Speaking of Life
God Is Faithful
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There is a myth that if people really trusted God for healing, they would in fact be healed. When people who believe that myth aren’t healed, they feel guilty. They look for the supposed “secret sin” that is keeping them from being healed.
Christian friends and family may tell them they need to pray that God will show them their sins so that he can heal them. They might tell the sick person that he or she needs more faith, and prescribe more prayer and Bible study and fasting as the way to get God to heal them.
But such advice is nothing more than superstition. It reduces God to the level of the ancient pagan gods – tyrants, who cared little for the plight of humans and acted only when they had something to gain, or when a stronger god forced them to. The Father of Jesus Christ is not like those gods.
Formulas for getting right with God have no place in the gospel. Our relationship with God is not a business transaction in which we do something for God, maybe do some good deeds or say the right words in just the right way, and then he will be good to us. God has already saved us through Christ, and he did it while we were still sinners simply because he loves us, as Paul tells us in Romans 5.
The reason we pray, as Jesus did, “Your will, not mine, be done,” is that God’s will for us is always unwaveringly good, and never bad. God is, and always will be, faithful to his word of promise to love us regardless of what we do.
We pray for healing, but we trust ourselves to the One who cares for us. We believe he will do what is right and good for us. We live by faith, resting ourselves in his hands, because he is good. It’s not about secret sins, it’s about trusting the faithfulness of God.
The one thing we do know for certain is that our sins are forgiven, and that’s what really matters. We can be certain of that because it doesn’t depend on us, it depends on God, and God is completely faithful.
If we are healed physically too, that’s an added blessing. But we should remember that everyone who gets healed of a disease eventually dies anyway. Even Lazarus, who was raised from the dead, eventually died.
Physical healing is great, and we praise God for the wonderful healings he has given and continues to give, but we look ultimately to something that lasts forever. Like those cited as examples of faith in the book of Hebrews, we look for a better country, a permanent one, a heavenly one, promised to us by the One who is faithful.
I’m Joseph Tkach, speaking of LIFE.
