Does God Have the Power to Heal?

Does God Have the Power to Heal Us?

We humans have difficulty in accepting that God has ALL power in His hands. This is despite the unthinkable alternative, that God would have NO power at all. That one item – a weak, ineffective God – would of itself cause total shipwreck to God’s grand designs for man and the universe He created for man.

A God without power is no God at all. Any power that is apparently outside such a God’s purview or control has only been temporarily delegated to the recipient by the omnipotent Creator God. When Jesus was standing before Pilate (a governor of Judea for the mighty Roman Empire), Jesus had to remind Pilate – if Pilate had ever known it – that he could have no power against Jesus if the one original all-powerful God had not given it to him to accomplish God’s inscrutable purpose. In this instance the “inscrutable purpose” was the redemption of all mankind. And He gave mankind the power to do this terrible act that would strip Jesus of His dignity, His divinity (as the human Son of God) and His life!

Does God Want to Heal Us?

“Ay, there’s the rub!” (Shakespeare) Yes, there is a bit of a problem if we have a God with the ability to uproot mountains, but who apparently doesn’t want to lift a finger to remove the afflictions towering over our prostrate bodies and pressing them into the ground. Life can play rough at times; and it hurts! But if that is what life is about – if it is really not a game, but a deadly serious contest of strength and will power – we stand our ground and say stoutly, Bring it on! We have divine Power and Will on our side.

Let’s do a little practical thinking and dispense with all the starry-eyed talk about “name it and claim it.” But at the same time we will not forget that God is still the God of miracles – small miracles, medium sized ones and stupendous miracles. No, the previous statement is rather misleading: all miracles are the same to God. There is no gradation of miracles where God’s power is concerned.

A miracle is simply an act that seems to fly in the face of natural laws and that to which we are accustomed. For example, if God so wished, He could make the universe disappear in a second; but that will never happen because it is definitely not what God wants. I can think of a number of reasons that God will not disintegrate the cosmos in a flash; some of the reasons are a trifle abstruse (that is, they are to me, but then, I have the intelligence of a snail) while others are easy to see.

The abstruse reasons are on the fringes of my mind; they are not anything I can easily grasp or articulate. But the simpler reasons are more easily handled. One is that God has a purpose for everything we see and perceive all around us stretching out to infinity: the planets, the unimaginable number of galaxies, the stars – and we cannot overlook man who was made for a little while lower than the angels and who is destined to be next to God in the consummation of all things.

The Scripture tells us that, if we believe, all things are possible.

(Mat 17:20)  “…verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.”

(Mar 9:23)  “Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.”

All right; I cannot say Scripture is untrue; and I firmly believe the passages above. But what about the incident that is included in Mark 9.17-29 in which Jesus had previously sent twelve disciples on a junket throughout the region and they had healed many and cast out the devils that possessed them? They had faith then and they had faith in the present instance also, or so they thought, and their prayers had come flying back in their faces – unanswered.

According to some versions of the Scripture Jesus told them that kind of demon could be handled only by prayer and fasting. I tend to believe these versions. But then what will we do with Jesus’ statement about removing mountains? Of course Jesus was only using the idiom of the Jews of that day in speaking of any insurmountable task, but, fasting aside, the incident in Mark 9.17-29 was merely another very difficult task and one which they had heretofore done easily.

What about the mountains in your life that you have often petitioned God to remove: Why are they not yet removed? Every child of God wants God to work wondrously in his or her life; it’s a normal desire woven into the spiritual fabric of all who belong to God. But the fulfillment of this normal desire is by no means automatic. The person who mines for gold does not expect the gold to jump out of the ground into his lap. Looking for gold is a long arduous task. By the same token, we have to seek earnestly and persistently for God to work His wonders in our individual lives. God has a plan for each of us, but the task of implementing the full will of God in our lives requires much prayer and sacrifice, sweat and tears.

Certainly we have all prayed for God to do a special work in and through us. If you have not yet sought God for this special blessing, you are not following Him closely. It’s axiomatic that drawing close to God brings with it a yearning to fulfill something – anything – that goes beyond the norm. Love will do that to a person. That is why the young suitor of “the girl of my dreams” will swear to her that he would swim the widest river, climb the highest mountain and even die for her. Then he concludes this moving spiel by saying something like, “I’ll see you tonight if it doesn’t rain”!

Such ringing expressions of love of course are belied by our feeble actions. Ringing words will never get us anywhere with God if we do not back them up with action. Rain indeed! Nothing should deter us from our quest for the power of God to work mightily in us and then, through us to reach out to others. We have to persevere in our search for the precious gold lying hidden from our sight and possession beneath the tons of obstructing rock and earth.

It is the power of God that will uproot mountains and quiet the fury of a storm with a single command, “Peace, be still!” When God flexes His muscles, extraordinary things happen: kingdoms fall, brave men become fearful, the earth rocks to and fro and the sun hides its face.  But the power of God is no more important than another facet of God with which we have to reckon. Along with the power of God comes the will of God. The two items are twins: there cannot be one without the other. The will of God is like a circular wall that restricts the power of God in a specific instance; divine power cannot operate outside divine will. At the same time the power of God, contained within the wall of His will, fulfills all that God’s will demands in the particular setting.

The power of God does not surge forth with abandon, indiscriminately creating new worlds here and there and uprooting mountains and casting them into the sea to no purpose. The power to work in such haphazard fashion is certainly there, but the will of God is also there, in its direction of the power. There can be no working of the power of God without the will of God to actuate it and determine its course and objective.

If it should seem that this awesome power at any time breaks through the restraint of God’s will, then we have to conclude that what had seemed to be God’s will was not His will because clearly the power cannot operate independently, and outside, of the will of God. Only God’s will can turn on the engine of God’s mighty power and it then directs the power to specific places at specific times. It is only in the Master’s own way and time that we can ever accomplish anything profitable.

So while you are pressuring God to show His power by using you in a mighty way, seek earnestly for the will of God concerning you. Exert every effort to be in perfect accord with what God wants. Then, as God shows you progressively what He wants, strive just as earnestly to do what He wants as you do in seeking for His power. The power of God will not work exclusive of the will of God.

Then, after you have done all to conform to the will of God, stand and see the power of God work in your life!