Dear People Who Keep Company With God,
I like to look at faith as the hand that receives the things we need from God. Everything Jesus purchased for us at the Cross can be obtained by holding your hand (faith) out to Him. This includes salvation, healing, the fullness of the Holy Spirit, gifts and fruit of the Spirit and victory over the world, flesh and the devil.
God has graciously given every believer in Christ a measure of faith (Rom. 12:3). Faith, along with hope and love, are eternal virtues of the Kingdom of heaven (1 Cor. 13:13). Faith works through love (Gal. 5:6) because God is love. Faith touches the Father’s heart and moves heaven so heaven will move earth. There are no impossibilities when faith is present.
Faith comes out of a relationship with the Lord. “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God” (Rom. 10:17). It does not say faith comes from having heard! The emphasis is on hearing in the present not having heard. Faith is rooted in a real and current heart to heart relationship with the Lord.
One aspect of faith that is prominent throughout the Gospels and Acts is faith for healing. Nearly one-fifth of the Gospel accounts are devoted to Jesus’ healing ministry. More is written about His healing ministry than any of His other mighty works.
Jesus’ compassion seems to be the primary motivating factor in His ministry of healing (Mk. 1:41). Compassion is love in action. He had compassion for crowds (Matt. 9:36; 14:14), as well as individuals (Matt. 20:34).
There was something else that motivated Jesus to heal – his anger at the demonic (1 John 3:8). Many times Jesus would speak harshly to demons He encountered. The first demon Jesus met at the beginning of his ministry started to scream, until Jesus basically told him to shut up (Luke 4:35). Jesus did this on other occasions, once even rebuking a fever as if it were a living being that could respond to His orders, which it did (Luke 4:39).
Smith Wigglesworth said something that I have thought about a lot, “I fail to see how you will ever reach a place where God will be able to use you until you get angry at the devil.” I think we need to grow in both His compassion and anger at the demonic.
Jesus seemed to be more able to heal in an atmosphere of faith, as illustrated by his experience in his hometown (Mk. 6:1-6). He was especially moved by the “great faith” of the centurion (Matt. 8:5-13).
There are only 41 instances of individuals’ physical or mental healing recorded in the four Gospels. However, there are references to Jesus healing multitudes of people. (Matt. 11:15, 19:2). Likely, Jesus healed 10’s of 1000’s of people while on the earth.
One of the things that sticks out to me is in 23 of the 41 of the healings, Jesus mentioned something about the individual’s faith, such as “Your faith has made you well,” or “According to your faith let it be to you.” He was always willing to heal those who came to him with faith.
We need to especially remember that faith works through love as it pertains to faith for healing. No one should ever be made to feel they are disqualified for healing because of a lack of faith. This is clearly illustrated when Jesus healed a demonized boy. He specifically questioned the boy’s father about his faith and the man confessed his faith was lacking. The man asked the Lord to help him with his faith and the Lord helped him by healing his son (Mk. 9:14-27)!
Many Blessings, BW