Healing is not something that simply happens to you. Instead, it’s something you work toward, search for and live out. It’s up to you to find healing.
That may sound heretical if you’re a believer who is praying for God to heal you—in your physical body, your troubled mind, your broken relationships or your wounded spirit. It’s hard to hold on to faith that healing is even an option. And perhaps you wonder why others seem to experience it—and you don’t.
Think of it similar to salvation. There’s nothing you can do to earn salvation; it’s a free gift from God. But that doesn’t mean you’re saved aside from your choice—and your voluntary response to God’s offer. You have a part to play in taking His offer of salvation into your being.
Or think of it like food. You don’t create food out of nothing; God supplies the food, but He doesn’t drop it into your mouth. You’re responsible for learning what you need, finding it, preparing it, and eating it. If you don’t, you’ll get awfully hungry!
With healing it’s kind of like that. First of all, God is a Healer—just like He is your Savior and your Provider. That’s just who He is. You can’t read Scripture and not see that about Him (Ex. 15:26; Ps. 103:20-3; Acts 10:38). That’s what He does; He heals.
And that healing affects everything; your physical body, your mind, your relationships, your inner spirit.
But that healing isn’t some magic spell that comes on you. It’s something you choose, seek out and actively work to receive.
Healing Is a Choice
Jesus functioned that way when He was here. People had to choose to come to Him for healing. Sometimes the faith of others brought them to Jesus—in person or “virtually.” He would sometimes ask, “What do you want Me to do for you?” The strongest example of this was when Jesus asked the man who had been crippled for 38 years, “Do you want to get well?” (John 5:6).
It’s not an unimportant question. You could choose something else instead of healing.
You could choose:
- To keep on living an unhealthy lifestyle (such as smoking or unhealthy food) and experience illness as a result
- To blame your spouse for your marriage misery, because to do otherwise would mean you would have to look at yourself
- To stay anxious and afraid because it’s the only thing you know and doing something different is even scarier
- To hold on to bitterness, loneliness or anger because it feels “safer” than letting go
Those statements may be overly simplistic, but you get the idea. God won’t force healing on you.
You might say, “I’ve been praying for my healing. Of course I want to be healed. God just hasn’t answered.”
It may be that you may need to do something besides asking. You may need to do the work of healing.
My Healing Choice
My husband passed away in February. The loss and grief was enormous—and exhausting. My head knew the truth that he is safe in Jesus’ arms, and that Jesus’ arms hold me too. I knew that death will eventually be destroyed. “Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Cor. 15:55).
But simply knowing those things, along with the passage of time, alone do not bring healing. I’ve had a few other really big matters where I had to grab a hold of God’s healing previously in my life, and that helped me know what I had do now. I had to choose to go after healing with my whole heart if I ever wanted to get to the other side of the pain.
There’s one important sense in which you never get to the point of not hurting over the loss of a loved one. But I’m not willing to stay stuck in the grief. I had to do the hard work of healing even though it hurt.
And I’ve reached a point where I can not only know, but feel, the sense of suffering, loss, and sadness be replaced by a profound sense of gratitude for the gift that was Al, his life, and our life together. I can feel—and accept—the blessing of the impact of his life on me and others.
I can feel healed. That’s a measure of healing that only comes from God—but it only comes to those who choose to go after it.
No, I’m still without my husband in this life. There will undoubtedly still be moments when I feel the loss, but the sting is removed.
Your Healing Choice
Where do you need healing?
Let me encourage you to not wait for heaven! I pray all the time, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus!” But don’t wait until then to go after your healing with everything you have.
Here are a few steps to help you understand what that looks like:
1. Choose to believe in healing. If you don’t believe healing is available for you, you’ll never get there. God usually doesn’t bring healing unless you’re looking for it.
That may look different depending on your circumstances. It may look like a healthy lifestyle, with as much physical healing as possible. It may look like a clear, calm, sound mind. It may look like loving well even if your spouse doesn’t respond in kind. It may look like a restored relationship between you. It may look like wholeness after abuse and rejection.
2. Go there! You won’t find healing if you keep your sickness covered up. I had to “go” into my grief and feel it, hold it, see it in all its devastation. You may need to “go there” in dealing with addiction or abuse by you or others, looking at the real problems in your marriage, owning the fear you have been trying to ignore because of your sickness or acknowledging how you’ve been irresponsible in some way. You may need others around you in order to do this.
And then invite God into that place, however dark it is.
3. Learn what God has to say. Listen. Really listen to Him! That may mean reading the Bible, listening to worship music, getting alone with Him in nature, or taking in what others who have known Him have had to say in preaching, books or similar resources. This is a huge part of what the body of Christ can do for each other. And it’s why you will almost always need others around you to help you search for—and find—your healing.
Once you’ve “gone there” and fully felt where you need healing, bring that to God. Better yet, get in God’s presence and then “go there” together. Don’t pretend. Bring whatever is hurt, broken, lost, dysfunctional or sick into His presence.
4. Let God decide the how, when and what. Remember you’re not the one who is the Healer; God is! You don’t heal yourself by drumming up enough faith or praying hard enough or reading enough Scripture. There’s work you do, but it’s not your work that heals you. When God tells you something, listen. When He asks you to do something, do it. When He gives you something, say, “Thank You.”
And when He brings you a measure of healing, embrace it!
Your healing will probably look different from what you imagined. That’s OK. Our ultimate healing will come in eternity. But you can still find healing here and now.
Healing Is a Choice
I hope you’ll choose healing for your physical body, your troubled mind, your broken relationships and your wounded spirit. God is the Healer! He wants to be that to you.
Question: Have you been holding back, waiting for healing to find you? How can you go after healing in the area you need it? {eoa}
Dr. Carol Peters-Tanksley is both a board certified OB-Gyn physician and an ordained doctor of ministry. As an author and speaker, she loves helping people discover the Fully Alive kind of life that Jesus came to bring us. Visit her website at drcarolministries.com.
For the original article, visit drcarolministries.com.
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James Lasher 
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