In our series titled, “What Does the Bible Say About Healing,” we’ve been looking at reasons why prayers for healing fail. Today we continue with Part Three. Please don’t look at any one of these reasons as being necessarily applicable to you. Such a conclusion would be premature. Rather, you should see them as a set of diagnostic tools. A way to check your spiritual health, if you will, to see if any of them apply so you can take the appropriate action.

Demonic Interference

In the NIV translation, the New Testament contains 82 references to “demon” or “demon possessed” and 8 more for “evil spirit.” The King James does not distinguish between “the devil” and “a demon” using only the word “devil” to describe Satan and all of his hordes as well. But it’s clear that Satan, not being omnipresent, could not perform all of his evil work alone but needs a vast army to assist him.

Most of us will never receive his personal attention, but that doesn’t make us immune to his schemes. His associates are well trained and vigilant, looking for any opportunity to help advance his cause.

Compare them to criminals in the physical world who know what they’re doing is wrong, but they do it anyway thinking they won’t get caught. When they see an open window or a flimsy lock they see a chance and in they go. It’s up to the police to catch them.

Demons operate the same way in the spiritual world, only there the “open window” is behavioral. Paul showed us an example of this in Eph. 4:26-27when he said, “In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.”

Anger that’s not resolved by sundown that same day is an open window through which a demon can crawl and establish a foothold in our mind.Unfortunately, there are no demon police to catch him and carry him away.Once he’s in it’s up to us to get him out.

Other behaviors besides unresolved anger that can leave us with open windows include all kinds of addictions, habitual sexual sin including pornography, and other flagrant sin.

Jesus had some advice on this subject for those who have gotten rid of a demon:

“When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first.”(Luke 24:24-26)

Leaving a demon’s habitation empty is like hanging out a welcome sign. It must be occupied by something else. One of the reasons AA is so effective is that it replaces the spirit of alcoholism with the Spirit of God. Every recovering addict should receive this advice and take it to heart to avoid reacquiring the addiction.

And Paul said we can demolish the stronghold a demon has built in us with divine weapons we’ve been given as believers.

For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ (2 Cor. 10:3-5).

Demons want us to believe false doctrine. Once they’re in our mind they begin feeding it to us    to cause us to doubt the promises of God, just like the Serpent did to Adam and Eve. These promises include the fact that we can be healed. If the demon can cause us to doubt that, he can hinder our prayers for healing.

When we know what the Bible really says we can dispute the demon, tearing down his arguments, taking the thoughts he feeds us captive to make them obedient to Christ. In the process we demolish his stronghold and force him to leave. James said, Come near to God and He will come near to you. Resist the devil and he will flee from you (James 4:7).

Demons can seem like powerful creatures, but John said, “He who is in you greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4), and Paul reminded us, “For God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Tim. 1:7).

Remember, these demons know their Bible too, so you can’t just make this up as you go. You have to know what you’re talking about. This is exactly the way Jesus defeated Satan in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1-11) and it’s the way you can defeat the demon you’re fighting, too.

Failing to Steward the Natural

For the most part people ignore their bodies, taking them for granted and acting like they’ll last forever. It’s commonly known that much of what we eat and drink is not what our bodies really need and a lot of it isn’t even good for us. But we go blissfully on not paying any attention to what we ingest, as long as it tastes good, and most of us get away with it.

But there comes a time when some of us get a warning that all is not well. It could be mild or it could be serious, but for most, a couple trips to the doctor and a hand full of drugs with a warning that we should start watching our diet usually puts us back on track, at least for a while. We quickly forget the doctor’s dietary advice, maybe even forget to take the medicine, and go on as if nothing happened.

This is the time when we should get serious about “stewarding the natural.” Signs like this tell us our body needs attention. If we give it what it needs now, better food, reduced weight, no more smoking or drinking, reasonable exercise to work off the stress, faith building prayer and Bible study, we can avoid big problems later. All these things will result in better health, But we don’t apply them, and because we don’t we’re not prepared mentally, physically or spiritually later.

