| Why is it so Hard to Ask For and Accept Healing Prayer? by: Rebecca Hemphill |
Why don’t we ask for healing prayer when we hurt or feel sick? Why are we so reluctant to ask our fellow Christians
to do what Jesus commands, to lay hands on us and pray for us?
Awhile ago I suddenly got very sick. Though I have had the privilege of praying for many people who are sick, and
had reports of their wonderful recoveries by the grace of God, I hesitated to ask for prayer. When I finally gave in and
asked, to my utmost surprise, my fever dropped from 102 to normal within 30 minutes, my pains and misery left, and I
felt well enough to entertain my 8 houseguests for the next few days without feeling crummy. Even though I continued
to observe the symptoms of my medically diagnosed virus– rash and swelling in my joints – I didn’t feel their effects. I
didn’t suffer.
I think I was reluctant to ask for healing prayers because I knew I had a virus. I was diagnosed. I matched all the
symptoms in the book and I knew where and how I had caught it. I’m a modern educated woman, and I knew this
particular virus (Fifth’s Disease or Slaps) runs its course in 14-21 days. It was “a done deal.” I knew I would stay sick
until the virus finished its stay in my body. This, despite the fact that I am part of Hope’s healing ministry and see
many more “done deals” than my virus reversed, stopped, “mysteriously transformed,” and let’s just say it , sometimes
even “cured” after prayer.
There was also a vestigial sense that “if I have this illness it might well be part of God’s will for me.” But, after reading
about how the institutional Church turned from healing in the 5th centuries and onward, I now make a strong effort to
correct this whispering voice in me that it might be God’s will for me to feel physically crummy. That’s why I finally
asked for prayer and got to experience Jesus’ healing blessings.
Francis MacNutt’s book Healing has gone a long way to clarify for me the difference between heeding Jesus’ message
that being a Christian is not an easy, suffering-free, path and accepting suffering of the body or mind or spirit as God’
s will. (Healing, by Francis MacNutt, PhD, Revised and Expanded 19th printing, 2001) [Note: Francis MacNutt just
published, in April 2005, a new book on healing, The Nearly Perfect Crime: How the Church Almost Killed the Ministry
of Healing .]
Every time Jesus met with spiritual or physical evil in the form of disease or dementia or suffering, he treated it as an
enemy. Every time a sick person came to Jesus in faith, he healed that person. He did not divide human beings into a
soul to be saved versus a body that is to suffer, unhealed until the next life and resurrection. (MacNutt pp. 49-50)
The tradition in the Christian church that the body should suffer came about in and after the 5th century from the
infiltrating influences of Platonic, Stoic and Manichean (pagan) sources which viewed the body and spirit/soul as
separate. In these, the body is an encumbrance or enemy to the spirit. But the world in which Jesus, his apostles,
and early Christians lived saw the body and spirit as an inseparable whole. The disciples and early Christians
followed Jesus commandment to take an uncompromising stand toward sickness. When he commissioned the twelve
to preach and sent out the seventy two, he also gave them the commission to heal the sick and drive out evil spirits.
Frances MacNutt points out “the close joining of the command to heal the sick with that of driving out evil spirits
emphasizes the attitude of the early church that disease is an evil – not a blessing sent by God.”
But what about Christ’s clear word that those of us who do not take up our cross daily and follow him are not worthy to
be his disciples? (Matthew 16:24, Mark 8:34, Luke 9:23) What about those streams of traditional spirituality that
emphasize the importance of suffering and penance as ways to “purge myself of selfishness” or to “unite my
sufferings with those of Jesus upon the cross and ask him to use them redemptively to help other people?” (MacNutt
p. 62) MacNutt says that often a cross-centered spirituality leads to a sense of guilt about asking in prayer to be
healed from sickness. To do so might be perceived as spiritual cowardice. (Yet those same people might feel no
guilt about turning toward medicine for a cure.)
MacNutt points out the apparent contradiction: “Jesus tells his followers to bear their cross; yet, whenever he meets
people who are sick, he reaches out to cure them. Was he inconsistent, or have his words been misunderstood?”
