When Healing Doesn’t Come

What do we do when healing doesn’t come?

When we’ve prayed all the prayers our friends and spiritual mentors told us to pray, when everyone in the Christian community is looking at us like it must be our fault, when we’ve confessed all our sins and done all we can do, yet healing doesn’t come.

I will never forget the Saturday morning my older brother, his body frail and wrought with cancer, finally found his healing. My parents had dressed Matt in his favorite St. Louis Cardinals shirt, and I’d been called into work. After mulling it over, and perhaps heeding the greater call deep within my gut, I’d thought better of leaving, and let “Fashion Gal” know I wouldn’t be coming in after all.

Instead, I stood in the doorway and watched my parents fuss over Matt with love and nurture in their eyes, as though he were a newborn baby. For months now, my dad had sat at Matt’s bedside in the evenings and read healing Scriptures over his son. And yet, the night before I’d been awakened by the sound of “the death rattle” coming from the bedroom next to mine—that labored, painful breathing that signals the time is near.

As I approached Matt’s bed, my mom said, “He’s not breathing.” The monitor on the floor confirmed this, and my parents watched for it to change. I watched my brother. I can only compare what happened next to being present at the birth of a baby. A smile spread across Matt’s face as the tangible presence of God filled the room. Then the color drained from his lips.

Matt is healed.

No more pain.

No more cancer.

Matt is healed.

And yes, at that point, it felt like death. “Did he just die?” my mom cried out. And the grieving, the sorrow, began.

During Matt’s illness, people told us why they thought he got sick and how to make it go away. Some said the sins of the father fell upon the son. Others said Matt had unconfessed sin in his life. Many said our family lacked faith. Still others said Matt should eat this, pray that, and go here.

The people who changed my life forever were the ones who loved us right where we were.

After Matt died, some said we should have prayed harder for him to be resurrected from the dead. Others said it wouldn’t have happened if we had only trusted God more.

And still others came to the door with a meal and heartfelt tears.

Hebrews 11:13 says, “All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth” (NIV).

What if faith looks less like demanding God do what we want, when we want it? What if it looks more like knowing he’s still God even when the promise isn’t fulfilled in our lifetime? What if we took God out of the box? What if we stopped shaming the sick, the poor, and the marginalized?

God’s promise to Abraham was fulfilled through his descendants, and God’s promise to Matt was fulfilled through death. What if while we were taking God out of the box, we let healing look however God wanted it to? What if we left the how (supernatural, through medical intervention, alternative therapies, and so on) up to the individual and God? What if it wasn’t up to us to decide for everyone else how their healing, their promise, should be fulfilled? What if instead we supported people in the waiting? What if we prayed for them in earnest and strived to meet their physical needs?

Honestly, I think a part of us needs to assign blame when trials come. That way we can isolate and surely avoid the cause. Some think, If sickness happened to me, I would pray harder. If I hadn’t seen my promise fulfilled yet, I’d refuse to die until it happened.

What if instead we let God be God? If today you find yourself waiting on a promise, may I assure you that you haven’t failed? The Bible is filled with “waiters.” And today, instead of assigning blame, maybe we could arrive at a “waiter’s” door with a meal and a smile.

 

Stacey Philpot is wife to Ryan and mother to Hayden, Julie, and Avery. She is a writer, goofball, and avid reader. Stacey has ministered for over 15 years to youth and women in her community in order to equip them to go deeper in Christ. She blogs at aliferepaired.com and chronicallywhole.com.