I still remember the night we found out our young, endearing uncle had cancer. What should have been a heart-wrenching piece of information brought a sense of hope into the room. We were children, my siblings and I, and my parents faith-filled. There was no doubt in our minds that God would heal him. All we had to do was pray… and wait.
Waiting for healing can feel overwhelming. We send prayers out daily on wings of faith, forbearance, doubt, urgency, and even desperation. We cling to God’s promises. We fast, worship, attend healing conferences, doing all the things we know to do. We see others healed instantly, even as we still wait.
Eventually, we might feel “the agony of defeat,” an expression Dr. Randy Clark gives to his own experience of disappointment when healing doesn’t come. Here at Global Awakening, we’ve seen God heal, again and again. Yet even Dr. Clark has felt the crushing weight of watching those in dire need of healing not receive it. “To be involved in healing ministry,” he writes, “you must be willing to embrace emotional suffering and to say, ‘I don’t know.’”
This agony often leads us to the slippery slope of questioning God’s character and identity: “Why, God?” or even “why God.”
Does it need to?
IS GOD REALLY THE HEALER?
God is the Healer. He says that Himself in Exodus 15:26. We are also told that God is love, that He heals all our diseases, that the one who asks receives, and that by His stripes we are healed (1 John 4:16, Psalm 103, Matthew 7:7-8, 1 Peter 2:24). Naturally, it is confusing when we ask for healing from a loving Healer and wait without receiving.
To complicate matters, we are also told that we need to have faith. We live by faith, not by sight—even faith the size of a mustard seed will move mountains—and by this faith, many were healed in the Gospels.
So how do we keep faith in a loving Healer while experiencing the absence of healing?
Sometimes we confuse faith with feelings. Of course we feel faith-filled when the diagnosis takes a turn for the better, when we’ve just watched ten people receive healing, when a friend comes alongside us and says, “God’s got this. It will be okay.” We saw it, we felt it, therefore we believe it for ourselves. Feelings build up our faith; we know this from Dr. Clark’s many impartation services when he shares testimonies to prepare the hearts of believers.
Yet faith surpasses emotion. We don’t keep faith by pretending everything is fine. Rather, we acknowledge the reality before our eyes while holding on to what is true. Just because we see through the mirror dimly doesn’t mean what we see in the mirror isn’t real (1 Corinthians 13:12). It just means that what we’re seeing is not the whole picture, and that understanding lays the foundation for faith. When prayers seem unanswered, God’s character has not changed. The mirror is just dim.
Faith means trusting that God is who He says He is—the Healer—even when we don’t experience healing the way we wanted to. Though we can’t understand why He hasn’t provided the miracle we need, we choose, again and again, to believe in God’s profoundly personal love and desire to heal (2 Corinthians 5:7).
Dr. Clark often explains that we can’t practice experience-based theology. We can’t reduce our theology to the level of our experience when our experiences are lower than biblical theology.
God is Jehovah Rapha, the “Lord who heals you,” and “by His wounds, you have been healed” (Exodus 15:26; 1 Peter 2:24).
When healing doesn’t come, the answer is not to stop believing. Rather, we trust that God is still who He says He is, and someday we’ll have eyes to see it.
How?
1. KEEP PRAYING
The defeat of healing prayer can create a crossroad: continue to pursue healing prayer, though it seems fruitless, or adjust our theology, believing God does not want to heal us?
Believers split at this crossroads daily. Some have made their peace with the belief that it is not God’s will for them to be healed. Others continue to pray and believe until the end of their earthly life.
There’s no shame in discontinuing to seek prayer for healing. I myself have experienced the pain of being denied grief in the pressure to keep seeking healing. Sometimes all our heart really can do in the waiting is to surrender and believe, or just surrender.
But keep praying.
Prayer is not only about the outcome but about keeping our hearts soft and connected to God. The psalmist assures us that the Lord is near to all who call on Him in truth (Psalm 145:18). His presence never leaves us, even when healing feels delayed.
Just as James 5:16 teaches that the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective, confessing our pain, doubt, and agony to God often is the very thing we need to keep our faith in His identity and character. Prayer is how we connect with God. When we don’t experience His healing, experiencing His presence and love in the secret place may be the only anchor to ground our faith in who He is.
2. LET THE HEARTBREAK SOFTEN, NOT EMBITTER YOU
Waiting can break the heart. During the three years following my uncle’s diagnosis, I remember the grief of standing in church, listening to testimony after testimony of someone being healed of cancer, sometimes even in our same prayer line. Hope deferred makes the heart sick, and Jesus Himself had to pay for healing with a broken body.
Yet Psalm 34:18 comforts us, assuring us that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. The root word of “saves” in Hebrew—yasha—means to deliver, to rescue, to bring into safety.
God will act when we bring our pain to Him. He may not heal us in exactly the way we are seeking, but His comfort involves action. He will bring help. He will deliver.
If we let Him in, experiencing brokenness can draw us into the Father’s arms. The more we experience His deliverance and comfort, the deeper our compassion can become for others. We cannot give away what we don’t have, and pain has the potential to make us tender with His love.
Every time I saw another person sick with cancer those years, all I wanted to do was give them a hug. My heart was tender with compassion, but not my own. I recognize that now. God sustained my young faith in Him with His loving presence.
3. REDEFINE HEALING
Healing is not only physical. Sometimes God begins by restoring our heart, our peace, or our sense of purpose.
Psalm 147:3 reminds us that God heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. Wholeness extends beyond the physical. Romans 8:28 reinforces that God works all things, including seasons of waiting, for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.
Even if our physical healing is delayed, God is still at work shaping our character, faith, and purpose. If we let Him.
4. FIND YOUR PEOPLE
When healing takes longer than we hope, it can be tempting to isolate ourselves. But God created us for community, and staying connected helps us bear the weight of waiting.
Galatians 6:2 reminds us to carry each other’s burdens, fulfilling Christ’s law through mutual support. We are encouraged that two are better than one, for they can uphold each other (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10). Lastly, we know that where two or more are gathered in His name, there shall He be (Matthew 18:20).
When Moses stood on a hill overlooking the battle between Israel and the Amalekites, his participation was holding up his staff. When his arms tired and his staff lowered, the Amalekites gained ground. He needed Aaron and Hur to hold up his hands.
Sometimes we need to seek out our Aaron and Hur. Who are the people holding up our arms as we battle for healing? We must find them and lean on them—they will help us.
5. MAKE PEACE WITH THE GREY AREA
My uncle passed quietly a few years later. He never did experience the miracle we believed for, and that was hard to grasp as a child. But a few things did change me: His hospital room was saturated with the peace of God. Never before or since have I felt such a desire to linger in a medical facility. There was no doubt that God was with him, and in control. Secondly, he outlived every time frame the doctors gave him… by years.
What do we do when healing doesn’t come? I suppose we’ll get there when we get there, and God will get us through it.
But until then: we don’t have to choose between believing in healing and trusting God in the waiting. We can do both. He is still the Healer and we are still beloved, chosen, and part of His greater plan. We might not ever know “why, God?” but God knows how to redeem things in ways that “why a God or a relationship with God?” becomes easier.
Galatians 6:9 reminds us not to grow weary in doing good, because at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
Keep praying, keep showing up, and keep believing. Even when healing has not come, the Healer is still near. He will heal. In some way. When He heals, you’ll know it’s Him, and He’ll work it for your good.
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Randy Clark, The Thrill of Victory and the Agony of Defeat Core Message, (Mechanicsburg, PA: self-published, 2009), 5.