When we Pray for Physical Healing

Have you ever prayed for healing? Most of us have. If not for ourselves, certainly for others.

Whenever I'm in a gathering of Christians, and someone is taking "prayer requests" I'd estimate a good two-thirds of the prayers have to do with asking for physical healing in some way, overcoming a devastating diagnosis, reversing an irreversible condition, restoring an injured limb. We pray for healing for those struggling with addiction, and we should! We pray for those who are suffering, and that's a good thing! Such prayers are rooted in the heart of Christ, who desires to overcome all pain, all suffering; who desires to wipe away every tear.

We bring our brokenness to God because we believe He can fix it. We ask for the scan to come back clear, for the chronic pain to lift, for the strength to return to a failing limb. We look at the stories of the Gospels as a menu of possibilities, hoping our name is next on the list for a "before and after" testimony.

But for so many, the "after" never looks like the story we wanted. The pain persists. The mobility doesn’t return. The miracle we demanded remains out of reach. In the quiet aftermath of an unanswered prayer, a devastating thought often creeps in: Did I not have enough faith? Did God not hear me? Was God even listening? Why did He heal someone else, but not me? Why did He answer someone else's prayer with a miracle, but not mine?

In the wake of such seemingly "unanswered" prayers, we may feel like we're failures, like God loved someone else more, like we somehow drew the "short straw" when God was doling out miracles.

But what if our obsession with physical relief has quietly obscured a far greater miracle? What if, in our rush to be made comfortable, we have walked right past the deeper restoration God is offering? What if we received a far greater gift when God told us to have faith, to endure our suffering, than we would have received if He'd healed us outright?

When it comes to prayer requests, we often hear a lot of pleas for physical healing, but only rarely have I heard someone ask for prayers for patience and endurance in suffering. Very rarely have I heard people ask that the church pray that Christ would use their pain, would bring something about through it more glorious than physical restoration.

We pray for the suffering to end. We pray for the bill to be paid, the diagnosis to be reversed, the pain to stop. And there is nothing wrong with that. Jesus himself, sweating blood in a garden, asked his Father to take the cup away. But something else happened in that garden too, something we rush past on our way to Easter morning. Jesus opened his hands. “Not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42, NRSV).

That moment of surrender did not remove the suffering. It transformed it.

I want to think carefully with you about healing, because it is a word we use constantly in the church and yet rarely examine. We sing about it. Some Christians build entire ministries around it. Other Christians hold services dedicated to it. And in many Christian communities, physical healing has become the headline act of faith, the proof that God is real and that he loves us. If you are healed, God has answered. If you are not healed, something has gone wrong, either with your faith or with the prayer or with the mystery of God’s timing, which we speak about in hushed tones as though it were an embarrassment.

But what if our obsession with physical healing has quietly obscured a far greater miracle? What if, in our rush to be made comfortable, we have walked right past the deeper restoration God is offering?\

 

The Healings Jesus Performed and Why He Performed Them

Consider the healing stories in the Gospels. They are extraordinary, and they are everywhere. Jesus heals lepers, paralytics, the blind, the hemorrhaging, the deaf, the demon-possessed. But look closely at what is actually happening in these accounts.

Almost without exception, the physical healing points beyond itself.

When four friends lower a paralyzed man through the roof, desperate for Jesus to heal him, Jesus does something unexpected. He forgives the man’s sins. The scribes are horrified. And Jesus, knowing their thoughts, asks a devastating question: “Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and take your mat and walk’?” (Mark 2:9). Then he heals the man physically, but only, as the text says, “so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (Mark 2:10).

The physical healing was a sign. The forgiveness was the substance.

We even see this mystery of timing and purpose in the book of Acts, with the man at the gate called Beautiful. We are told he had been lame from birth and was carried to the temple gate every day to ask for alms. Think of the implications: if this man was there daily for years, Jesus surely passed him by during his own visits to the Temple. After Jesus' entry into Jersusalem on Palm Sundy, he went to the temple. This man was there when Jesus was there. Why didn't Jesus heal him, then?

Because it wasn't the right time. This man's suffering had to endure a little while longer. Because His healing was going to serve a much greater purpose than the alleviation of his pain.

Instead, it was Peter who later commanded the lame man, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk” (Acts 3:6).

This delay was not an oversight; it was a revelation. It demonstrates that the ministry of Jesus, the good news of the Kingdom, and the power of the new creation were not confined to the few years Jesus walked the earth.

By healing him through the Holy Spirit given to the Apostles, God showed that His redemptive work continues through the Church and will continue until He comes again. The man’s long wait served to prove that the power of Christ did not leave the world when he ascended; it was multiplied.

