For years the church has debated whether divine healing is for today. We know that Jesus healed the sick and cast out demons everywhere He went.
Matthew 4:23
And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people.
There is a litany of powerful scriptures that support the truth of healing in the atonement. See the following.
Isaiah 53:4-5
Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds ( stripes) we are healed.Malachi 4:2
2 But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall.
Mark 16:15-18 says this, although this portion is not included in some original manuscripts.
And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. 16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. 17 And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; 18 they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
In the letter written by the brother of Jesus, James, James provides a protocol for the church to pray for the sick; James 5:13-16
“ Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. 14 Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.
The following is an article written by EW Kenyon who was a Pastor at the end of the 19thcentury going into the 20th. It provides some powerful trues.
My Legal Rights
When He imposes diseases upon me, I have a right to say to him, "Satan, those diseases were borne in the body of Jesus and you have no right to bring their photograph around here and frighten me with them.
"Those diseases were unconditionally put away, and I am free from disease as the body of Jesus was when He rose from the dead. For I am in Christ Jesus and you cannot put those things on me."
And if Satan should attack my body, all I have to do is to call my Father's attention to the fact, and the disease must go, because I am free! I know that "by His stripes, I am healed." If I am healed, I am healed! I know that by His resurrection I am justified, and I do not need to be re-justified: I am justified. I know that by His life I am made alive, and I am alive! I know that I died with Him; I know that I rose with Him; and I know that I am in Him.
I know that by His stripes I am healed; then I am healed, and if I am healed, I am well, thank God! I have no more to do with my healing than I have to do with my resurrection, for He is my resurrection! He is my healing. He said, "I am the resurrection and the life."
He is my resurrection; He is my life; He is my healing; He is my health; He is my victory; He is my all and in all. Now, I simply recognize the fact that He healed me in His substitutionary work, and because of that I am healed.
The hour is coming when this kind of knowledge will be so common that men and women who are in Christ and walking in Him will be healed the moment they are afflicted, and they will live in perfect health in the body as well as soul and spirit.
They will live like this until their bodies are worn out and they fall asleep in Christ. There is no more need of our bearing about in our bodies our sicknesses than there is of bearing about in our spiritual nature an unforgiven sin.
His Word True
For the very moment I confess my sins, "He is faithful and righteous to forgive me," and when He forgives me, I am forgiven. On the same ground, the moment I confess that Satan has put a disease or infirmity upon me, just that moment He is faithful and righteous to heal me, and I am healed.
He healed me of my sin; He now heals me of my sickness - they both come from the same source. It requires no struggle, no long drawn-out siege of struggling after faith and trying to believe. There is the written Word, and the Eternal Throne of God is the back of it.
That Word cannot fail any more than God can fail. When I confess my sins, I am forgiven.
If I refuse this, if 1 challenge it, I declare by that challenge or that refusal, that God is a liar, that His Word is not true; that all He has said in the Scripture is a lie. For all unbelief is a challenge to the integrity of God.
Then this new kind of faith in Him becomes the stabilizer of one's whole spiritual nature.
It is a faith that grows out of the knowledge of God's faithfulness of evidence given in the Word, of facts that have become a part of spiritual knowledge so that when the believer is "exercising faith" He unconsciously acts as he does when writing a check for money he knows is in the bank.
Then the greatest need of the hour is not more faith but more knowledge that will produce an unconscious faith in our great, loving Father God.
The Wonderful Name of Jesus - EW Kenyon”
I find it very interesting that both EW Kenyon John G Lake lost wives to sickness early in their marriages and ministries even though they both had tremendous healing ministries. Thus, in our desire to pray for the sick, we must balance it between our expectations vs the will of God concerning the matter. God’s ways are much more perfect than ours. Of course, we want the loved one we’re praying for to remain, heaven is so much greater. I believe most of us would rather stay with Jesus than return to a life filled with tribulation. I think Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead was the most disappointed man in the scriptures, especially when he discovered that the religious leaders were going to try to kill him because they hated Jesus so much.
Perhaps the greater miracle is that according 2 Cor 5:8, if a person believes in Jesus, they don’t even taste death. Death is only a shadow (Ps 23). When we die, we pass immediately into the presence of the Lord and all our loved ones who have gone on before us. That has to be the ultimate for the believer, not just being healed. That was the Apostle Paul’s struggle as he stated to the church of Philippi in his letter 1:22-23
If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. 23 I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.
If you or your loved is healed, rejoice in that and enjoy your lives together. If the Lord decides to take them home, rejoice in that too. You will see then again.
Jesus’ blood secures your healing, whether a temporary one or the ultimate one, Thankyou Jesus for your blood that was shed for me to give me healing, both in this life or the next. Regardless, we win!