Why Does God Heal Some People but Not Others? by David K. Bernard Podcast recording (no venue stated in the delivered transcript) Kind: teaching Scripture: James 5:14-15, Romans 8:28 Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/david-k-bernard--why-does-god-heal-some-people-but-not-others Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page. Free to copy and share with attribution. ------------------------------------------------------------ let's start with the scripture as you have already done first of all we as pentecostals absolutely believe that god heals that includes physical and emotional healing that includes instantaneous healing that includes miracles of deliverance so we must always preach and teach that we do believe in the gifts of the spirit divine healing and miracles we believe that healing is in the atonement in the sense that when jesus died for our sins and rose again he not only purchased forgiveness for our sins but he purchased healing and wholeness for our bodies however and here's where the issue comes not all the benefits of the atonement are immediate for example we still live in a sinful world we're still subject to temptations it's possible that we could succumb to temptation and make a bad choice in sin even though the lord has saved us from sin we still have that temptation and moreover we live in mortal bodies that will get sick and one day we will die everybody's going to die sooner or later of something until the rapture takes place i mean after all the apostles were great men of faith they preached divine healing but none of them are alive today they all died of something and you may say well that's not fair they they were tortured and killed but okay all their contemporaries uh everybody in the church everybody is dead 100 so some the benefit of the glorified body and perfect healing is not until the rapture of the church and the catchy way of the saints and living for the lord in heaven so we live in this middle ground where healing is promised but it's not going to be complete in this life so and and by the way i've written a book called spiritual gifts and i do have a chapter on healing and i address at length this question why are some people not healed now now some will say well if you only had enough faith everybody would be healed but that's not accurate as i just said all the great people of faith died of something but even if you look in the bible paul several times mentions co-workers who are sick trophamus for example he had to leave him because he was sick epaphroditus was sick paul even told timothy gave him advice for nutrition because he he was sick he had a chronic illness apparently paul had a thorn in the flesh we don't know if it was a physical illness or some other type of trial but nevertheless he prayed three times for god to deliver him and god didn't deliver him but instead said you know my grace is sufficient so it is biblical to understand that no not everybody receives healing and not everybody receives instant healing i will say that some healing can be instant but some healing can be gradual it's still healing really all healing is god's healing so let's say you need to have surgery and the surgeon cuts out the cancer or some other problem well then we're all still depending on the body to heal itself you know the surgeon doesn't actually heal your body that wound is going to be healed by a natural process that god designed and since we're so used to it we just think of it as mundane but it's really god you think about the human body and how it fights off disease and how it heals itself really that's amazing so if you go to god in prayer and he heals you instantly at that moment great but what if he does like the surgeon cuts out whatever is wrong and over the next week you gradually get better we say oh well i didn't get healed that was just lucky or that was just nature well wait a minute god designed your body to do that and if something goes wrong and he just touched you and fixed what was wrong and then let the body resume its natural work and it took a week or two weeks to do its work isn't that still god so when you think of from that perspective there there is a lot of healing that maybe we don't fully appreciate but having said let's get to the heart of your question and i will say as a pentecostal we must consider the first reason why we might not be healed is lack of faith so let's not just shove it off and say oh well you know it doesn't happens to some but not at all not to others we do need to trust god have faith in god because time and time again in the gospels when jesus healed someone he said your faith has made you whole or to the contrary there are cases because of your unbelief and we can say like the man who came with the afflicted son and jesus said well if you believe i can do it and and he said lord i believe help my unbelief some people say oh that's poor faith well jesus healed the son jesus accepted it i think the point is be honest yes i do believe you are but i am struggling i have to admit have to be honest my intellectual thinking my scientific background my culture whatever i'm i'm having a straw i do believe but i'm honest lord i'm struggling take me as i am the lord can take that but we must go to god in faith and james makes an interesting point a lot of times we don't have because we don't ask so we we're sick so we take a pill we're sick so we go to the doctor well thank god for medicines and doctors i don't think that's against god's will i think that's in harmony with god's will but god can god can use medicines and doctors and a lot of what they provide after all is just good information so the body can heal itself and follow you know good diet good exercise the way god intended so doctors and even medicine many times they're just helping you get back on track with the original creative purpose of god so there's nothing wrong with that but at the end of the day our trust is not in doctors or medicine our trust is in god so the first reason why people aren't healed because they don't have faith they don't ask they don't believe they don't trust we need to remember that and so i think sometimes in we look at in poor countries there seem to be more dramatic healings well maybe it's because the people know there's no other option they go to god first and foremost and god answers their sincere cry and their their urgency second reason might be bad choices of our own so if you smoke and get cancer emphysema god could heal you but i don't know that we can have a lot of confidence especially if we're keep going to keep smoking okay god you know i want to keep sinning but i want you to take away the bad consequences god is not obligated to do that or let's say we have high blood pressure and maybe it's due to overweight and poor diet eating the wrong things is god obligated to heal us of the high blood pressure or are we supposed to get control of our diet and our exercise and so forth so i think there are many times some cases could be actually judgment for sin although i don't think we should go around trying to identify people but yet we can say in a very practical sense sexual promiscuity can bring diseases uh hatred bitterness jealousy strife can bring such stress on the physical body that yes that can be a big component of heart attacks and and strokes and high blood pressure so evil that we allow in our lives whether emotionally or physically can definitely be the cause of sickness and bad choices that aren't sinful but just aren't according to god's creative intent whether we realize it or not we expose ourselves to to uh things that are harmful to us well that can be a reason why we're not healed but then i also have to say some things we have to leave into the will of god and we won't really know till later but perhaps some people aren't healed or some people aren't healed instantly because it's the general purpose of god not necessarily to say that god caused the sickness but god is allowing the natural process of life without intervention and he does see a way that he's going to use it for a higher purpose or for his glory that's not to say any individual thing is necessarily good i don't think we have to say well i broke my leg thank god that's good because i know some something's good going to happen or i was born with this incurable disease well thank god i'm glad it was because god can use me i don't think we have to go to that extreme but i think we can say some things are just life some things may be the devil some things may be life in a fallen world we have in imperfect worlds we have genetic flaws we have accidents we have disease because we live in a sinful world so it's not my sin or your sin it's just life and for whatever reason god doesn't intervene to overcome so many people with long-term illness or are genetic disease or something like that it's not a matter of god causing it but you could say god didn't miraculously intervene and when he doesn't you could say well god romans 8 28 i'm not saying every individual thing is identifiable as good but god works all things together for good so all of our life experiences make me who we are so it's not that i would say oh i'm glad that accident happened to me 10 years ago i'm glad i was in the hospital 10 years ago or whatever that was good for me but we can say you know all the things that happened good and bad god wove them together to make me who i am and to give me the opportunities that i have so so if i had to do it all over again i wouldn't change anything because that's made me who i am or at least we can be at peace to say well i wouldn't want to go through that again if i had a choice i wouldn't but look what god has done with my life and i think when we get to heaven there will be no regrets when he wipes away the tears we're not going to argue why did i have to shed that tear when it's the lord himself who takes it away it will be worth it all so there are many answers to your question i think first and foremost we have to consider if we're not healed it can be definitely a lack of faith it could be bad choices of our own it could be just the more general we live in a fallen sinful world and bad things happen to good people and god works all things together for good sometimes we may identify a purpose as to why he didn't heal or why he allowed us to go through a time of sickness other other times we may not really see identifiable purpose but we take the whole together and we we say god did orchestrate my life and then finally i would say