Furthermore, the literary parallels between the healings of Jesus and the healings of Peter are undeniable, signaling that the same Spirit is at work. In the Gospels, Jesus says to the paralytic, “I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home” (Mark 2:11). In Acts 3:6, Peter uses the same imperative language: “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.”

In Matthew's account of the healing of the paralytic, we're given this insight: "When the crowds saw it, they were filled with awe, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to men." (Matthew 9:8, NRSV). They're talking about the authority to forgive sins! And Peter demonstrated, by healing using the same words Jesus did before, that this authority is still channeled through men. Through the Apostles, through the Church, with as much authority as that which Jesus Himself wielded when He forgive the paralytic, and by such healing, demonstrated His authority to forgive sins.

Later, when Peter encounters the paralyzed Aeneas, he uses nearly the exact same formula: “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; rise and make your bed” (Acts 9:34). Even in the raising of the dead, the parallel is startling. When Jesus raises the daughter of Jairus, he says, “Talitha cumi,” which means, "Little girl, arise" (Mark 5:41). When Peter raises Tabitha, he says, “Tabitha, arise” (Acts 9:40).

By using the same specific language as his Master, Peter is demonstrating that the authority to forgive and restore remains with the Body of Christ.

The healing of the man at the gate called Beautiful testifies not only to the reality of the resurrection—how "new creation" breaks through through the Church—but also that sins are still forgiven by Christ through His apostles. When the Church speaks, it is as sure and certain as if it were Jesus Himself speaking to the broken, saying once again, “your sins are forgiven” (Luke 5:20).

Jesus Himself made this clear by explicitly commissioning His Apostles this way: "Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” (John 20:21-23).

How incredible is this? Jesus says that his apostles are being sent the same way the Father had sent Him into the world. He breathes on them, echoing the language of Genesis when God breathed His Spirit, His life, into the nostrils of the first man, and subsequently gave him authority over creation (represented by the dominion over the Garden of Eden and all the earth, and the right to name the animals). What God is doing, through Jesus, through the Apostles who bear the same Holy Spirit, is making all things new.

This links every physical healing and the forgiveness of sins in a profound way. It's all re-creation stuff, restoration stuff. Every healing, every pronouncement of the forgiveness of sins, is more than removing temporary pain or personal guilt for sin. It's the new creation breaking into the world. It is the Kingdom of God reigning over a broken world. It is a foreshadowing of Eden Restored wherever the Church is found, wherever His forgiving word is proclaimed with His authority.

That is the calling for Christ's church today. We are not a social-club. We're not just a collection of people gathering together for accountability and mutual support. We are all "New Adams" and "New Eves," participating in the image of God, restored in us in Christ, and are agents and ambassadors of a new Kingdom, that is truly coming into the world.

Though, many of us don't see it. The world doesn't recognize it.

When Jesus heals the man born blind in John 9, the entire chapter unfolds not as a medical narrative but as a theological drama about spiritual blindness. By the end, the man who was physically blind can see in every sense of the word, while the Pharisees who had perfect eyesight are declared blind. “If you were blind, you would not have sin,” Jesus tells them. “But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains” (John 9:41).

Jesus is not running a first-century clinic. He is revealing the kingdom of God, a kingdom in which every form of brokenness, physical, spiritual, relational, is being addressed at its root. It's new creation, every time.

 

The Glorified Wounds

After the resurrection, Jesus appears to his disciples. His body is glorified, transformed, radiant with the life of the new creation.

And yet he still bears the wounds. 

He invites Thomas to put his finger in the nail marks, to thrust his hand into his side. The wounds are not erased. They are transfigured. They have become something they were not before: signs of victory, not defeat. Marks of love, not merely suffering.

This is what I mean by glorified wounds, and it is a concept that much of the modern healing movement simply does not know what to do with. If the goal of faith is the removal of all suffering, then the risen Christ is a problem, because he kept his scars. He did not need to. The God who raised him from the dead could certainly have smoothed them over. But the wounds remain, and they speak. They say: suffering that is surrendered to God is not wasted. It is taken up into something eternal.

Paul understood this. He pleaded three times for the removal of his “thorn in the flesh,” and the answer he received was not healing but something far more radical: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Paul’s response is staggering. He does not merely accept this. He boasts in it. “I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

This is not passive resignation. This is a man who has discovered that the place where he is weakest is the place where Christ is most powerfully present.

 

The Offering of the Unhealed Wound

When physical healing does not come, we are often left feeling as though our prayers have hit a ceiling. But there is a profound mystery at work in the unhealed wound. When we remain in our pain, we are given a unique "offering" that the healthy cannot give. We are invited to unite our specific, tangible suffering to the suffering of Christ on the Cross.

This is not a hollow exercise meant to pacify our complaints in the midst of our agony. It is a profound act of prayer.

