When Healing Doesn't Look the Way You Expected
He's Still the Healer
This has been heavy on my heart lately, and I’m going to bring something out that not everybody knows about. God has been giving me certain things to do, and part of the gift he’s given me is the operating with the gift of healing. For a long time, I actually backed off from it. You know why? Because people were looking towards man for the healing. Every time I had a healing line, people would come up and say, "Well, Freddy laid his hands on me, so Freddy healed me."
And the Lord told me, “That’s not what it is.” So I stepped back. But lately? He’s been bringing me right back into it.
Now, I want you to know something about me if you don’t already. I’ve gone through serious surgery with my foot. I wear hearing aids. Let me ask you a question: Is that a defeat? Is that something where I can say, "Well, I just didn’t have enough faith, so I have to rely on hearing aids to help me hear?"
A lot of people in our denomination take medicine or medical help as a defeat or that using it is wrong because that shows you don't trust God. But I’m standing here telling you that we live in an age where some of this stuff is needed. If we were living in the old time days, a lot of us would have been dead and long gone! A simple fever or an infection in your foot, and you’d be six feet under. But thank God for medicine and the time we live in, because God knew we were going to need this kind of stuff to fulfill the call God has on our lives and not have them be cut short.
What the Word Actually Says About Your Pain
If you want to know what God's purpose is for healing, you have to look at what the Word says. Look at Psalms 147:3. It says, "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds."
That's who He is. Jesus came for the brokenhearted, to bind up the wounds, and the Old Testament reflects Jesus perfectly. Look at Exodus 3:7. The Lord said, "I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and I have heard their cry... I know their sufferings."
God knows when you're dealing with something. He sees your tears, He sees your pain, and He's there because He wants you to trust Him as the Great Physician.
Look at Luke 4:18 when Jesus went into the temple. He quoted Isaiah and said, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind..."
Healing isn't just something God does. It's part of who He is.
And listen, some of you have an issue with taking medicine. You say, "It's man-made, I'm not taking it, it's not God." But did you know God told Moses to go to the river and push a tree into the water so the people could drink it and be healed? Wasn't that a type of medicine? God did it in the Old Testament, and He knows what you need right now.
Please don't dismiss medicine without taking the time to pray. Many of us say "no" out of our fear, not because we actually spent time with the Lord to discern His will. Medicine can and will help you while you take a stand in faith. Not taking medicine is not a sign of great faith and neither is taking medicine a sign of weak faith.
"You Just Need to Believe God"
When I was facing the issue with a life threatening infection in my foot, I had a lot of people coming to me saying, "You need to believe God, you need to believe God."
I did believe God! I had great faith in God. And when I prayed and asked the Lord what I needed to do, I clearly heard the words, "Do what the doctor says." But see, most people were believing that God would just supernaturally restore my foot to a normal foot right then and there. Could He have done that? Of course He could have if He wanted to. Can He still do it, absolutely! But are we looking for signs like that to prove if someone has "real" faith?
Look at Dr. Kevin Zadai. He walks around with a limp. Something happened—I don't know what it was—but he walks with a limp. And is he a man of faith? Absolutely! He goes around, speaks the Word, and people get healed left and right. So why didn't God heal his leg instantly? Why do I still have half a foot? Why am I wearing hearing aids?
Does that mean I don’t believe I’m healed? No! I'm doing everything I can in the natural and trusting the Lord with the supernatural.
I believe with all my heart that God did something to my foot. He has helped my body go from an A1C of nearly 14 to non-diabetic numbers. He did something with my ears and some hearing has been restored. It just doesn't always happen right away, or how you think it’s gonna happen. And you don’t need to go running around seeking after some special human "healer" to lay hands on you. Don't seek after man and what they can do for you.
The healer is not the person laying hands on you. The healer is the One inside that person, empowering them to do the work of God.
Stay with Him
I understand, from experience, that it can be easy to give up when you don't see healing come instantly, but let me assure you, God is faithful to His promises. In just the last few weeks, we have seen numerous healing miracles take place in our church body, some of them instantly, and some of them took time to manifest.
Whether it's a stage four kidney failure diagnosis before a follow-up appointment revealed kidneys functioning completely normal, or pain from iron poisoning leaving within two minutes of praying, or a micro-preemie baby given a less than 10% chance of living who's now running around in the nursery, or a family all sick for weeks and then seeing a turn around within an hour after they came into agreement and took a stand against the enemy, or low frequency hearing returned- God is moving!
But remember Mark chapter 8. Jesus laid His hands on a blind man, and the guy said, "I see people, but they look like trees walking." It wasn't a total, instant healing the first time. Jesus had to put His hands on his eyes a second time before the man saw clearly.
Sometimes healing takes time. But you cannot lose faith in the middle of the process. If the doctor tells you it's going to take time, or that you need a surgery, don't let fear make you say, "I'm just gonna sit at home and believe God without the doctor." God guides the hands of the surgeons. He gave mankind the know how to make life-saving medicine.
He is the Alpha and the Omega, the King of Kings, and your Heavenly Father. Trust Him with the process, trust Him with your health, and get connected back to the body. He knows exactly what you are going through, and He loves you too much to leave you there.