The Myths of Faith Healing

By Larry Keefauver

Some believers focus exclusively on faith as the key to healing. Yet Jesus healed many who apparently had no faith. Some were healed because their friends had faith. Others were bound up by demonic spirits and healed by exorcism, even against their wills.

The truth is that God heals. The myth is that God always heals now at the initiative of our faith.

Faith teacher Frederick K.C. Price has asserted: "The seventh method of receiving healing--[which] I believe is the highest kind of faith--is the highest way to receive healing...If you believe you receive it, you will confess that: 'Bless God, I believe I am healed. I believe I have received my healing...I believe that it is so. I believe that I can walk in divine health all the days of my life.' You are reading after one man who will never be sick, and I'm not being presumptuous."

Myth is mixed here with truth. The highest kind of faith is, "I believe in Jesus," not just, "I believe."

It is true that faith must be our initiative. But even our initiative comes through the prompting of the Holy Spirit: "No one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor. 12:3). Our faith helps us receive healing, just as the lack of faith hinders healing. But healing does not depend on faith. Healing depends on the Healer.

Healing is the will of God. Canadian evangelist Peter Youngren wrote: "Jesus clearly shows us God's will in healing ... the Word of God declares that 'great multitudes followed Him, and He healed them all' (Matt. 12:15). When Jesus healed all, He was obviously doing the will of His Father, because He only did that which the Father wanted Him to do."

Youngren adds: "This is why you can come with boldness asking God for healing. God is on your side. He wants the best for you. He is good."

So, if God wills all to be healed, then can your faith move His hand to heal you? In the words of the Hertz rental car commercial: "Not exactly!"

Your faith moves Him to save you (see Rom. 10:9-13; Eph. 2:8). And in your salvation is your healing: "That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying: 'He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses'" (Matt. 8:17; Is. 53:4-6).

But your faith does not effect your healing now. When you are healed rests entirely on what the sovereign purposes of the Healer are.

Consider this biblical example. In John 5 Jesus healed one paralytic at the pool of Bethesda though a multitude thronged that place daily to be healed. Why was one man healed at that moment while others were not?

John 5:19 gives the answer when Jesus confessed, "'Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner.'"

Bible scholar Jack Deere correctly observes that the initiative for the miraculous in Jesus' ministry did not begin with Him but with the Father. "He healed only the people He saw His Father healing," Deere writes. "The only firm reason for the healing of the paralytic that we can derive from the context of John 5 is that the Father willed it, and Jesus executed His Father's will ... We are ultimately faced with the conclusion that sometimes the Lord works miracles for His own sovereign purposes without giving any explanation for His actions to His followers."

The second myth about healing is that if you stand fast in faith, you will be physically healed in time and space. Ken and Gloria Copeland have declared that healing will come if we have faith in our hearts and God's Word in our mouths. But, they add: "It may take time for it to manifest in your body. So stand fast in faith, giving thanks to God until it does. Focus on God's Word, not on physical symptoms."

In what do we "stand fast"? The "rock" on which we stand isn't faith or healing but Christ alone--the Healer. In Hebrews 10:23 we are admonished to hold fast to the profession of our faith. But in what is our profession of faith? Certainly, it is not in faith or in healing.

Be careful that your faith is not in faith itself--or, worse yet, in a faith teacher! Just believing hard enough, long enough or strong enough will not strengthen you or prompt your healing. Doing mental gymnastics to "hold on to your miracle" will not cause your healing to manifest now.

So what is faith? It is more than believing in your heart that God heals. The truth is that God is the God who heals. Faith is trusting the God who heals. Faith is a radical, absolute surrender to the God who heals. Faith is not holding on for your healing but holding on to the God who can do the impossible.

The truth is that your healing may manifest in eternity, not in time. If your trust is in God who heals, then when He heals you is secondary to belonging to the Healer. Certainly you will thank Him if He heals you today. But if your healing comes beyond death in eternity, will you praise Him now for that?

Paul did just that: "'O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?' The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord" (1 Cor. 15:55-58).

The third myth about healing is that if you just confess your healing, you will be healed right now. But you should confess the Healer, not your healing.

In his best-selling book, The Bible Cure, Dr. Reginald B. Cherry encourages us to "speak to the mountain" of our illness when we pray. That is important in prayer. But praying it and saying it won't make physical healing manifest now.

Positive confession does not effect healing. If that were true, anyone who believes in mind-over-matter mental exercises could heal people. Only Jesus heals.

Our confession should be in Him, not in being healed now. Jesus sternly warned: "'Therefore whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven'" (Matt. 10:32-33).

It's time we throw out the lies that cloud the truth about faith and healing. It's time we embrace the scriptural truths that shatter shallow myths and bring us freedom to confidently trust God.