He solves the problem between distinguishing between two kinds of suffering (pp. 63-64):
1) The suffering that comes from outside from the wickedness of others who are evil, and is the “cross of
persecution.” Jesus suffered deeply within himself, but the source of his anguish was outside himself. “Jesus wept
over Jerusalem; he was reviled and mocked; he was nailed to the cross and died.”
2) The suffering that comes from sickness and which tears us apart from within be it physical, emotional, or moral,
Jesus did not endure. He took this suffering away from those who approached him in faith..
Because Jesus was good he drew down upon himself the wrath of the world. But nowhere do the gospels tell us that
Jesus was every physically ill. Jesus himself distinguishes between sickness (attacking a person’s life and wholeness
from within) and persecution (attacking from without). He tells his disciples that they will be persecuted, they should
expect it, and rejoice in it. But in contrast to rejoicing in withstanding the blows of external evil, Jesus wants to cure
illness. “Every time you meet Jesus in the gospels, he is either actually healing someone, or has just come from
healing someone,or is on his way to do it,” is how a friend of MacNutt’s put it. And I would add, “or he is commanding
his followers to do likewise in his name.”
Thus, we do not “preach ‘cheap grace,’ a Christianity without a cross, says MacNutt. We preach the good news, that
suffering is evil to be cast out . Suffering is the result of sin, only to be endured for the sake of the kingdom and never
for its own sake. Even Paul only stopped praying that his “thorn in the flesh” be cast out when he finally learned that
there was a purpose to it, and “was for the sake of the kingdom (lest his exalted revelations make him proud). (2Cor
12:7-9) Moreover he calls it an ‘angel of Satan,’ and not a blessing sent by God. (p.66)
There is still ample need for all of us to be reminded of God’s awesome power and love. The early converts flocked to
Christianity when they experienced the tangible proof of God’s desire to make them whole through healings and
miracles accomplished by the power of the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus. It may be harder for us in the 21st
Century, with our understanding of the mechanics of the human body, biology, chemistry and physics, to humble
ourselves and ask for prayer. But the good news once we do is just as transformative and brings us to a closer
relationship with God.
to do what Jesus commands, to lay hands on us and pray for us?
Awhile ago I suddenly got very sick. Though I have had the privilege of praying for many people who are sick, and
had reports of their wonderful recoveries by the grace of God, I hesitated to ask for prayer. When I finally gave in and
asked, to my utmost surprise, my fever dropped from 102 to normal within 30 minutes, my pains and misery left, and I
felt well enough to entertain my 8 houseguests for the next few days without feeling crummy. Even though I continued
to observe the symptoms of my medically diagnosed virus– rash and swelling in my joints – I didn’t feel their effects. I
didn’t suffer.
I think I was reluctant to ask for healing prayers because I knew I had a virus. I was diagnosed. I matched all the
symptoms in the book and I knew where and how I had caught it. I’m a modern educated woman, and I knew this
particular virus (Fifth’s Disease or Slaps) runs its course in 14-21 days. It was “a done deal.” I knew I would stay sick
until the virus finished its stay in my body. This, despite the fact that I am part of Hope’s healing ministry and see
many more “done deals” than my virus reversed, stopped, “mysteriously transformed,” and let’s just say it , sometimes
even “cured” after prayer.
There was also a vestigial sense that “if I have this illness it might well be part of God’s will for me.” But, after reading
about how the institutional Church turned from healing in the 5th centuries and onward, I now make a strong effort to
correct this whispering voice in me that it might be God’s will for me to feel physically crummy. That’s why I finally
asked for prayer and got to experience Jesus’ healing blessings.
Francis MacNutt’s book Healing has gone a long way to clarify for me the difference between heeding Jesus’ message
that being a Christian is not an easy, suffering-free, path and accepting suffering of the body or mind or spirit as God’
s will. (Healing, by Francis MacNutt, PhD, Revised and Expanded 19th printing, 2001) [Note: Francis MacNutt just
published, in April 2005, a new book on healing, The Nearly Perfect Crime: How the Church Almost Killed the Ministry
of Healing .]