I know a man who actually got into a huge argument over a scratched fender while he was still in the hospital after suffering a major heart attack, and made his wife, who was responsible, leave the room. The monitors attached to him showed the effect of his anger but he paid no attention. Another acquaintance stopped by a fast food chain on the way back from a trip to the emergency room for a burger and fries. Just minutes earlier the doctor had warned him about the need to reduce his cholesterol.

People like this keep smoking and drinking even though they know they’re poisoning themselves. They maintain their high stress lifestyle, knowing that it’s killing them, but convinced that they’ve beaten the odds. Finally it all comes crashing down and as they listen while their loved ones ask God for healing they finally realize they haven’t taken very good           care of themselves. They’ve neglected their mind, their body and especially their faith and              are in no way prepared for the ordeal they’re facing.

Our Allotted Time in Life is Fulfilled

“All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (Psalm 139:16).

After Adam and Eve sinned God withdrew the eternal life with which they had been created and they became mortal. He said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever”(Genesis 3:22). He banished them from the Garden and placed a cherub with a flaming sword at the entrance to guard it.

Since that time man has been mortal and God has written in the Book of Life the total of days appointed to each one of us. None of us can know what the total of our days is, but when that total has been reached our time on earth has come to an end.

It’s not that God chooses how many days we’ll get, but that having seen the end from the beginning He has seen our last day and appointed it to be so. In the meantime we can be healed to prevent our days from being shortened, but once our last day has come our time on earth has ended.

The days of our lives are seventy years; and if by reason of strength they are eighty years, yet their boast is only labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. (Psalm 90:10)

According to this Psalm, the average life span is about 70 years. But this is a principle and not a rule. And is not meant to imply that we’re guaranteed 70 years of life. However, when a person reaches the upper levels of this 70-80 year range, it does appear likely that his time on earth is nearing an end. And prayers for healing are less likely to be answered.

As an example, one night I was called to the hospital to pray for an elderly friend who had been admitted that night. Upon arriving at her bedside, she looked at me with piercing eyes and said, “Are you here to pray for me?” When I said yes she said, “Then pray for Jesus to take me home.”

This woman had been in pain for years. She said she was tired, and that although she knew her husband would prefer her to stay with him, she felt that it was time for her to go. This woman was sure that if she died she would be with Jesus. So I prayed and I asked for her to be healed, but added that it was her desire to be taken home. It was her desire that the Lord answered, and later that night she died and received the ultimate healing, eternity in the presence of the Lord.

Based on my research, these represent the major reasons why prayers for healing can fail. Certainly there are others. And there are admittedly many unknowns. But my purpose here is to show that God is not arbitrary. He doesn’t heal some and not others based on His own reasons, anymore than He saves some and not others.

The idea that He would do such a thing is simply man’s attempt to justify not being healed. Remember, when we try to justify ourselves, we end up condemning God. Better we should spend a lifetime trying to understand the human component of healing than to spend even one hour trying to make God responsible.

I’ve received some blow back from my studies on “What Does the Bible Say About Healing” and “Why Prayers For Healing Fail, Part One.” People have jumped to the conclusion that I’m part of the Word of Faith movement (I’m not) or a Charismatic faith healer (not that either, not even Charismatic). For the record I’m an evangelical who takes the Bible very seriously and who believes it means what it says.

That means I believe God is still in the healing business, because I can’t find any place in the Bible where it says He got out of it. So I’m trying to convey what the Bible really says about healing and why it doesn’t happen for some. With that, let’s look at some more reasons why our prayers for healing sometimes fail and see if we can get to the bottom of this.

