Health and Healing

Norman Grubb wrote the following wise and practical words on health and healing in his book Who Am I?--maybe not the words that most people want to hear but presenting Christ's overcoming reality never-the-less:

"Then there is the health and healing question. It is plain that all who came to Jesus were healed. But not so today. Let us face it. Even those who have the best known public healing meetings, only a small proportion go away healed, and many hundreds unhealed. Yet there is healing. The Bible makes that plain. There are the two extremes among Christians--those who speak of healing as if it is the normal thing to expect and something is wrong with our faith if it does not happen; and those who really don't believe in it for today, though to cover themselves, they may say, 'Of course God can heal.'

"It is true that Jesus had that perfect relationship with His Father, by which without hesitation He spoke the words or gave the touch which healed every kind of disease, and all who came to Him in faith were healed; and it is true that no one since Him has healed like that. So it is no good our talking of a theoretical faith which we ourselves cannot operate.

"But more than that. Paul did not write of total healing for the body; and can anyone have greater faith than Paul who did raise the dead, and spoke of 'mighty signs and wonders by the power of the Spirit of God'? But Paul qualified his great victory chapter, Romans 8, by saying that we 'groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.' He spoke of the body dead because of sin, and that it will be quickened, but the future, not present tense is used. 'The outward man perishes,' he said, and advised his own chosen successor, Timothy, not to get healing, but 'to take a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities.' He said the same of his companion Trophimus whom he had 'left at Miletum sick'; and all this quite apart from the controversial question of what his own unhealed 'thorn in the flesh' was, though most of us think it was blindness.

"Where do we stand then between possible healing and continued sickness? I think it fits right in to our whole position--that we are not body people, but spirit people. We are spirits inhabiting temporary tabernacles. But, as with all things material, we have had our minds set more on the physical than the spiritual. We are too body-minded instead of being Spirit-minded. At a meeting which is opened for requests for prayer, almost always two-thirds of them centre round the body.

"But suppose we apply our same principle of matter or Spirit believing to our bodies. We say what we are believing in is real to us and we are contributing to its reality. Well, while we believe in our body condition, is that not what many say today, including many in the medical profession--that a lot of our ill-health is the product of our minds, our believing in sickness? The world [sic] psychosomatic is an in-word for today. Now refer that to my immediate 'sick' condition. I am hurting, so I am surely tempted to believe that my sickness is the reality. So it is on the physical level. But now, as in all these other ways, we have talked about, we transfer our believing to who we really are, human spirits in union with the Divine Spirit, and consequently perfect in Him and in His perfect life. We simply are in the perfection of eternal life, for 'by one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified'; and to this fact we attach our believing, and not to our body condition; and say so with the expressed word of faith. We are in perfect health in Him, or we should rather say in perfect life in Him, for health and sickness are part of that divided outlook through the Fall. This is the essential. This is the victory--to see ourselves perfect in Him, and say so with praise, when our bodily condition is obviously imperfect. This means reality to us is spirit, our human spirits in His Spirit. We have our sick physical condition, and it is having its obvious effects on us and we are taking any available remedies for it; but we keep maintaining that that is not who we really are or where we really are. We really are in life 'in Him.'

"This also means that we are accepting for the present moment that we have a bodily condition of sickness, and that this is His present deliberate will for us. He 'determined' this for us, He 'gave' us this messenger of Satan to buffet us, if we use Paul's word. So we praise Him for it, as well as in it. It is when we do that, we can settle our believings in Him instead of our bodies. That is a dying in Christ to flesh-believing and a rising to Spirit-believing.

"When we are clear in this, by the evidence of being able to praise the Lord, then the secondary word of faith is possible. We can say that God heals the body now. We can speak the word of healing now for our physical condition, or fellow-believers can lay hands on us, or anoint us according to the Scriptures. And let us speak that word without compromise. 'I will. Be thou healed.'