Every time Jesus met with spiritual or physical evil in the form of disease or dementia or suffering, he treated it as an
enemy. Every time a sick person came to Jesus in faith, he healed that person. He did not divide human beings into a
soul to be saved versus a body that is to suffer, unhealed until the next life and resurrection. (MacNutt pp. 49-50)
The tradition in the Christian church that the body should suffer came about in and after the 5th century from the
infiltrating influences of Platonic, Stoic and Manichean (pagan) sources which viewed the body and spirit/soul as
separate. In these, the body is an encumbrance or enemy to the spirit. But the world in which Jesus, his apostles,
and early Christians lived saw the body and spirit as an inseparable whole. The disciples and early Christians
followed Jesus commandment to take an uncompromising stand toward sickness. When he commissioned the twelve
to preach and sent out the seventy two, he also gave them the commission to heal the sick and drive out evil spirits.
Frances MacNutt points out “the close joining of the command to heal the sick with that of driving out evil spirits
emphasizes the attitude of the early church that disease is an evil – not a blessing sent by God.”
But what about Christ’s clear word that those of us who do not take up our cross daily and follow him are not worthy to
be his disciples? (Matthew 16:24, Mark 8:34, Luke 9:23) What about those streams of traditional spirituality that
emphasize the importance of suffering and penance as ways to “purge myself of selfishness” or to “unite my
sufferings with those of Jesus upon the cross and ask him to use them redemptively to help other people?” (MacNutt
p. 62) MacNutt says that often a cross-centered spirituality leads to a sense of guilt about asking in prayer to be
healed from sickness. To do so might be perceived as spiritual cowardice. (Yet those same people might feel no
guilt about turning toward medicine for a cure.)
MacNutt points out the apparent contradiction: “Jesus tells his followers to bear their cross; yet, whenever he meets
people who are sick, he reaches out to cure them. Was he inconsistent, or have his words been misunderstood?”
He solves the problem between distinguishing between two kinds of suffering (pp. 63-64):
1) The suffering that comes from outside from the wickedness of others who are evil, and is the “cross of
persecution.” Jesus suffered deeply within himself, but the source of his anguish was outside himself. “Jesus wept
over Jerusalem; he was reviled and mocked; he was nailed to the cross and died.”
2) The suffering that comes from sickness and which tears us apart from within be it physical, emotional, or moral,
Jesus did not endure. He took this suffering away from those who approached him in faith..
Because Jesus was good he drew down upon himself the wrath of the world. But nowhere do the gospels tell us that
Jesus was every physically ill. Jesus himself distinguishes between sickness (attacking a person’s life and wholeness
from within) and persecution (attacking from without). He tells his disciples that they will be persecuted, they should
expect it, and rejoice in it. But in contrast to rejoicing in withstanding the blows of external evil, Jesus wants to cure
illness. “Every time you meet Jesus in the gospels, he is either actually healing someone, or has just come from
healing someone,or is on his way to do it,” is how a friend of MacNutt’s put it. And I would add, “or he is commanding
his followers to do likewise in his name.”
Thus, we do not “preach ‘cheap grace,’ a Christianity without a cross, says MacNutt. We preach the good news, that
suffering is evil to be cast out . Suffering is the result of sin, only to be endured for the sake of the kingdom and never
for its own sake. Even Paul only stopped praying that his “thorn in the flesh” be cast out when he finally learned that
there was a purpose to it, and “was for the sake of the kingdom (lest his exalted revelations make him proud). (2Cor
12:7-9) Moreover he calls it an ‘angel of Satan,’ and not a blessing sent by God. (p.66)
There is still ample need for all of us to be reminded of God’s awesome power and love. The early converts flocked to
Christianity when they experienced the tangible proof of God’s desire to make them whole through healings and
miracles accomplished by the power of the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus. It may be harder for us in the 21st
Century, with our understanding of the mechanics of the human body, biology, chemistry and physics, to humble
ourselves and ask for prayer. But the good news once we do is just as transformative and brings us to a closer
relationship with God.
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