© 12 Colin Melbourne
What about the ones who are not healed?
Q: Is it my fault if I’m not healed? I feel as though you are blaming me for being sick. Surely it’s up to God to heal me, and give me faith to believe in my healing isn’t it?
A: You sometimes get this response to the healing part of the Gospel. Usually from dear sick ones frustrated by what they term “trying to believe”, and yet failing to receive their healing.
They have often been prayed for, anointed with oil by elders, and had hands laid on them by every healing evangelists who passes through: All without apparent benefit. So they become bitter in heart. They have a tendency to incriminate God, and the messenger of His Word.
We need compassion, wisdom, and sensitivity in dealing with them.
Normally they are genuine Christians who have been religiously indoctrinated, so the full Gospel of Christ comes as a new thing to them.
It takes a long time to renew their minds in accordance with God’s Word, and some neglect to do so.
It’s a Faith Walk: Not a Sight Walk
Their walk with God is based on their senses and emotions; what they experience, see, and feel inside: It is not based on Bible faith.
You will avoid this snare by learning to walk in God’s revelation knowledge, instead of sense knowledge. (See E.W.Kenyon’s marvellous books: Two Kinds of Knowledge and Two Kinds of Faith.)
Mental assent is another common reason for failing to receive healing. Christians agree with the word in their minds, and speech, but don’t actually believe it in their hearts, so their actions contradict what they claim to believe. Here’s how God taught me the difference between mental assent and genuine Bible faith.
Cynics and sceptics delight to accuse God’s ministers. They point fingers, and say: The trouble with you preachers is you put the responsibility onto the sick person for their healing!
Some Christians respond to such attacks by feigning perplexity, and back-pedalling. But the scriptural fact of the matter is; it most definitely is the responsibility of the sick person to believe and receive their healing.
Can you lose your healing?
It is possible for people to be healed primarily by the faith of the person ministering healing, and that of believing friends, but unless the recipient also has genuine faith, they will rapidly lose their healing because of doubt and unbelief.
You come across statements such as, Those whom God heals stay healed. But that unscriptural remark flatly contradicts the Lord.
Christ Himself warned the impotent man at the Pool of Bethesda. Jn. 5:14 KJV;
Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.
No, we will not compromise, adjust, water-down, or deny, the Gospel of Christ in order to accommodate doubters. Jesus didn’t, and a Bible preacher won’t either.
There’s only one Gospel, and it is the same for every creature.
Whosoever Believeth Receiveth
The LORD Jesus Christ is The Faith Preacher, our role model, and Prototype, and His method was to put the onus on the recipient to have faith for healing.
That is why He so often confirmed it was the sick person’s faith that wrought the miracle.
The recipient’s faith in The Living Word.
So, put your whole faith in the Living Word, and you will get what these people got, Mtt. 9:20-22 KJV;
And, behold, a woman, which was diseased with an issue of blood twelve years, came behind him, and touched the hem of his garment: For she said within herself, If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole.
But Jesus turned him about, and when he saw her, he said, Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole. And the woman was made whole from that hour.
Whose faith did Christ declare made her whole?
Next we read in Mtt. 9:27-30 KJV;
And when Jesus departed thence, two blind men followed him, crying, and saying, Thou Son of David, have mercy on us. And when he was come into the house, the blind men came to him: and Jesus saith unto them, Believe ye that I am able to do this? They said unto him, Yea, Lord.
Then touched he their eyes, saying, According to your faith be it unto you.
And their eyes were opened; and Jesus straitly charged them, saying, See that no man know it.
Those two blind men got exactly what they believed they would get from Christ. Now look at Mk. 5:34 KJV;
And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.
Was it Christ’s faith that fixed her plague?
Now you are beginning to see, like Bartimaeus in Mk. 10:46-52 KJV;
And they came to Jericho: and as he went out of Jericho with his disciples and a great number of people, blind Bartimæus, the son of Timæus, sat by the highway side begging. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, and say, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me.
And many charged him that he should hold his peace: but he cried the more a great deal, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me.
And Jesus stood still, and commanded him to be called. And they call the blind man, saying unto him, Be of good comfort, rise; he calleth thee. And he, casting away his garment, rose, and came to Jesus.
And Jesus answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? The blind man said unto him, Lord, that I might receive my sight. And Jesus said unto him, Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole. And immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way.
Bold Bartimæus took responsibility for his own believing, and Christ endorsed his faith by restoring his sight.
Whose faith made this precious woman whole? Lk. 8:48 KJV;
And he said unto her, Daughter, be of good comfort: thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace.
Continued in Part 2: Why Are Some Not Healed?
Direct transcripts of Smith Wigglesworth preaching in the power of the Holy Spirit. This is one of those precious books that feeds your spirit with each reading. You simply must have… Ever Increasing Faith by Smith Wigglesworth
© 12 Colin Melbourne
