Why in the world take faith off the table?????
Fearing some comment that someone says "you do not have faith" is bizarre.
I have been in ministry for many many years. I HAVE NEVER seen the "you would have been healed if you had more faith" invoked EVER.
That assumption needs to die.
You ALWAYS want faith on your side.
What we see with Jesus was about half the time it was THEIR faith and the other half it was Jesus faith.
There are some 70+ verses in the nt on healing. Faith rises as we ingest the word. Words of faith. Words of healing.
But what do folks do?
They got 3 or 4 quotes from paul that they actually use to CANCEL FAITH for healing.
In 1999, some charismatic friends of mine, decided to pray for me to be healed of Rhuematoid Arthritis. They believed I would be healed, they prayed for me for hours. One person anointed me with oil. I prayed with them, believing God would heal me.
Instead I was not healed by them then, or since. I trust God that his will for me is being lived out, in many ways, but it didn't include physical healing.
When I wasn't healed, all these people who prayed for me started accusing me of not having enough faith to be healed. They were the ones praying for me. If not having enough faith was the issue, then it was their lack of faith, not mine. Two of these people were my closest friends. They continued to put me down, berate and insult me for not having the faith to be healed. So, I changed churches to a non-charismatic church, where people prayed for me and my husband and children, with fervency and consistency. Many good things came out of that, such as my children finding Christian spouses, and God using my pain for good!
Ironically, one woman who had prayed for me, got breast cancer. She had a mastectomy, but refused chemo and radiation. She claimed healing. Within a year, she was dead when the cancer metastasized. The other friend almost died from an enlarged prostate. He was so convinced God would heal him, while he got worse and worse, he finally collapsed. A friend came by, rushed him to the ER, where he underwent emergency surgery. He still believes in healing, but also that God uses doctors and modern medicine.
I got very depressed as the RA, pain and deformities grew worse, I gained huge amounts of weight, partly due to prednisone use, and partly from lack of exercise. My heart was broken. I turned away from God for 2 years. I stopped praying, reading my Bible, witnessing and going to church. It took 2 years of God telling me to read 5 Psalms a day but I finally did that for 2 years. I met God's people, warts and all! Some people were healed, but the majority were not! But they praised God anyway!
God had called me to seminary in the early 1990s and I didn't go, because I didn't understand the point! Only men could be pastors. Little did I know God had amazing plans for my life, which did not include becoming a senior pastor. So, in 2006, I started taking courses at an online seminary and gradually got back into studying, writing and doing research. And started being more consistent in following Christ all the time, daily! L I finally got on good RA meds, got into long distance daily bicycling, stretches and weights. God more than restored me, although it was a medical remission, as there is no cure for RA. God allowed me to learn how to minister to God's people, and to be a bold witness to the real gospel, not the "name it and claim it" heresy. I read books on both sides of the debate, but God kept giving me verses of encouragement, and I grew so much during those 7 years.
So, not only was I not healed, I was nearly destroyed with people who told me I didn't have enough faith, when Jesus was the most important thing in my life. I ministered to believers who were hurting, damaged and called second class Christians. I have been able to encourage so many who have been lied to, and accused by the devil of not having enough faith.
"For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned." Romans 12:3
It is God who gives us the measure of faith we need. God has been using me in many areas. I am an admin of a group of almost 800 people on FB with RA, and a smaller group for people with bipolar disorder. So many people come to the RA group, come in, and besides the excruciating pain and deformities, they have had their faith battered by charismatics, who are preaching bad theology, and damaging theology. A 1/4 of a verse of Isa. 53:d, does not a doctrine make! It is a verse totally pulled out context, and then paired with the 2 NT verses, which are about Jesus, not believers in the 21st century.
But I won't get into that, now! I would love to debate this issue, using Greek and Hebrew to show the errors of the Health & Wealth gospel. I have researched and written much about this topic. And I can gladly state, that although I am not healed 21 years later, my relationship with God and others had grown so much. I'm grateful God gave me so many verses to show me, that although I was not healed, I have matured and I am closer to Christ than I would have ever been, had I been healed.
"Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." Romans 5:3-5
