Your Heavenly Father and Your Healing
If your children disobeyed you, would you deliberately put chicken pox on them to teach them something? Would you teach them patience by putting cancer on them if you could? Would you try to develop their character by making them gasp for every breath with a lung disease?
Of course not! You do everything you can to help your children get well, don’t you? You certainly don’t try to make them sick.
God reveals Himself as your heavenly Father. Are you a better parent than God? If you would not do the things listed above, and God would do them, you would be a more loving parent than God. Some agency would surely declare God to be an unfit parent.
If you could do something for your sick child, wouldn’t you do it? God can do anything. He loves you and wants you to be in health. He is not withholding healing from you or your children. However, he has put healing on a faith basis. To receive healing from God, you must believe that you receive it. God is not waiting to feel like healing you. He is waiting for you to receive something from Him in faith – something that He is ALREADY offering you.
Jesus told a foreign woman that deliverance for her daughter’s problem was the “children’s bread.” He was talking about not giving Gentiles what was for the Jews under the Law. He did not say that healing was a special favor; He said it was the children’s bread. In other words, it’s a necessity that your heavenly Father has provided for His children. It belongs to His children. Now under the New Covenant, Gentiles are equal partakers with Jews of God’s healing mercies. The children’s bread belongs to you, too.
It amazes me that anyone can say, “God is love,” and then say, “God wants you to suffer sickness so that you will grow.” Is that what love would do? I suppose there are some deceived Christians out there who think that sickness will work out for the best, and that it is really better for you than not being sick, and God knows that and loves you enough to make you sick. But God’s kind of love is better than that. God’s kind of love does not abandon you and leave you as a helpless doormat for the devil. God loved you enough to give you His best, His Son Jesus Christ. He also says that with Him He freely gives you all things (Romans 8:32), which would include healing. God is good and God is generous. That is what God is really like. He has given you His Spirit within you that cries out, “Father!” (See Romans 8:15 and Galatians 4:6. The word actually used for “Father” is the Aramaic word Abba, and its actual meaning is debatable. That is not because of any chance that Paul was referring to a future Swedish pop group, but rather because some theologians claim that it means Daddy, while others claim that it is a more formal way to address a father. I haven’t seen reliable evidence that it really means Daddy, and I don’t assert things that I can’t prove myself. But one thing stands out no matter what it means – it means that you have the SAME relationship with your Father now that Jesus had, because HE referred to Him as “Abba, Father” (Mark 14:36) – exactly the same term that the Holy Spirit uses to cry out to Him through us in the two 2 verses above. This makes sense because you are Jesus’ brother or sister now (Hebrews 2:11).)
Religious people couldn’t care less if you talk about God, but when you start calling Him Father, they get upset. God is your spiritual Father. You have a physical father on the earth, but your physical father is not your spiritual father – God is your spiritual Father. He is a better Father than your natural father is. He loves you and cares for you.
If your picture of God is that he is ready to condemn you for everything, you must renew your mind with His Word and discover how wonderful He really is. Otherwise, you will never trust Him for your healing because you won’t think He’s good enough to let you have it. God is for you, not against you (Romans 8:31). God is not your problem; He is your answer. God is not your Sickener; he is your Healer. He loved you enough to have Jesus bear stripes on His back before He went to the cross to pay the price for your healing.
You are not redeemed from suffering persecution, but you are redeemed from suffering illnesses. Your Father does not want you to suffer with sickness. He wants you to be healed, and He sent His Word to heal you (Psalm 103:20), not to “comfort you in your sickness.” He loves you as your Father. If you get the picture of God that Jesus and the New Testament writers paint, it will be much easier for you to receive your healing.