, you can’t use your faith for souls anyway, even though some people use that phrase.  You use your faith to meet your own needs.  That is why God gave it to you.  You can apply Mark 11:24 and believe that you receive your healing.  But you cannot believe that you receive someone else’s healing for him.  You also cannot “believe someone into the kingdom.”  If we could do that, we would “believe” everyone into the kingdom and there would be no more sinners.  Then the outpouring of God’s wrath in the book of Revelation could not take place and Jesus’ words that FEW would find the way of life (Matthew 7:14) would be invalidated.

The Bible pattern is to share the Word of God with others so that they can enjoy the benefits that you enjoy, rather than having you “believe” those benefits onto them.

Your faith cannot cross the line of someone else’s free will.  Everyone is free to choose life or choose death.  God gave the Israelites that choice (Deuteronomy 30:19-20).  God will honor your choice to go to hell if you don’t want Jesus in your life.  You cannot even “claim” a family member using Acts 16:31.  (Proof of this is contained in the answer to the question, Can I Believe and Receive a Healing for Someone Else?)

You can believe that God will send laborers to a lost person.  You can ask God to open his eyes to the truth.  You can believe that the Holy Spirit will convict him that he is in sin because He has disobeyed God’s command to receive Jesus, and that he would be eternally lost without Him.  But you cannot “receive” the person’s salvation by faith.  Some people will get saved when laborers are sent and their eyes are opened to know the truth.  Some will not.  You cannot “believe and receive” another person’s salvation the way you can believe and receive the answers to your own needs.

It isn’t selfish to seek healing when God says it is already yours!  (Satan uses objections like this to try to imply a sinister motive on the part of the person believing and receiving healing.)  It will please God when by faith you receive the healing that Jesus paid for.  And if you really understand what faith is, you know that you can’t really use it for souls in the sense that you can use it for your own healing.

Besides, you will not “drain” your faith by using it to receive healing.  Instead, you will build it and be in a better position to believe that God will send laborers to sinners and convict them.