You can know all about healing in the Bible and not know how to seek God for your healing. Maybe you don’t believe that God can, or wants to heal you. The Bible gives us tangible ways to seek God for our healing.

In my last post, I went over some of the reasons the Bible gives for sickness and disability. In this post, I want to talk about ways to seek God for your healing.

Most of us know the easiest way to seek God for healing is through prayer. But you may not know how to pray. There’s something about the Church in Acts and how often their prayers were answered. If you’re like me, you want to learn how to pray like that. We will look at assumptions about God and prayer and the things that block our prayers.

Assumptions about Prayer

The first assumption we can make about seeking God for our healing is that prayer moves His hand. It is true and biblical. God says that when we follow the proper steps, He hears and answers our prayers.

Take, for example, 2 Chronicles 7:14. God gives the steps for what must happen for Him to answer the prayers of His people in Israel. The first step is to humble ourselves, to rely on God instead of our abilities. Next, we must pray. A third step is to seek God’s face. How is this different from prayer?

I see a separation in these steps. Seeking God requires a deliberate and desperate focus on God. We can do this through fasting, longer times of prayer and Bible study, and repeated times of focusing on God.

Next, we must turn from wicked ways. We live in a sin-saturated world, and if we’re not careful, we will not realize how pervasive sin can become. We must remain sensitive to wickedness around us.

We can take this promise for the Israelites and apply it to our lives. When we follow through with these steps, God will hear our prayers, forgive our sins, and heal us.

We can assume God answers our prayers. One leper cried out to Jesus that if He was willing, He could make him clean (Matthew 8:3; Mark 1:41). Jesus answered, “I am willing. Be clean.” Healing was a large part of Jesus’s ministry. Since Jesus does not change (Hebrews 13:8), we can believe He still heals today.

When you pray for healing, pray God’s will. We must also assume our prayer must be within God’s will and character.

Assumptions about God

We ask God to heal us because we believe He is a good God. We also know He has the power to heal because He has done it in the past. A Rabbi once famously agreed with God’s desire for us to be healed but questioned His power and ability since not many people get healed. We must not make the same mistake.

Jesus said when we ask Him for things within His will and in His name, His character and fit into His reputation, He will give us what we ask (John 14:13; 16:23). We must also demonstrate faith in God’s ability and goodness to us to heal us and receive it.

When you believe these two core principles about who God is, there’s nothing to stop you from receiving what you ask from Him. We assume that God does not change (James 1:17; Hebrews 13:8), so He still heals today.

Cover All the Bases

Let us cover some practical things we need to deal with before we will see God answer our prayers. The biggest one God already addressed in 2 Chronicles 7:14. He called the Israelites to turn from their wicked ways.

Sin is a touchy subject for us, and no one wants to talk about it or admit that they have sin. Even more, no one thinks they are living a lifestyle of sin. John talked about it being one way we cannot remain in fellowship with God and His people (1 John 1:5-10).

The greatest promise is that when we confess our sins, Jesus is always faithful and just to forgive us (1 John 1:9). He is the one person who will not condemn us (Romans 8:1) or hold it against us. It is so freeing to confess our sins to Jesus.

Sin and sickness are often attached in the Bible. James says when we confess our sins God heals us (James 5:15-16). Sin can block your prayers and healing. God is interested in healing your whole person, spiritual and physical.

What about Spiritual Warfare?

You may wonder about spiritual issues such as generational curses, demonic activity, and other forms of spiritual warfare. I have dealt with generational curses in another post. Essentially, Christians do not need to be concerned about generational curses because the power of Jesus is greater than them.

If you believe a generational curse is blocking the prayers for your healing, it does not hurt to deal with that. But you must know that Jesus is greater than any kind of curse that has been professed over you.

Another pattern we see in the Gospels is that demonic activity can affect a person’s health. I plan to cover this in one post and trace the occurrence of both demonic activity and healing being talked about. Demons can cause physiological manifestations.

But please know that if you are a Christian, a child of God, greater is He who is in you than he that is in the world (1 John 4:4). A Christian cannot be demon possessed because the Spirit of God dwells in you and no demon can stand to dwell in God’s presence.

You belong to Jesus and He protects you from spiritual attacks. We must not allow these things in our minds and hearts more power or attention than they deserve.

Obedience in Everything

It’s one thing to confess sin and receive God’s forgiveness. But another thing that can block your prayers and healing is disobedience in even just the slightest way. Naaman was a Gentile who came to Israel to be healed of leprosy (2 Kings 5:1-14). He expected the prophet to come out and personally deal with him because of who he was.

His pride blocked his healing until he humbled himself and obeyed the word of the Lord through the prophet. All he had to do was go and dip in the dirty Jordan River seven times, and he would be healed. It took series convincing from his servant girl for him to be obedient. When he was, he was healed.

You can live without sin in your life and still not be doing everything God wants you to do. The Bible talks about obedience repeatedly. Are you obedient and everything God has for you and commands of you? Don’t be too quick to answer that with a resounding, “Yes” until you know it is true. You cannot disobey Jesus and call Him Lord.

Persistent Prayer

One of my favorite teachings of Jesus comes through one of His parables, the parable of the persistent widow (Luke 18:1-8). Jesus uses hyperbole and exaggerates a little to get His point across. He tells of this wicked judge who doesn’t care about justice.

A widow comes to him and asks for justice repeatedly. It finally drives the judge crazy enough to grant her request so she will go away and stop bothering him. Jesus teaches us that we can be persistent in our prayers, asking more than once for whatever we need. This includes healing.

Why doesn’t God just answer the very first time? I don’t know, but it may have to do with our attitude about our request, that God wants to hear from us often, that our faith may increase the more we pray for something, or some other reason.

You can be as specific about your prayer request as possible. This does not mean that if you’re not specific God will not answer your prayer. That’s not how it works. He knows better than us exactly what must happen for our healing to occur. For instance, I know only a little of the science behind why I am paralyzed. But the information I do know I use in my request.

Praying for Your Healing

Let me pray for you and me. Jesus, I thank You for my brother and sister in You. I thank You for their life and faith that You can do all things, especially their healing. I ask that You grant our petitions and give us the healing You have promised in Your Word. As we continue to pray for this desire and Your promise, I thank You for answering our prayers. In the mighty name of Jesus, Amen.

Up Next

We’ve covered a lot of ground in how to seek God for your healing. Next, I want to look at God’s promises about healing.

Image by Samer Chidiac from Pixabay