Lack of Knowledge

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding” (Proverbs 9:10)

Because the concept of faith healing is neither taught nor practiced in many churches, a great majority of Christians don’t know anything about it. The idea of going to the elders to ask for prayer, as instructed in James 5:14-16, never occurs to them. Neither would it occur to the elders to offer prayer, because they likely have never been told that’s part of their responsibility.

Sometimes, when all the “miracles” of modern medicine have failed them, believers will turn to God in desperation for healing. But even though they know the Lord, they don’t have a relationship with Him based on biblical knowledge. Therefore they don’t have an understanding of Him, or His character, or the limitations they may have placed on Him by their own lack of knowledge that can prevent Him from responding to their prayers.

We’ve already discussed the view among some evangelicals that the so-called sign gifts (healing and tongues) were withdrawn when the New Testament became complete, based on an incorrect interpretation of 1 Cor.13:9-12. And we’ve mentioned others who claim these gifts were a sign to the Jews that Gentiles could receive the Holy Spirit and ceased after the Council of Jerusalem when Gentiles were given direct access into the Church. This can’t be documented in Scripture either.

Both these groups will have difficulty praying for healing because of this. You can’t very well ask God to heal you when you don’t believe He does that anymore. (There are some believers in these groups who believe God still heals people, but no longer uses individuals to perform miraculous signs such as healing others. And they condition their belief by saying while God can heal us and we should pray for Him to do so, we shouldn’t be surprised if nothing happens.)

As another example, because of the convoluted teachings of Calvinism, some people think God’s sovereignty extends to every event in their life, and that He’s actually the cause of their illness, or their child’s birth defect, or the accident that left a loved one horribly mangled. How does one pray for healing to the same God they believe brought these things into their lives for His divine purpose?

Aside from this being a serious assault on the character of God, it forms a cognitive dissonance in the mind of believers that makes it impossible for them to be of one mind when praying together. It’s not hard to see that believing God brings illnesses upon His children to somehow make them better Christians can be a major obstacle when praying for healing from the same illness.

What Does the Bible Say?

God never created anything that wasn’t perfect. And so it was with Adam and Eve. After He created them in His image He told them to be fruitful and multiply, to take dominion over the earth and rule over every living thing (Genesis 1:28). From then on they were in charge of bringing new people into the world and God was no longer directly involved.

But before they began having children, they sinned and their nature was irrevocably changed. When one of their first two children murdered the other one and was banished, it became clear that their children would be born in their fallen image and not God’s perfect one.

As their descendants reached child bearing age they joined in. That’s why the process is now called procreation. It’s also why John described our first birth, the physical one, as being of natural descent, or a human decision, or a husband’s will. God is only directly involved in our second birth, the spiritual one (John 1:12-13), the one that makes us perfect again.

When Adam and Eve sinned, Satan used the opportunity to steal dominion of Earth from Adam and is now the god of this age (2 Cor. 4:4) with the whole world under his control (1 John 5:19). God’s once perfect creation was irrevocably changed, allowing sickness, disease and death to become part of the human condition, along with all kinds of sin. The Creation is now a decidedly unfriendly place where evil things can happen to anyone at any time for any reason or no reason at all.

One of the most serious injustices Calvinism has done to God is to blame Him for the work of the devil. Satan is the one responsible for the sickness and disease, the birth defects, the senseless accidents and all the misery they cause. Once you understand that, you understand that by praying for healing from one of these things, you’re not praying to the one who caused it, but to the One who is the Ultimate Authority with the power to overrule what Satan caused.

We know God wants us to be healed because His name is “The Lord Who Heals You” (Exodus 15:26). His Word is filled with promises of healing that cross dispensational lines and carry no expiration date. He’s waiting for us to develop the same single mindedness of purpose He has about it because His nature is such that He cannot deal with a double minded person. James said such a person should not expect anything from God (James 1:7-8).

If you’ve been carried away by hollow and deceptive philosophy which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ (Colossians 2:8), I urge you to get back into God’s Word and rebuild the foundation of your relationship with Him based on Biblical knowledge, rather than on Man’s doctrine.

