Does God Want You to be Sick?

Do you believe God wants you to remain sick?

A man with a skin disease once came up to Jesus and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I am willing. Be made clean!” Immediately his skin disease was cleansed. [Matthew 8:2–3]

Jesus healed many who did not even ask for healing –and of those who did ask for it, Jesus turned not a single person away. His response was always, “I am willing.”

Jesus is willing and wants to make us well. The question is, are we willing to do our part in what it takes to be well? Read Part I of this article to find out more!

The truth is that God requires our consent to heal us. Remember the free will he has given us? Jesus says, “Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and eat with you, and you with me. [Revelation 3:20] God does not enter where he is not invited. Jesus does not do what we don’t trust him to.

When we are ready to open the door to our hearts to Jesus, when we speak to him in prayer, and listen to his word, he is able to heal us, physically and spiritually. We find that we are slowly, but surely, being changed into the people he made us to be; the wounds of our past being covered and healed by God’s love.

But what about the deeper, inner wounds that we are not even aware of? Some wounds are buried so deep within our hearts and minds that they begin to take on a nature that is separate from ours.

These wounds are hidden for a reason — the memories and emotions associated with them are so painful that our mind blocks them from us, so that we may be able to continue to function normally. It is simply an attempt of the mind and body to “move on” from the hurt that has been afflicted on us — and so, these wounds are left behind to deal with the pain on their own. When this happens, we allow these wounded parts of ourselves to become separate from us, hiding them deep within ourselves, so that the pain they hold doesn’t return to the surface.

It’s like hiding a test paper where you scored badly under a pile of books, hoping that the fail grade will stay hidden. It does, but the effect of that low score continues to be seen in the rest of our studies — we continue to do badly because we have not understood or dealt with the problem area. One of the reasons we may bury our wounds like this is because we believe ourselves to be responsible for them. We may have scored badly due to a variety of reasons — the teacher hadn’t explained the lesson well, we were unwell on the day of the test, we were being distracted by things going on at home and couldn’t focus on our studies — but the shame of a bad score in this analogy is similar to the shame we feel when something bad happens to us.

Our mind that believes that it is in control justifies, “If we were in control, how did we allow this to happen to ourselves?”

These parts of ourselves may hold onto the hurt and shame of what happened to us, as a defence against it happening to us again. They believe that it is important that the memories and emotions associated with these events/hurts remain deep under the surface so that we may continue to function, but at the same time, ready to be released again as a reminder when similar events begin to unfold, so that we remember and are able to take steps to avoid another painful outcome. This is the mental equivalent of the physical immune system — the first time our body is infected with a certain germ, it can take several days for the immune system to make and use all the tools needed to fight the infection. After the infection, the immune system remembers what it had learned about how to protect the body against that particular disease. If the body encounters the same germ again, the T-lymphocytes recognize the familiar germ and the B-lymphocytes can produce antibodies to fight off the infection.

This works amazingly well on the physical level, protecting us from sickness — but when executed mentally, this defence mechanism that our mind develops sometimes prevents us from living the life in abundance that God has promised for us.

When stressful situations trigger these wounds, we may be left wondering why we are filled with unpleasant memories and reactions that seem far greater in proportion to the hurt we are currently feeling. This is because the parts of us that are holding previous hurts that were not understood or dealt with are sending us urgent reminders to be careful!

Our inability to understand what is going on in our mind and heart sometimes manifests in physical symptoms — backaches, breathing issues, headaches, infertility, loss of vision and lots more.

When this continues to happen even after we have come to know God, it may be because these parts of ourselves that are holding our hurt are so far removed from us, hidden so deep from our conscious mind, that they are far from the Light. Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” [John 8:12] Jesus wants every part of us to be able to come to him, the light that dispels all the darkness and despair that sin brings, because it cuts us off from the healing, life-giving power of God.

One way of bringing these parts of ourselves up to speed with the new reality is by bringing them to the surface to meet Jesus for themselves. As long as there is a part of me that does not know Jesus, I will not be fully able to believe in what he can do for me, as a whole.

This is how inner healing sessions usually work — a counsellor will help you uncover the hurt and then invite you to bring it to the surface, where it can be covered by the love of Christ. Again, our consent is vital here — where the hurt is so deep, it has taken root in us and become a part of ourselves that needs to be treated as such, in order to be healed.

But what happens when we do not have access to an inner healing session or counsellor, or have attended sessions like this that have not worked? Or when we are unable to remember the hurt that we once felt that is now holding us back…with good intentions, but unfortunate results? There is another method that we can use to find inner healing.

Where we are not able to bring the hurt up to the Light, it is possible to allow the Truth to seep down to it. Jesus is not only the light of the world, but also the Truth.

If we are not brave enough to venture into our painful past and uncover our hurt, all we need to do is allow these parts of ourselves to receive the Truth that we have discovered, but that they may still not be aware of. This Truth is simple and Jesus is the living proof of it — God loves us no matter what we may done, or have been told, or has happened to us.

The solution is simply to allow Jesus deep access to ourselves — our past, present and future. At concerts, several types of passes are issued, depending on the price of the ticket — some of these, issued to organisers and VIPs, are ‘ALL ACCESS’ passes that allow the holder access to any area on the premises, even backstage.

This is the kind of unrestricted, all-access pass we need to issue to Jesus, giving him our consent to cross all barriers that our mind or heart may have erected as a defence mechanism. The power of Christ’s love is such that it requires nothing else from us.

But the very act of giving Jesus this access, of surrendering control to him, must also be accompanied by an acceptance of what he will do, once he has it. We need to give Jesus access to not only the hurt, but also the area of transformation that is required. If we hold back, it would be like giving the doctor access to our fracture, but only allowing him to rub ointment on it, fearing that anything else will result in pain. But a fracture requires a resetting of the bone, a splint, a cast… and possibly some pain. With the temporary pain, though, there is the assured promise of healing! The doctor will do all the work — but only if we can close our eyes and trust him with it.

When every part of us knows the Truth that comes from knowing Jesus — that God loves us and wills our good — the wounded parts of us will finally be able to lay down their defences, and hand over this role to Jesus.

We will then finally know the peace that Jesus wants to bless us with — the peace that comes from knowing that God, who knows everything and loves us infinitely, is in the driver’s seat. We are also able to reconcile with what happened to us, knowing that if God loves us and wills what is good for us, he allowed it to happen for a reason… even if we cannot understand this reason in the moment. We will finally be able to be the person that God created us to be — and will find our ailments magically begin to disappear!

So give Jesus that all-access pass to your life and yourself today, and he will give you the grace to accept the deep healing he starts to do on the inside.

All you need to do is:

a) Tell Jesus that you are giving him complete access, and

b) Trust in grace to take away your fear that he will ask you to do something that you don’t want to do. Jesus is kind and compassionate, gentle and sweet — he will never ask you to do something he knows you cannot do!

God bless and heal you.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The above is a testimony from personal experience — the author was healed of breathing issues stemming from fear within a week of this revelation, and the very next moment from giving Jesus this all-access pass. May your faith be strengthened by this testimony!