Is it me or the minister or God?
This raises a serious pastoral issue.
Many who are prayed for and do not receive healing move into feelings of being rejected by God and, as we are all steeped in the blame game, we look for scapegoats.
This is our human way of lashing out in order to revenge our rejection.
However, if progress is to be made, we would all be much better off seeking the healer rather than spend that spiritual energy looking around for someone to take the blame.
We need three things to receive healing: expectancy, persistence and humility.
Firstly, we will fall away from the needed humility straight away if we are blaming anyone, the minister or oneself, for failure, rather than going on seeking Jesus.
Secondly, much receiving of healing is missed simply because we try once and give up if results are not immediate and sustained.
The reason for the scarcity of persistence in the church is usually a lack of understanding that it is necessary at all and a lack of faith that it will do any good to press on.
We fear that we may be raising hopes unfairly, or putting the supplicant’s faith at risk, and yet Jesus himself taught us through two parables that persistence is essential.
Thirdly, there are doubts.
We may have difficulties, both consciously and subconsciously, in fully and simply accepting Jesus as healer.
These doubts are the things that prevent the receiving of healing and should be approached, discussed and overcome in honest and Bible based ways.
A minister’s fear that supplicants (or even they themselves) may lose faith allows room for just enough doubt that God will act consistently and reliably to prevent them from receiving healing.
It also prevents many leaders from humbly admitting that they failed to fulfil what they suspect, in theory, they should have been able to do and having their beliefs and attitudes adjusted by God.
Instead, many ministers justify themselves and the supplicant as having no faults in the arena of healing, at the expense of God’s reputation for being compassionate and completely reliable.
This regrettable theology creates serious pastoral issues for future healing situations, for those who hear their justifications.
Expectancy, persistence and humility may be lacking in some way in the supplicant but they may also be wanting in the minister and in the surrounding congregation if there is one.
No–one is to blame, we only have shortfalls in our understanding to overcome together.