Lack of Faith

Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you” (Matt. 17:20).

This verse and many others tell us that with sufficient faith we can accomplish anything. Reading the stories of those who’ve been called into a healing ministry, I was surprised to learn that even though they were called and obeyed the call, they went through a period of praying for people without success before experiencing their first healing.

And even then, their first successes were often small ones, aches and pains and such. Then, as their faith grew, they were able to tackle larger challenges successfully. All of them attributed this to their own lack of faith at the beginning.

This tells us that the faith to be healed is not something we can take for granted. After all, most of us haven’t done anything to develop such a faith. At the first sign of a little ache or pain, we don’t look for someone to pray for us, we head for the medicine chest or the drug store for a pill or potion.

As a result our faith never has a chance to grow. Then, when something serious happens we’re not prepared with the faith to meet the challenge so we look instead to doctors, hospitals and such for healing. We don’t realize we’ve replaced our Lord’s promise to heal us with the medical profession. As a society we spend billions on health care every year while the God who promised to heal us for free stands by waiting for the call that never comes.

Then, if all else fails and we do go to someone for prayer we say, “I had the faith, but the Lord didn’t heal me. How come?” Well, according to a literal reading of the Bible, if we had the faith we would be healed, to which I add, if we had exercised and developed our faith we would have it. Remember, Jesus never said, “My faith has healed you” but He often said, “Your faith has healed you.”

Perhaps this is why so many of the reports of supernatural healing we hear today come from underdeveloped countries where there is no alternative to God’s provision and where faith is a necessary component to successful living. It’s reported that thousands come to faith every day, many because they’ve been healed and others because they saw someone else being healed.

Faith Comes Through Hearing

When you were searching for better solutions to the problems of your life you began to give consideration to the Gospel. God, in His grace, invested in you the faith to believe the death of His Son had paid the penalty for all your sins.

“For it is by grace you have been saved by faith, and this is not of yourself, it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8).

Because of that gift of faith, you believed and were saved. If you’re like most new believers, what followed was an immersion in the gospel of your salvation. You read and listened to everything you could find on the subject. You began attending a Bible Study. You discussed it with like-minded friends.

You heard the message repeatedly in church. You saw others being saved. As a result, your faith grew stronger until you no longer have even a shadow of doubt about your eternal destiny, and today you eagerly await the Savior you know is coming for you.

Now, compare that with your experience where healing is concerned. That same gift of faith that saved you was meant to grow into a belief that the God who saved you can also heal you. But for most of us that hasn’t happened. We haven’t read and listened to everything we could find on the subject. We haven’t attended Bible studies on healing, or discussed it with like-minded believers.

We don’t hear messages about healing from the pulpit. We haven’t seen other people being healed, nor have we asked for prayer for our own healing. As a result our faith in God’s power to heal us has never grown, but has all but withered away.

I am by no means trying to justify all the excesses of the Charismatic movement, but perhaps one of the reasons why they’re the ones who are experiencing healing in their midst is that they’re the ones teaching it, preaching it, talking about it, studying it, and practicing it.

One of the dangers in taking these reasons one or two at a time is it’s easy to conclude that each one is the only one. But I’d like you to think of them as diagnostic tools instead, using each one to give yourself a checkup. Each time you find something amiss, and can act to correct or eliminate it.

In the case of this one, you can start building your faith by study and exercise. Go back and really read “What Does The Bible Say About Healing” carefully, taking time to look up the citations I’ve included. If you have some like-minded friends ask them to join you in a study group on healing. Be careful not to invite anyone who isn’t open to the idea. Commit to pray for each other for healing. Then, before you automatically reach for that bottle of pain reliever for some minor ache or pain, ask one or two of them to pray with you instead. If nothing happens the first few times don’t be discouraged. Keep studying and learning. As your faith grows you could soon see a miraculous healing. See you next time.