Welcome to the Sabbath Cafe Podcast. This is Episode 130, “Praying for Healing”. You can find transcripts and more at SabbathCafe.Substack.com.
Hi, everyone!
Thank you for listening to the Sabbath Cafe Podcast. This is Michele, and today I want to talk about praying for healing.
I guess for me, it's actually a very personal topic to talk about. In the church I grew up in, praying for healing is actually kind of controversial. I don't know why... because in scripture, you just see God constantly healing people. Whether it's in the Old Testament and especially in the New Testament, you see that anytime anyone comes up to Jesus to ask for healing, Jesus always answered and he always healed them.
Now, there are many different ways he healed them, but he always did. So I think after a season, I was reading scripture and I just realized God is a compassionate God and that Jesus always was so compassionate when people are suffering from physical ailment, and come to Him and to ask for relief and to ask for healing. Jesus always healed them. And I realized that God is very welcoming for us to come to Him and ask for healing. And He wants to heal us. And that just gave me so much faith and so much encouragement. So I pretty much started praying for myself.
Ever since then, if I have allergies or if I had a headache, I just started to pray over healing for myself. And there's just been so many great experiences. Sometimes God would tell me, "you're a bit dehydrated, you need to go drink water." That's pretty simple, but hey, you know, it really did heal most of my ailments.
Many times the Lord would just give me a lot of peace, and then I have a good night rest. And the next day, I just feel so much better. Sometimes, after a season of prayer, I would find and understand what are the triggers that cause some of these symptoms that I was dealing with. And that's kind of also how I started to learn more about how does prayer for healing also work when we have such a great and advanced medical system.
Here in the States, we're blessed with a lot of pharmaceutical advancements. And there's pretty much a pill you can take to deal with all sorts of symptoms. Also, kind of what I understood is that even with medicine, most of the medicine will manage your symptoms. They manage the symptoms so it alleviates the pressure in your body and helps your own immune system and your body's natural function to kick in. But at the end, it is still your body's own regeneration and immune system that brings about the healing. So that helped me to understand how does prayer for healing come hand in hand with our medical system.
Also, there's this assumption in many Christian circles that the only way God answers these type of healing prayers is through miraculous, instantaneous healing. They sort of discount everything else. If they don't see it right away, then they discount it. They think that God did not answer their prayers. I actually think that's putting God in a box. In scripture, Jesus healed in many ways. Personally, I think God can heal however He wants to, whether it's instant miraculous healing or through a process.
And a lot of times, it's also the patient themselves and what is best for the patient's situation. Many years ago, we had prayed for a missionary lady. She was going through chemo. She was diagnosed with cancer. And she's been in the mission field for years, worked really hard.
And when we were praying for her, her prayer request was that God will heal her quickly so that she can go back to the people that she was caring for. And as we were praying for her, we just really sensed that God is more concerned about her health condition, and her body was really, really tired. God was recommending that she take her time in the States to go through the recommended treatment and to just take a season of rest. A Sabbath season, if you will, to help her body to recover.
And it was interesting because she wasn't very happy when we shared what we sensed in our heart. She wanted to be healed, be done with the treatment, so then she can get right back to her ministry work, but what God cared more about was her. God wasn't worried about this other group of people that she was taking care of. What God was more concerned was about this lady herself - that she was tired and she needed rest and she needed care herself. She needed to recover.
I see that as much as God can heal the sickness itself, what He really wants to do is to address the root of the issue. For most of the time when I'm praying for healing, whether it's for myself or other people, the prayer is just an invitation. It's just a question. And then what's really important is to take the time to listen afterwards.
In some cases, God will simply affirm our path of care and even help you connect with the right medical professional. And in some cases, God will start to highlight bad habits that had led us to this place. Once after we prayed, God actually reminded us to start giving thanks because thanksgiving would help the patient to remain hopeful, to have faith and not feel so frustrated because his healing process seems to be progressing very slowly.
And it's interesting because God is looking at working with us holistically. Our physical body, our emotions, and even our thoughts and mindsets...these are all interconnected with each other. If we are to pray for healing, then God will start to help us improve in many of these areas. So really what I see is that praying for healing and getting medical care really goes hand in hand.
To be honest, whenever I ask somebody if they would like me to pray for them, no one ever said no. I think everyone always welcomes that when they're going through illnesses or sickness. I always tell them, "hey, what do we have to lose, right?" And every time we prayed for people, we've always had more insights and even breakthroughs in the situation.
So if you ever wonder, well, how do I learn to pray for healing? Just start. The best way is to start by praying for yourself. Next time you have a cold or if you have a headache, start small. Allergies... Pray for yourself, pray for your family, and just pay attention to see how God leads you in the process.
And that's it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. You can find resources and transcript at sabbathcafe.substack.com. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to Sabbath Cafe Podcast on Apple or Spotify. And we are now available on YouTube also. Have a wonderful week, and we'll see you next time.
Praying for Healing (Podcast 130 - 8:49)