I used to think that sometimes God answers our prayers for healing, and sometimes He doesn’t. Like sometimes He says yes, sometimes no.

But maybe God always heals, but not always in the way we expect. Sometimes, it’s earthly but sometimes not until heaven.

I found this post that speaks to when God’s answer to our prayers for healing don’t look like what we hoped for or anticipated. But since God is always good, His gifts and His answers are always good.

“When you pray for someone to be healed but the opposite happens, you sometimes wonder if your prayer wasn’t good enough or if you aren’t righteous enough or your faith tank is too low. Other times you wonder why some people get that wow-God, triumphant miracle story while you sit there still praying, still waiting, changing up the words you pray to find that perfect key-fit to unlock the miracle. When it comes to God healing or choosing not to heal, I know the right answer in my brain, but my heart doesn’t get it and keeps asking, ‘why?’

One day while I was pondering that, a very wise friend, Tia Willin Collin said this and in one fell swoop, called a truce between my head and my heart. Here’s what she said about God sometimes choosing not to heal:

‘Wait what? God doesn’t always heal? I disagree! Prayers for healing are the safest prayers we can pray because God always says ‘yes’. Now…let’s define ‘yes’. If he heals you here, your healing is temporary. It’s still good and amazing, but it will not last forever. You will get sick again. You will die. I’ve never met a 2,000 year old Christian! But if he releases you from your mortal body, and heals you in THAT way, then, you are healed forever! No more sickness, no more pain, no more tears. The problem isn’t, sometimes God heals and sometimes he doesn’t, the problem is, we’ve begun to cherish ‘temporary healing’ over ‘eternal healing’ so much so, we now dismiss eternal healing as any type of healing at all’” (Lisa Barry).