Who initiated the Healing?
When we look at the ministry of Jesus, we will soon notice that in some of the accounts of people being healed, Jesus mentioned the person’s faith as being involved, while in other accounts, no mention of faith is made at all.
This has caused confusion in the church, as some teach we need faith to receive healing from God while others strongly oppose this, claiming we do not.
In the previous post we mentioned a new mp3 teaching I have put on our website that studies this issue in depth, helping us to fully understand when faith is REQUIRED for healing and when it is not.
To add to this teaching, I have now uploaded a page to our wesbite which lists the healings in Jesus’ ministry by category of ‘who initiated the healing’ – In other words, who made the initial approach, was it Jesus going to the sick person, or the sick person coming to Jesus.
This simple division between the various healings in the gospels shows a very interesting pattern, as you will notice. The healings that Jesus initiated, going to the sick person, do not reference faith, while those that were initiated by the sick person going to Jesus do.
I encourage you to listen to the accompanying MP3s which look into the doctrine behind this.
MP3 – Healing by faith or not? Part 1
MP3 – Healing by faith or not? Part 2
Does healing require faith or not?
If you spend time reading the Gospels in the Bible, you will notice that sometimes when people were healed in Jesus’ ministry, He commented on their faith. At other times faith was not present, or referred to in the account.
This has sparked debate in the church about whether faith is necessary in receiving healing or not.
Some choose to go with the scriptures where faith was NOT an issue in the healing and they use these scriptures to try to ‘disprove’ that faith is a necessary factor in healing. Others hold strongly to the scriptures where faith IS pointed out as the determining factor in the person receiving healing.
The problem is the Bible shows both, and we are not supposed to be picking and choosing the bits of the Bible we want to listen to, or the bits that ‘prove’ our doctrine. Nor are we supposed to be setting one scripture against another, trying to prove that because we can find a scripture which says ‘one thing’ we can ‘write off’ a scripture which someone else uses to show another thing!
That is NOT how we are to approach interpretting the Bible, but it often happens like that.
There have been times when I have been trying to help a person receive healing and I point out a particular scripture which shows faith as a factor in receiving healing, and the next thing, they jump quickly in to point out a scripture which they feel contradicts the one I have used, where the person received and faith is not mentioned
To be honest, we should be looking at how all of these passages fit together and endeavouring to understand why the Bible shows the 2 different sides, how they work together in the over all healing ministry, and how to know which applies in specific situations.
I have just uploaded 2 MP3s onto our website which look at this issue and I believe clearly show how to understand the Bible on this issue. The Bible shows a very specific factor that determines which approach to healing is needed in a particular situation and should solve the questions people have about whether they really do need faith or not to receive.
These 2 MP3’s are actually only 1 teaching session split over 2 MP3’s, so it will only take you an hour to go through them and find the Bible answers to this issue.
The MP3’s can be found here:
Healing – By faith or not by faith? Part 1
Healing – By faith or not by faith? Part 2
There is a handout which goes with these teachings, which I will upload shortly as well, so check back for the new post telling when this is available
Other great teaching MP3s can be found at: http://www.exceedingfaith.org/audio.html
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Hubs