"Now when Jesus spoke such words of faith, the healings were immediate, and sometimes with the apostles, and there are many present-day instances of immediate healing. But not so in thousands of us. This is where we need to be careful not to be trapped into going back on our word of faith. Is it because of lack of faith? Well, that can be said of all of us, for none on earth manifest the faith of Jesus who healed all. We must all face up to Paul's warning to 'think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.' Therefore if there is not an immediate healing, beware of accepting false condemnation, especially when others say, 'Why haven't you faith?', or if others are healed at a healing meeting and you are not. If I have spoken that word of faith that I am healed, and apparently I am not, then I can so easily swing back to that old negative believing which looks at my body and judges by outer sight. Then down I go again in the bonds of the visible and unbelief. But I am to learn to accept God's time-table, and that once my faith is fixed, my faith is fixed. I do not look down to see how and where the answer comes. The word of healing has been spoken, and I walk on in the spirit, not body-minded, but Spirit-minded, and people catch that from us. And in that present condition Christ is magnified in our body 'whether by life or by death.' When we are praising and thanking God, yet still in physical ill-health, we are doing something the world cannot do, and demonstrating a power not of ourselves.

"Incidentally, that is why we do not help people in their illness by sympathy which keeps attention on their suffering condition. We truly help by the much more costly compassion, rather than sympathy, which loves people enough to help them to praise the Lord in their condition, even though by saying that to some who are feeding on their own self-pity, we may get a sharp comeback. But that is compassion--loving people by doing what I know is best for them, and not by what is easiest and most comfortable for me in commiserating with them.

"Then where is the healing or deliverance? It often does come, sometimes suddenly and miraculously. It may come gradually and sometimes it may never come in the body. But one thing is certain, we shall know and see that God has done what we said He would do. We shall be able to say, 'Yes, that's why I had this suffering. Look, this was God's full answer, I would not have had any other.' That will take us right up to the topmost point Paul reached, when God made it plain to him that his 'thorn' would never be removed in the way he first requested. But he received so much more from God, which he has been able to pass on by his witness to countless millions, and which he could have passed on in no other way, when God said, 'My grace is sufficient for thee; for my strength is made perfect in weakness'; and that took him another big stride forward when he said, 'I now welcome all kinds of physical or human frustrations, because I've discovered that it is when I am weak that I am strong.' He got the total answer to his prayer of faith for healing; and so do I, somewhere along the line. Stick to the word, 'The just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.'

"But one balancing word should be added. Don't let's be fools. There is in fact not a single completely perfect body on earth. All have some physical disabilities. We thank God for every gift of healing and bless those called to minister that way in the Body of Christ. May they not be moved from using their gift to the full. Praise God for those who do get healed in great public 'healing' meetings, or privately. Praise God for the many who find Christ as Saviour when they came to the meetings for body healing. But for a great many of us, our healing is the flow of the life of God in our mortal bodies, while we continue with some disabilities; but we go on and on despite them.

"My wife, Pauline, has never been robust and has suffered much physically, but on she goes, now nearing eighty, and thanking God for what she has learned of Him through suffering. I had a damaged knee through football when young, and then was shot in the same leg in World War I, and had knee surgery twice, and walk with a leg somewhat out of the straight till today. For this I was given a small disability pension. But I started out in the Congo (Zaire) over fifty years ago, when we had to walk the forest tracks to the villages. My knee sometimes caused trouble with synovitis or temporary dislocation, but not really disabling. I foolishly (?) resigned the pension as not really needing it! Five years ago I was told the knee is full of arthritis, and if I had trouble, the only thing would be to stiffen the leg. But there is no trouble, and I still keep on the move in tours of meetings. It had been the quickening life of God overflowing an unhealed condition, and that is all I have ever needed. That is a trivial illustration compared to so many, but the principle is the same. In perfect life in Christ, yes now and forever. In physical healing, maybe; sometimes sudden, sometimes gradual, sometimes not at all, but praising God anyhow and continuing in His overflow of life: and sometimes best of all, out of this mortal body and with Christ which is far better: and adieu till we meet again for ever!"