Prayers for health

One may ask, if God is all-knowing why does God just heal us without the need of using prayers for health? From the gospel of John, we meet Jesus Christ who had gone up to Jerusalem, and there at the Sheep Gate was a pool that was called Bethesda where there was a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed waiting for the moving water. For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had. 

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. (James 5:14).

God cares so much about our health, God desires that we may prosper in all things and be in health, just as our souls prosper. What should happen when we find that we are not in good health or our beloved is sick? Our opening scripture begins with a question: “Is anyone among you sick let him call for the church’s elders and let them pray over him”.

At the pool lay a certain man who had an infirmity for 38 years. The scripture records that when Jesus saw this man lying there, He knew that he had been there in that condition for a long time. But look at the question that Jesus asks that man, “Do you want to be made well?”. This sounds like a strange question to this man, of course, that is the main reason that had made the man dwell at the pool for 38 years.

Jesus is trying to teach us here that though He knows what we are going on concerning our health, we should pray for our healing. Prayers for health are a form of surrender to God; it is shifting our focus from man’s help to God’s help. God wants us to totally depend on Him for everything. The man at the pool instead of answering the question that he had been asked by Jesus started blaming people for not dipping him in the pool when the water was stirred up.

This is exactly how some of us behave when we approach God for healing, we might say that we don’t have enough finances to take us to the best hospitals, we don’t have the best insurance coverage or people who will stand with us with finances when we are in pain. That is purely depending on man. God wants us to shift our focus from man and direct it to Him.

How then are we supposed to use prayers for health? We should pray with faith, and we should never doubt God, though we might have tried other forms of help from the world which might have failed, there is a God in heaven who is much able to heal us from any kind of sickness. Look at the following scriptures;

“And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven”. (James 5:15) “But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.  For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. (James 1: 6-8)