Is God Still Good When He Doesn’t Heal? Bill Johnson’s Honest Answer

Excerpted from Removing the Sting of Death.

I have seen thousands of people healed through the years.

I remember wondering, as a young man, if I’d ever see anything like that in my lifetime. And although I believed in healing and knew it was theologically correct, it never happened around me. My personal breakthrough in this area is largely due to John Wimber, whom I never met, and later Randy Clark, who is one of my best friends. I’ve written about this part of my story elsewhere.

Since then I’ve seen blind eyes open, stone-deaf ears open, the lame walk, cancers disappear, and so much more. Here’s the dilemma. If I could choose one miracle for one specific person, above all the rest, I would choose the healing of my wife. No question. Selfish? No doubt. So the one person who mattered most to me wasn’t healed. Does that redefine God? I’ve watched people forget all that they’ve seen God do because one specific need wasn’t met in the way they thought it should be. It seemed to give them license to reevaluate the nature of God and His promises. Do I have the right to take my most precious story that became a disappointment, and redefine God with it? No. I am responsible for what I have seen. Pursuing a life of signs and wonders is costly, in that you can never go back. I will forever be accountable to manage my losses in the light of wondrous works.

I have been invited to seek His face. It is the pleasure of my life to do so. I have been invited to ask whatever I want of Him. That also is the great pleasure of my life, knowing I have an audience with the King of Glory. What an indescribable honor. I have been commanded by Him to lay hands on the sick with a promise that they will recover. That has also been done with diligence. Do I now have the right to judge Him based on my experience? It is very arrogant to use my experience as that which gives me access to an opinion of Him that is contrary to the Word of God. It can be dangerous to interpret Scripture through our experience. But it is even more dangerous to interpret Scripture without one. (For who really knows what it is to be born again until they’ve actually been reborn? Experience gives insight.) This is a relational journey in which the Holy Spirit works through our sincere surrender to Him who works in and through us according to His will.

Oops, It Didn’t Work

Sometimes we feel obligated to have an opinion about things Jesus is not addressing. We end up with lame thoughts and ideas that don’t hold their weight in Scripture. Yet they are embraced, much like a drowning man grasping for anything he can grab ahold of, even though it won’t hold his weight in water. As a result, we theologically drown, clinging to things that take away from our ever looking like and behaving like Jesus, who was resurrected and now is seated at the right hand of the Father. He remains our model. Our goal. He is absolutely victorious. “As He is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17 NKJV). He victoriously sits at His Father’s side. And we are in Christ, seated with Him. We are being fashioned into the likeness of the resurrected Christ. And it’s quite a journey, traveling from where I am at the present, being fashioned into the image of the resurrected One. There are many questions and objections along the way, as the powers of darkness work to entice me to develop answers that God is not giving.

So many people, especially leaders, are guilty of forming their theology (their understanding of God) around what God didn’t do, instead of what He did. This is a very dangerous procedure as it negates how God the Father is revealed in Jesus through His character and His works. The backslider in heart will always judge God for what He didn’t do, over what He did. But those who live with tenderness toward Him will always look to Him through what He has said and what He has done. The heavenly Father is perfectly manifested and revealed in Jesus, the Son of God. He is the exact representation of the Father. (See Hebrews 1:2.)

Jesus Christ is perfect theology. Anything you think you know about God that you can’t find in the person of Jesus, you have reason to question. And must question! He healed all who came to Him, and He healed all the Father directed Him to. He didn’t even withhold the miracle from those who came with weak faith. He addressed their weak faith and then performed the miracle to give them access to greater faith.

Not everyone who comes to me gets healed. I can either lower the standard of Scripture to my level of experience, so I can feel better about myself. Or I can work to raise my standard of living up to the level revealed in the Bible. I’m not in this so I can feel better about myself. I’m in this to represent Jesus the best I can. It is my responsibility to go to the Father and pray concerning the discrepancy between Jesus and me. My prayer usually goes something like this: “Father, these people came from the other side of the globe to encounter You when I prayed for them. And in doing so to receive the miracle spoken of in Your Word. But all they met was me. And neither of us are impressed. You’ve got to do something in me so that when people come to me, they meet You.”

I’ll Meet You at the Pool

One of my favorite stories in the Bible takes place at the pool of Bethesda. In fact, my favorite biblical site in Israel is this pool. It doesn’t attract the crowds of most other sites. But its historical significance is very meaningful to me personally. The story is recorded in John 5:1-15.

Historians tell us that as many as 800 to 900 people would be seen gathering around this pool, waiting for the angel of the Lord to come and stir the waters. The first one in the pool following the stirring was healed.

Jesus walked up to a man who had been at the pool 38 years, waiting for his miracle. Jesus healed him on the spot. Of course this miracle moved the people tremendously. And the religious leaders were angered once again, as their control and influence over the people was waning. It was tough to match the excitement and wonder created by the One who opened blind eyes and made the lame walk. In fact, they knew they could never match Him. So they planned to kill Him.

There’s much to this story, but only one main point I want to draw your attention to for this chapter. The Bible celebrates what God did. He healed a man who had been waiting for a miracle for a very long time. If that were to happen today, pastors, teachers, seminary professors, newspaper reporters, and TV newscast personalities would be around the pool asking people what it was like to have Jesus walk past them, only to heal someone else. Theologians would be lecturing us on how this only goes to prove that it is not always God’s will to heal. Pastors and teachers would be teaching on the danger of miracles, for now their counseling load has increased with people who now question whether or not God really loves them because Jesus walked past them. The media would, of course, question whether or not the man was really unable to walk in the first place. And once they find he was, the conclusion must be that his lameness was psychosomatic, all in the mind.

The Bible has a different view. Or let’s put it this way: the Holy Spirit, who inspired Scripture, sees this situation differently. He focuses on and celebrates the healing of one man. He is trying to draw our attention to what God is saying and doing, which was probably the number-one key to the ministry success of Jesus. He only did what the Father was doing and said what the Father was saying. (See John 5 and 8.)

It may seem strange to say, but Jesus wasn’t trying to show us what God could do. That had been clearly established in the Old Testament. Jesus, who was entirely God, was also entirely man and chose to live as the Son of Man completely yielded to the Father through the Holy Spirit. In other words, Jesus wasn’t trying to show us what God could do. He was trying to show us what one man could do who was without sin and completely yielded to the Holy Spirit, with a purpose of revealing the Father. The miracles of the Old Testament showed us what God could do.

Whenever we celebrate what God has done, even if it’s only with one person, we set the climate for that one miracle to multiply. The thankfulness and celebration of God’s goodness sets the stage for great increase. If I can’t celebrate one healing out of the 899 others who needed it, I can’t be trusted with the breakthroughs that bring about the massive displays of power where everyone is healed. It’s about heart. It’s about hope. It’s about holding to the standard of Scripture in spite of contradictory circumstances.

Due North

It’s important that we have absolute, non-negotiable things in our lives. These are things we will never question, never move away from. But they must be entirely based on the Scriptures. As such, they define the rest of our lives. We protect them with all of our hearts. These elements all come from the Word of God: who Jesus is, salvation only through the blood of Jesus, the resurrection of Christ, and its resulting impact on how I do life. And so many other things. In fact, these things are under the largest assault through this present culture that I have ever seen in all my life. Yet everything I’ve mentioned exists as truth because God is good. Everything else is revealed, defined, measured, and finds its place by this one truth. God is good. Due North.