When the Healing Doesn't Come

“I’m sorry that my prayers didn’t help”

“Do you think God could have healed your sister?”

“So many people were praying why wasn’t she healed, why didn’t the cancer go away, why didn’t the baby live?”

For 24 hours hundreds and hundreds of people fervently prayed for my sister. From watching a whole entire waiting room filled with friends and family pray, to watching her basketball teammates circle around her bed sending up bold, faith-filled prayers,”, to me holding her hand through the night praying the same words over and over again, all the way to a sweet 3 year old praying for Aunt Liz to “feel better”; I saw the whole spectrum. You hear of all of these crazy miracles and the way God saved someone’s life or miraculously healed someone—yet for us our story ended with a gravesite and funeral. Sometimes it feels that if maybe we had just prayed more fervently or had more faith than she wouldn’t have died. I know there are so many stories out there where the ending isn’t a miraculous healing where instead there is still the constant daily pain and sickness, the permanent disability or the aching heart from a loved one who didn’t make it.

So the question that I have been wrestling with lately is what do you do when you don’t get the physical healing that you pray for?

If you look at the gospel you see over and over again Jesus healing people of their physical diseases, so we can’t help but wonder if he will do the same for us too. & when he doesn’t it leaves us wondering if God is either unable or unwilling to heal our loved ones.

In the gospel of Mark there is the story of Jesus healing the lepers and the man knelt before Jesus and said:  “If you are willing, you can heal me and make me clean”

Jesus replied

“I am willing, be healed.” Mark 1:40-41

Jesus said to the lepers “I am willing”, but in my own life it felt like he was saying to me “I am not willing” and it hurt, it felt like Jesus was refusing me my miracle of healing the loved ones in my life. I felt like it was a party that I wasn’t invited to, an exclusive privilege that wasn’t extended to me. It left me feeling hurt and upset with God.

When we look throughout the gospels the miracles that Jesus performed display his love and compassion for hurting people BUT the greater purpose of each miracle is to draw people into a greater spiritual reality a greater understanding of him that will give us the life we’re so desperate for.

Jesus really does want us to live, and he came and healed people while he was on earth in order to show us that there was a deeper sickness than cancer, brain injuries, miscarriages, autoimmune disorders and strokes and that deeper sickness is sin and it is a poison that penetrates and destroys everything.

But we have hope for what is to come, hope that as Rev 22:1-3 says, death and disease will be killed for good and sorrow and pain will be no more.

But for now we live in the in-between where suffering is an ongoing reality as we await the healing to come with the new heaven and the new earth.

Jesus’s miracles in the gospels and those that we still see today give us a foretaste of what is coming- the day is coming when the healing ministry of Jesus will come to full fruition,

But “when we insist that God’s promises of complete healing be applied to our lives now as well as in the fullness that is to come, we’re mistakenly expecting in this age what God has reserved for the next. God’s primary purpose in the here and now is not to rid us of sickness and pain, but to purify us and empower us to hope in his promises trusting that one day they will become a reality that we will know fully and enjoy forever (Nancy Guthrie).”

Jesus came to get to the root of our problem—the cause of all suffering and sorrow: sin. Jesus promises to heal us of the most destructive, deadly disease in our lives, the disease of sin.

So when I go back to the question I was asked of  “Why didn’t God heal your sister?” I know that Jesus did not withhold his healing touch from her, instead he healed her in the greatest way possible and has taken her to himself and will at the resurrection give her a glorious new body.

This freedom from sin is the miraculous healing that is beyond our understanding and the too-good-to-be-true promise of the gospel.

So don’t insist that God heal you or your loved one here and now. Don’t reduce the nature of his healing power and intentions. Jesus did not die on the cross to give you a certain number of days of health on this earth, but to fit you for eternity in a new heaven and a new earth.

“We believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will gives us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.”

-Romans 8:23

Freedom in Pain

For a big portion of my life, I was dishonest to both myself and to others. I was so focused on shoving any negative emotions down that I never allowed myself to truly feel pain.


The pain of death, the pain of mental illness, the pain of broken relationships, the pain of practically any life experience that hurt – I shoved deep down inside of myself. I lived life numb. I turned off my pain receptors and was “strong” for myself and for everyone else around me. 

This next sentence was a revelation: vulnerability goes so much deeper than simply allowing yourself to TALK about the hard stuff. It is allowing yourself to feel it, too.

I never gave myself the freedom to actually “lose control” and embrace pain. I would be sad for a little while, but would quickly tell myself, “Enough is enough,” only because I’d get tired of feeling the negative emotion. I would cry for as long as I deemed necessary, but only when I chose to. 

I constantly tried to control and limit the depth of my pain.A short backstory: I used to highly value looking like I was put together. I was the “strong” one. Even when life got hard, I was the person who could carry on, regardless of anything. Looking back now, I realize how I allowed my insecurity of looking weak to steal life from me. 

False strength stole the intimacy of being vulnerable, and the closeness it fostered in relationships.

I even allowed it to steal my dependence on God. I was too busy being “strong”, instead of relying on him to carry me.

More recently, I came to the realization that I have lived the majority of my life half alive, numb to pain – all because I believed allowing myself to feel pain was bad. It made me weak, somehow.

Lately, I’m discovering it’s actually the complete opposite.

2 Corinthians 12:9 “But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”

God loves broken people, and he loves being glorified in our weaknesses.

It’s completely selfish that I haven’t allowed this healthy emotion – pain – into my life. I’ve lost a lot of opportunities where I could have relied on God instead of trying to do it all myself. 

Even though being vulnerable may make me feel cut open, wounds bleeding and scars showing, I know it is necessary. God is best glorified in my weakness. And as I find the courage to feel, I can see God working for me, not against me. 

Matthew 5:4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” 

By walling off pain, I was denying myself the comfort God brings through mourning. 

Dear Friend, if you’ve had similar struggles – please know that it is okay to cry, even when people can see you. Chances are, those same people want to be there to comfort you, love you, and support you. It is okay if we don’t have our lives put together. We aren’t called to perfection; we are called to live in complete abandon for Christ. 

It’s also okay if you don’t know how to explain your feelings. I encourage you to just take the first step, and allow yourself to feel. 

Feel the ugly, and feel the brokenness. Be completely honest with yourself. Allow the tears to come. Let your walls come down. 

In these feelings of “weakness”, God can create intimacy. 

In these feelings of pain, God can create dependence on Him. 

In not having your life put together, you can witness to other people who don’t have their lives put together, either! Let your brokenness be your testimony for God. 

I am weak, because God is my strength. 

I am not perfect, because He is the only one who can be. 

I am not independent, because I am DEPENDENT on the One True King – and in this, I am free. 

I am free from the fear of judgement. I am free from the standards of my own mind. I am free from the guilt, the shame, and the perfectionism! 

In Christ I am free. That my strength. That is what I will lean on. 

2 Corinthians 3:17 “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”