It is a question today, the can get you a vehemently charge answer. But why? Shouldn't believers seek God for their help and healing and not get upset if you seemingly pose the question without even asking it...did you? Or today do we view Him as a second, third or forth choice just not in healing, but really anything.
I think Christians get a bit...tense when someone brings up the matter of miraculous healing because they have encountered believers who want to make healing a litmus test of spirituality. Despite the apostle Paul clearly saying not all have the gift of healing, and despite the examples in the NT of Christians not being healed (Trophimus, Epaphroditus, Tabitha, Timothy, Paul), and though healing is listed in Scripture as a "lesser gift," these healing-is-for-everybody types press fellow Christians to make healing a prominent feature of their living, insinuating they have a shallow, juvenile faith if they don't. And this is why - some of the time, anyway - there can be very vehement responses to having brought up the matter of healing.
Romans 12:4-6
4 For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function,
5 so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.
6 Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, each of us is to exercise them accordingly: if prophecy, according to the proportion of his faith;
1 Corinthians 12:8-11
8 For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit,
9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit,
10 to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.
11 All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.
1 Corinthians 12:28-31
28 And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues.
29 Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles?
30 Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret?
31 But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.
It is a great discussion to bring up because if believers seen God as there first protection and help and the rest of everything out there as second, third, or forth line of defense maybe we would not be sitting in the situation we are today.
What "situation" are you talking about, exactly?
If God's people are not going to lead then they must follow, but what are you following?
Where does God's word say Christians
must lead? And lead who?
I think what I hear in the comments if God chooses to heal. I think it can become easy then to move to the assumption that he probably will not because of x,y,z and our belief is just not there.
Far more important, I think, than our capacity to believe is our willingness to live in constant surrender to God's will and way (
Micah 6:8; Romans 6:13-22; Romans 8:14; Romans 12:1; James 4:7; 1 Peter 5:6). If one is doing this throughout every day, faith in the right measure in the right things happens naturally and powerfully.
Jesus said, one of those signs that accompany those who believe is they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover.
And the cases of Trophimus, Epaphroditus, Tabitha, Timothy and Paul who received no miraculous healing (except Tabitha, who had to die of her illness first)? These all indicate that, as some have already noted in this thread, healing is not guaranteed to believers.
As servants or slaves of Christ delivering what God told us and believing that is who we are doing for.
And if it serves God's purposes to keep a person ill? Are you willing for this to be? Often people only turn to God in humility and dependence when they have been pressed by disease and the prospect of death to do so. Healing may, in these cases, work contrary to what God is doing in a person's life. Do you take this into account in your views on healing? God kept Paul weak and dependent through a "thorn in his flesh," didn't He? But the result was that the power of God was more fully flowing in and through Paul. "When I am weak then am I strong," he wrote. Do you believe him? Or was Paul's faith simply too weak?
I am not denying God heals some even today. But I would urge you not to deride fellow believers who don't adopt your degree of enthusiasm about this particular gift. See above.
