The Healer

I was once asked to pray for a young woman who had been eight long years in bed, a total invalid, pitiful and hopeless. The doctors had finally said they could do nothing more for her.

My husband and I visited this woman and her family, staying with them for ten days and spending many hours in prayer. I kept thinking, Oh Lord, so many people have prayed with her, including some with gifts of God’s healing. I felt very desperate and very small before so great a need.

I opened the Bible to one of my favorite verses: “Who delivered us from so great a death, and does deliver us; in whom we trust that He will still deliver us” —a promise of past, present, and future healing. Also I noted the preceding verse, which I had never pondered before: “We should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead.”

Then it came to me that this woman’s healing had very little to do with me or the others who were praying. Our only part in the matter was to bring it to God’s attention. It was God who was going to do the work, and we could have no confidence in our own power or abilities. No matter how we feel about ourselves, it is God who heals the sick and raises the dead.

I called my husband over, and we read from the Bible together. Then the girl’s mother and father came into the room and we all prayed for her. With all sincerity and faith in God, we told her, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk” —and she did! She rose from that bed. For eight years she had never been out of that bed, but she got up and walked—proof that no one is beyond God’s power to heal.

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Psalm 103:2–3 KJV – Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases.

Exodus 15:26 KJV – I am the Lord who heals you.

Jeremiah 30:17 KJV – “I will restore health to you and heal you of your wounds,” says the Lord.