11:24 Healing

Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe you have received it, and it will be yours ~ Mark 11:24


What does it mean to be healed? You could look it up in a college dictionary or even a Bible dictionary and you would read some standard answer along the lines of "cure" or to "made whole", etc. But what does it mean? I suppose it depends upon what it takes for you to be healed. I don't mean necessarily just "pain free." I've had plenty of doctors tell me that they were surprised by how much pain I was in considering how little they found wrong with me. But I don't think healing is simply about physical hurting. There is a woman I have heard about, but do not know, who suffers physically when things change in her world. So for her, "pain free" is not the answer, because it is something that happens in her mind (no, that is not to say it is all in her head) that causes her to experience physical anguish.


Healing is experienced differently by everyone, and while sometimes we are still left with physical ailments for one reason or another, I believe we have received our healing when we have handed over our lives to our Lord. Of course everyone who is sick longs to be delivered from that sickness, whether the sickness is physical, mental, emotional, or physiological. But I believe healing begins with freedom from the chains and the restraints that the "issue" has on you.


For example, I have a friend with a couple herniated discs in her back. It causes her tremendous amounts of pain. But, she has told me that when she is doing the work to which God has called her, He gives her grace and allows her to not experience pain while she is doing His tasks. Is she healed? She's not 100% pain free. But, she is free to do the work of the Lord. There is someone else I know who is in a lot of physical pain and that pain has only gotten worse to where it causes her a great deal of stress and emotional anguish. While the stress did not cause her pain, I believe it hasn't helped it and has probably, to some degree, exacerbated it. So, if she became free of the stress and emotional anguish, is that considered healing? Or, if her doctors to could find a way to alleviate her physical ailments, but her stress level was just the same, would she then be considered healed?


Healing is something the Lord delivers. To receive it is up to us. One definition of the word "heal" is "to be made whole," (blueletterbible.org). I believe it is when we allow Jesus to come in and fill up the cracks, dings, dents, and missing pieces of our lives--even if we don't know the extent to which we have them--our healing begins. For the girl whose pain was getting worse, she lifted her hands up to the Lord and declared, "Lord, I give it all to you. If it is for your glory that I am going through this, then I praise you. And Lord, if it is for your glory that you have not found fit to take this pain away, then Lord, I praise you. This life is yours and I give it all to you. Take my life. Take all of me. I'm yours." It was once she gave it over to the Lord that her healing began. She is still in pain today, but received word from the Lord that she would be healed--even more so than she had been before--soon.


But they that wait upon the Lord... Isaiah 40:31