Healing…Your will be done Lord….

One of the things that I have been accused of is not praying “with faith” when I have prayed for someone’s healing, especially when it is very serious. The reason for this is that I usually end such a prayer by saying, “Your will be done Lord.”

Let me state unequivocally, we have a wonderful heavenly Father who loves us in Christ and can do all things, including the healing of serious illnesses. However, sometimes the Lord’s will is not to heal. Sometimes He uses illness to draw us closer to himself. One man who had a serious, debilitating stroke when he was just fifty-three years of age, leaving him in a wheelchair, said to me, “I am thankful, despite my blisters that I sit on every day for the last thirty plus years, if the Lord had not blessed me with this stroke, I would more than likely not be His child today!” 

We can be very thankful that we live in an age where the Lord has blessed us with various medicines and very skilled medical practitioners, surgeons, specialists, nursing staff, who can diagnose, perform surgery, and care for us when we are unwell. It is amazing what modern medicine and medical procedures can do with the Lord’s blessing. And often, our Father in heaven uses these gifted people and procedures to bring about healing, whether it be for the common cold, a burst appendix, a kidney stone, or some other organ that has malfunctioned. But sometimes He doesn’t heal. That too is for our greater good, for we are His children in Christ, and He loves us dearly, which we should not doubt. 

Well, let us address the ‘elephant’ in the room. What about cancer? There have been many times the Lord has healed people with cancer. Most of us know someone who has had cancer and they are either in remission or the cancer has been eradicated through various treatments or surgery. But sometimes the Lord decides not to heal and uses cancer to bring us into His eternal presence. Yes, life is sweet, and we would all like to stay a little longer with loved ones, but as Christians, to be called into His eternal presence is not the worst thing that could happen to us. It would be far worse to be called into his presence if we were not Christians. 

But what if the cancer has been determined as terminal by qualified medical staff, can the Lord not heal? Yes, He can, and that is what we pray for keeping in mind that the Lord’s will be done. And when His answer is not to heal, may we be wise and humble enough to prepare ourselves and others for our transition to glory, no matter how difficult that may be at the time. 

In closing, let us remember that our heavenly Father said ‘no’ to His beloved Son when he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. Three times He asked His Father in heaven to remove His cup of wrath for our sins and three times the Father’s answer was ‘No’. Thankfully, three times the Saviour also ended His prayer by saying, “Not my will be done, but Yours.” As Easter approaches, may we be thankful that our forgiveness and eternity was determined when the Father said ‘no’ to His Son’s prayer and the Son willingly obeyed His Father’s will. This single act of obedience to the Father’s will brought about the greatest healing for all sinners who repent and believe. JZ