It is far too easy to skim over words, especially if the text is familiar. Look at the Leper’s words. “And behold there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, ‘Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” He understood what many do not understand today. The choice to heal belongs to God, not to us (1 Corinthians 12:1-11).
It is true that our faith is involved in our healing (Mt 9:22; Mk 10:52). We need to believe that God can heal, just like the leper believed (Lord, if you will, you can…). It is not our responsibility to believe that he will heal, but that he can he if he chooses.
In this case it was God’s will to heal him. We know this because Jesus said, “I will; be though clean.”
How do we know when it is God’s will and when it isn’t? We know simply by asking to be healed, believing that God can heal.
There was a man with a crippling disease whom Jesus had passed by many times and did not heal him. This man was not even a believer when Jesus did finally heal him. You can find the story in John 5:1-9. We know that Jesus often went to Jerusalem. Scripture says Jesus knew the man had been lying there crippled for a long time. This tells us out healing can be a matter of God’s timing.
But in both these cases Jesus did heal them. Is there ever a time when Jesus did not heal someone? Yes. In Acts we read about a man who was crippled from birth and had been begging at the temple gate daily since he was old enough to know how to hold out his hand (Acts 3:1-8). How many times had Jesus passed that man and never reached out his hand to heal him?
We say, but he eventually was healed. Yes, but Paul never was (2 Corinthians 12:7-9). If God does not heal our physical infirmity, it is because he has an infinite plan in which our thorn in the flesh is playing a part.
