Healing Is For Today: God's Will for Your Health

The Healing Ministry of Jesus

Any serious engagement with the question of divine healing must begin with the Gospels, because the Gospels present an indisputable picture: healing was central to the ministry of Jesus. Not peripheral. Not occasional. Not symbolic. Central.

Matthew's summary statement — 'Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people' (Matthew 4:23) — establishes healing as one of the three defining activities of the Messiah's ministry alongside teaching and proclamation. The healing of the sick was not anecdotal padding to the 'real' spiritual message. It was part of the message. In every act of healing, Jesus was declaring in embodied form what He also declared in word: the Kingdom of God has arrived, and in the Kingdom, bodies are made whole.

The range of what Jesus healed is breathtaking. Leprosy. Blindness. Deafness. Paralysis. Haemorrhage. Withered limbs. Epilepsy. And death itself — in the cases of Lazarus, the widow's son at Nain, and Jairus's daughter. No condition is presented in the Gospels as beyond the reach of His power. In not a single instance does Jesus tell a sick person, 'It is not the Father's will for you to be well.' In every case where healing is requested in faith, it is given.

Healing in the Early Church

The critics of divine healing often argue from a cessationist position: that the miraculous gifts of the Spirit, including healing, ceased with the passing of the apostolic generation. But this claim finds no support in the New Testament itself, and is difficult to sustain even historically.

The book of Acts records healings flowing through the apostles (Acts 3, 5, 9), through non-apostolic figures like Stephen and Philip (Acts 6-8), and through ordinary church members (Acts 9:32-35). The Letter of James — written not to an apostolic elite but to the general church — gives explicit instruction that when any member of the congregation is sick, they should 'call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord' with the promise that 'the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well' (James 5:14-15). This is not a special ministry limited to uniquely gifted individuals. It is the Church's ordinary practice.

The second and third century church fathers — Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen — all write of healing miracles occurring in their communities as ongoing realities. It was not until the fifth and sixth centuries, when the church had become institutionalised and theologically accommodated to a world in which miracles were embarrassing, that cessationist arguments began to gain significant traction. The history does not support the theology.

Is It Always God's Will to Heal?

This is the question that causes the most pastoral difficulty, and it deserves honest and careful engagement.

The consistent testimony of the Gospels is that it was always Jesus's will to heal those who came to Him in faith. The one instance sometimes cited as an exception — the man blind from birth in John 9 — resolves itself on examination: the disciples ask whether the blindness was caused by the man's or his parents' sin; Jesus denies both and says 'this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him' — and then heals him. Even in the one case where healing is apparently delayed, the resolution is healing.

The most challenging passage is the Apostle Paul's 'thorn in the flesh' (2 Corinthians 12). Paul prayed three times for its removal; God responded 'My grace is sufficient for you.' Some have read this as biblical evidence that it is sometimes God's will for believers to remain sick. But careful exegesis reveals that Paul does not describe the thorn as a physical illness. Most Biblical scholars understand it as a reference to external opposition or persecution — a 'messenger of Satan' sent to harass him, most likely referring to the ongoing persecution he experienced. It is not at all clear that this passage teaches that God wills chronic illness upon His children.

What the Scriptures do affirm is that healing, like all benefits of the Kingdom, exists in the 'already but not yet' tension of Christian eschatology. The Kingdom has broken in; the full completion of the Kingdom has not yet come. In this present age, we sometimes receive the fullness of a Kingdom promise — and sometimes receive grace to endure what has not yet been fully resolved. Both are real experiences. Neither should be used to deny the other.

The Relationship Between Faith and Healing

Jesus repeatedly made explicit connections between faith and healing. 'Your faith has made you well,' He told the haemorrhaging woman (Mark 5:34), the blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10:52), and the ten lepers (Luke 17:19), among others. When He could not do many miracles in Nazareth, the text explicitly attributes this to the people's unbelief (Matthew 13:58).

This correlation requires careful handling. It has been misused to produce cruel and spiritually damaging applications: the message that if a believer is not healed, it is because they lack sufficient faith. This teaching devastates people who are already suffering and adds a burden of false guilt to physical pain.

The alternative — taught in this ministry — is not to deny the relationship between faith and healing but to understand faith rightly. Faith, in the New Testament, is not a quantity of confident feeling. It is a quality of trusting relationship — with a Person, not with a theological proposition about healing. The woman who touched the hem of Jesus's garment was not exercising a principle. She was reaching for Jesus. The blind men who cried 'Son of David, have mercy!' were not applying a formula. They were calling on the Lord.

Healing prayer is therefore not a spiritual technique. It is an encounter — with the living Christ who remains the same yesterday, today, and forever. The prayer of faith is the prayer that genuinely believes that this Person cares, that this Person can act, and that this Person is present in this room, at this bedside, in this moment of need.

How to Receive Healing

The practical question, for those who are suffering and seeking health, is how to position themselves to receive what God makes available.

Dr. Momodu, who has seen significant healings across his ministry in prayer meetings, hospital visits, and remote prayer, offers the following counsel rooted in Scripture and experience:

Begin with confession of sin. James 5 connects healing explicitly with the confession of sin: 'Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.' This is not suggesting that all illness is caused by specific sin. It is recognising that a soul right before God is a soul positioned to receive.

Bring your need specifically. Vague prayer produces vague faith. Name what you are believing for. Tell God the diagnosis, the prognosis, the fear. He is not surprised by any of it. He has been present in every doctor's consultation, every scan, every sleepless night. Name it before Him, and ask specifically.

Invite the elders or believing community to pray with you. The promise of James 5 is not the private prayer of the sick person alone — it is the prayer of the community surrounding them. Healing prayer is a corporate act.

Persist. The parable of the persistent widow is as applicable to healing prayer as to any other form of intercession. Do not assume that one prayer is the measure of what God will do. Many of the healings in scripture required persistence, faith, and time.

Trust the Healer even when the healing is not immediate. His love for you is not contingent on your health. His purposes for your life are not defeated by your illness. Whatever the outcome, you are held by a God who knows your name, who counts the hairs of your head, and who declares that neither life nor death, neither the present nor the future, can separate you from His love.

A Word of Faith

Healing is for you. Not because you deserve it. Not because you have prayed enough or believed with sufficient intensity. But because you were made in the image of a God who loves you, who sent His Son specifically so that your every need could be presented at the throne of grace with confidence, and who has not ceased — for one moment of all of human history — to be concerned about the details of your life.

At Global Peace Ministry, prayer for the sick is not a special service reserved for dramatic occasions. It is woven into every gathering, every outreach, every pastoral encounter, because we understand it to be one of the forms in which Jesus continues His ministry through His body, the Church.

If you are unwell — in body, in mind, in spirit — you are invited to reach out to this ministry for prayer. You are not a burden. You are the reason Jesus came. And it is our privilege, and our calling, to stand with you in faith for the health that God desires for every one of His children.