What to do When You’re Not Healed

It can be painful and confusing when people around you are miraculously healed but you’re not. It might feel like you just missed out on getting a golden ticket to a chocolate factory; actually it probably feels more personal than that like when you’re picked last for a sports team. You can feel alone and left staring at your shoes, processing rejection, willing the ground to swallow you up.

It can sometimes follow that before long you’re making vows to yourself about the future, promising to never put yourself in a position to feel like that again. Left unchecked you might end up feeling offended at God and even start to question the truth of Christianity.

All those reactions and emotions from watching other people miraculously healed!

It can all feel a bit messy and complicated can’t it? If that’s you, we see you - we know what it can feel like.

Here’s a couple of ways that might help you process how you’re feeling:

1) Process it Personally

In large tent meetings like at Newday it can sometimes feel all a little impersonal and random, but it isn’t. God is not a force like electricity, striking some and leaving others alone. He’s a person, and learning to process disappointment and pain with him personally is really important.

In fact God isn’t just a person, he’s three persons. He is the Father, the Son and the Spirit. He’s the Father who numbers the hairs on your head, provides food for the sparrows and beauty for the flowers. He’s also the Son who came looking for us, who loves us, and who laid his life down for us, and he’s the Spirit who comforts us, leads us, affirms our adoption and is our helper every day.

God does nothing randomly, unthinkingly or cruelly. All of which means two things: first, that you can bring your disappointment to him because he cares for you and, second, that he’s at work in and through your sadness right now!

God is drawn to people in need and he’s close to the brokenhearted. He is magnetically pulled toward those who get overlooked or are unloved by the world, and when we’re struggling and suffering he’s probably closer than he was before.

It’s normal to dislike painful emotions like distress and sadness, but don’t let your hurt convince you of things that aren’t true.

When we’re flooded by sadness and shame or when we’re feeling angry, we can sometimes lurch from side to side in our faith, but God is not far away, he has not forgotten you and he does not make mistakes.

God, your Father, has a plan for your life. He has a plan even for your pain.

Process your disappointment with him, ask him what he’s doing through this experience and continue to cling on to the truth about who God is. God is the Father, the Son and the Spirit. He always has been and he always will be.

2) Process it Biblically

We must process our pain personally with God but we must also process it biblically. We must try and see things through a Bible-shaped lens.

When someone’s healed it can seem to us like it’s the most straightforward thing in the world (even though we might not understand how it happened). Someone was in pain one moment, they were healed the next, simples - ‘why can’t it happen to me then!’ but that overlooks the reality of what the Bible says about the world.

According to the Bible the whole earth lies under the power of the devil (1 John 5:19) and in this world death dominates, covering all we do like a shroud of darkness (Isaiah 25:7).

Life isn’t a playground and the world isn’t all puppies and parties. Instead in this world of ours: death, disease, pain and suffering are normal and happen every day (John 16:33). The question shouldn’t be ‘why isn’t everyone healed?’ but rather: ‘why is anyone healed in the first place?!’

When a person is healed it’s like a shard of hope cuts into the despair around us, and a voice calls to us from the outside. Life gets a little bit larger, and a little bit stranger.

The apostle John calls miracles and healings ‘signs’. They are signposts, he tells us, pointing us to a destination. Where are they heading? They’re leading to the truth that Jesus is the Son of God and our saviour (John 20:31). They say to us ‘the one who heals our bodies, is also able to heal the world, and he’s able to forgive your sin and bring you to God.’

Jesus is making all things new, restoring everything that’s been broken and healings point us toward that reality. They remind us who he is. Having defeated death and destroyed the power of the devil, Jesus is driving back darkness every day. Healings are an invitation that we can come to him, find forgiveness, and enjoy life in his name. Healings tell us that he cares about the human race, that he cares about you, and that he came to save you.

Jesus has been given all authority by God the Father and he is establishing his kingdom all over the world. It is coming more fully every day and it will eventually come completely. On that day all disease and pain will cease, but until then we marvel at his miracles following where they lead so that we can experience peace and enjoy abundant life in his name.

Run, Just Not Away

When we’re afraid or in pain we want nothing more than to run away from it all. We want to get away from whatever’s hurting us or scaring us. It’s entirely normal to want to run from how you’re feeling right now. Go ahead and listen to that feeling that wants to run away. Listen to it and act, only don’t run away from Jesus, run toward him instead.

When someone’s healed by Jesus in the Bible we sometimes read of them leaping in the air (Mark 10:50), or of them jumping for joy (Acts 3:7-8). We picture people running, perhaps like you saw people running at Newday after they were healed.

You may not be able to run physically right now, you may instead be still processing your emotional and physical pain. As you share it with the Lord and think biblically about your life, the outcome is that you’ll end up doing more running than others which is exactly what God wants for you and me. He wants us to learn to run to him as often as we can. He’s the fountain of life, the source of all joy, and he’s offering himself to you.

Anything that happens in life that teaches us to run to him for help, is a precious thing.

“Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.” (James 4:8)