Praying for the sick is commonplace in our churches. Anointing with oil is practiced in some of our churches. We say we believe prayer for the sick is important.
If we pray for one who is sick who does not appear to get better or who subsequently dies, we are likely to hear many well-meaning people assure us it was “God’s will” the person die. We talk a lot in our churches about how God’s will will be done and how God does not change his mind. If these statements are true, why pray for the sick? Is that just because we are demonstrating our submission to God’s will? Is it because it makes us feel good to pray for our sick friends and family?
Praying for one who is sick who then dies can be disconcerting to those of us who believe Scripture. I remember a friend who, when she got sick, was surrounded by her dearest faithful friends who anointed her with oil and prayed she would be healed. She died anyway.
The Psalm 116 passage teaches that God’s ear is inclined to us when we pray. When we suffer distress, we call on God to save us, and God is gracious and merciful. This passage speaks to prayer for ourselves when we are sick, and it recognizes the many times that God’s grace restores us, even when we may not realize it.
The fact that God does not always heal every illness in the way we would choose from our human standpoint to be healed does nothing to challenge the validity of this Scripture—we pray, God hears and God’s mercy is extended to us. Sometimes, that means our symptoms disappear. Sometimes, as David would be the first to acknowledge, our infirmities stay, but we feel God’s hand in other ways.
The challenge may arise when we do not see the answer we had envisioned to our prayer. When our friends and family members die even after we have prayed for them, or when our own infirmities are not removed on our timetable, we can tend to decide that Scripture is wrong and that prayer is not answered. This psalm does not give us that out—David says God has been merciful to him and therefore he will continue to pray for deliverance. So too should we take our sickness to God. God always is merciful, but God may not show mercy to us the same way every time.
The Luke 4:38-40 passage is but one of many examples of the healing power of Christ. When Christ chooses, he can touch the sick and vanquish the disease. The New Testament does not record Jesus’ healing every sick person in Galilee. The point is not formulaic, and Scripture promises no more guaranteed results in the area of physical health than it does anywhere else. Doctor Luke is pointing out the abilities of the Great Physician, and we would do well to remember them and call on them. What happens then is in God’s hands.
The James 5:13-16 passage, like the others, is misread if we take it as a formula for guaranteed fever reduction or cancer elimination. James is speaking about a power and intent of God few of us really understand.
That is a hard lesson. Some months before my friend’s death, I heard a minister from a great church in our city tell an amazingly moving story of his deliverance from disease even as his family planned his funeral. We hear those stories, and we read in the Scriptures about miraculous healings. Then we read James tell us to do just what was done with my friend, promising that the prayer of the righteous has great effect and that the sick will rise up and be healed.
Sign up for our weekly edition and get all our headlines in your inbox on Thursdays
My friend’s death taught me a lot about prayer. Because I know no more righteous Christians than she or than the friends who gathered around her and prayed over her, and I absolutely believe the Scriptures. That means I must believe she rose up and was healed.
We have a lot to learn about healing. Healing obviously is not always what we think it is, nor is it always what we think we need, and it often is not what we say we want. In fact, we have a lot to learn about a lot of God's promises. We only get to see a tiny corner of the great work God is creating, and our little human minds do not comprehend how the whole masterpiece fits together. We simply have the wrong point of view. Having very little idea what the whole picture looks like, we certainly do not understand what is good and what is bad in each situation.
I think my friend knew that, and I have no doubt she is healed—without pain and singing her heart out right now … probably singing her favorite: “All the Way My Saviour Leads Me.”
That experience with my friend taught me about prayer. It taught me that we ask in faith as best we understand the Scriptures and as best we understand what God has taught us and as best we understand our own situation, and then we leave the ball in God's court. God hears and God answers. God heals … and we rise up.
That became quite a message for me six months later, when the deacons at another Baptist church gathered to pray and anoint. This time, the patient was my father-in-law, and God healed again, quickly, ending months of pain and misery and sadness.
Pray faithfully, and be open-minded enough to recognize the hand of God, even if God is working in a way you did not expect or really even want.
We seek to connect God’s story and God’s people around the world. To learn more about God’s story, click here.
Send comments and feedback to Eric Black, our editor. For comments to be published, please specify “letter to the editor.” Maximum length for publication is 300 words.