By consciously offering our pain to Him, our suffering ceases to be a lonely burden and becomes a point of deep communion.

We are no longer suffering "instead" of Christ or "apart" from Him, but "with" Him.

We can do this in total confidence because of the nature of the Resurrection. Just as Christ’s wounds were not erased but remained as part of His glorified body, our own unhealed hurts—when surrendered to Him—are being prepared for glory.

Your chronic pain, your lingering illness, or your deep emotional scar is being unitied to His glorified wounds.

You can trust that every ounce of agony you offer up to Him is subsumed within His own wounds, and when you are finally raised, those very places of pain will be the parts of you that shine most brightly with His light. They will be glorified, not forgotten.

The Danger of the Comfort Gospel

Here is where we must be honest with ourselves. In many churches, the emphasis on physical healing has become entangled with something that is not the gospel at all.

It is a theology of comfort.

It says, implicitly or explicitly, that God’s primary concern is our well-being in this present life, that faith is the mechanism by which we access relief, and that suffering is always and only an enemy to be defeated now.

But the scriptures tell a different story.

They tell of a God who walks with his people through the valley of the shadow of death, not around it. They tell of a Messiah who conquers not by avoiding the cross but by enduring it. They tell of a hope that is set not on the removal of all difficulty in this life but on the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come.

When we cling too tightly to the demand for physical healing, we sometimes reveal an attachment to this world that must, eventually, be released.

This is not to say that the body does not matter. It matters immensely.

The incarnation itself declares that flesh is worthy of God. But the body’s ultimate healing is eschatological. It belongs to the future. Every physical healing in this life, whether through medicine or prayer or the slow repair of time, is a foretaste of the resurrection. It is a preview, a sign on the road, not the destination itself.

Paul makes this explicit when he writes, “We ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:23). Even those who have the Spirit groan. Even those who have tasted the goodness of God still ache in their bodies. The redemption of the body is real, it is promised, it is certain, but it is not yet fully here.

But every prayer for healing, offered in faith, will be answered with "yes" in Him. If not in this earthly life, in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. You will be healed. But for now, your pain might serve a greater purpose. Do not resent that call, do not complain if your temporary sufferings are not immediately relieved. Instead, offer the pain to Him. He knows pain more intimately than you can imagine. And He will glorify it.

 

Praying with Open Hands

So how do we pray for healing?

We pray boldly. We pray honestly. We bring our pain, our fear, our longing for relief before the God who made our bodies and who loves them. Jesus never rebuked anyone for asking to be healed. He never said, “You are asking too selfishly.”

He wept at the tomb of Lazarus. He was moved with compassion when he saw the crowds, harassed and helpless. God is not indifferent to our pain.

But we pray with open hands. We hold our requests before God the way a child holds a broken toy before a parent, not dictating the method of repair, not insisting on a timeline, but trusting that the parent sees what the child cannot. “Not my will but yours be done” is not a prayer of defeat. It is the most courageous prayer a human being can utter, because it requires us to trust that God’s answer, whatever form it takes, is aimed at our deepest good.

Sometimes that answer is physical healing, and we give thanks. Sometimes the answer is the grace to endure, and in that endurance we discover a communion with Christ that the healthy and comfortable may never know. Sometimes the answer is the slow, quiet transformation of our suffering into something that blesses others, that deepens our capacity for compassion, that strips away everything in us that is not love.

And sometimes, the answer is the final healing, the one that awaits us all: the resurrection of the body, when every tear will be wiped away, when the groaning of creation will give way to unimaginable glory, when we will see him face to face and find that every wound we carried has been, like his, not erased but glorified.

A Practice for the Week Ahead

This week, I want to invite you to do something simple but difficult. If you are carrying a burden of pain, whether physical, emotional, or spiritual, bring it before God each morning. Ask for healing. Ask boldly. But then, after you have asked, open your hands, palms up, and sit in silence for a moment. Let that posture say what words sometimes cannot: I trust you with this. I trust you with me. Whatever your answer, I receive it. And I will be grateful to you. The pain is a gift as much as the healing might be. Give thanks for it all.

And if you know someone who is suffering and has not been healed despite fervent prayer, resist the urge to explain why. Do not offer theology as a bandage. Simply sit with them. Be present. Sometimes the most Christ-like thing we can do for another person is to stop trying to fix what only God can redeem and simply bear witness to their pain. That, too, is a ministry of healing, perhaps the most profound one there is.

The risen Christ still bears his wounds. He is not ashamed of them. Neither should we be ashamed of ours. For in the economy of God, it is precisely through our wounds that His light shines the brightest, let the purifying light of His grace cauterize your wound, even if the pain endures. For in the end, every wound united to His is glorified. He is making you new. He is making everything new.