The other day my wife and I were having coffee and tea with some friends of mine and we got on the topic of how does God heal. While I began to share that there are basically four ways that God aids in physical healing my friend Rachel mentioned a fifth way that I had never thought of. Below are the five ways that we can experience physical healing – and the exciting thing is that all five ways are from the Lord! I like to classify these five ways as natural healing, psychosomatic healing, medical healing, miraculous healing and glorification healing. Let’s take a look at each one.
Natural healing
Natural healing is when you get a cut and your body forms a clot, without you having to do anything. This type of healing is what I like to refer to autopilot healing. God builds this wonderful healing provision into our bodies. It is fabulously complex but praise God that our bodies are so fearfully and wonderfully made!
Psychosomatic healing
Psychosomatic healing is when you think the right way. Correct thinking can heal a lot of physical conditions that stress and negative emotions can cause. Right thinking can reverse many of these aliments.
Medical healing
Medical healing is when God gives special wisdom to doctors to use medicines and surgeries to help us overcome many sicknesses. In the last 100 years this form of healing has advanced greatly and we can expect the next 100 years to be filled with more amazing medical healing breakthroughs.
Miraculous healing
Miraculous healing is when God does a medical miracle. While this form of healing is not normative it does take place, I believe, more than many may think – and especially in third world countries where doctors are scare and believing prayers are often greater. We should never cut God short when it comes to miraculous healings in response to fervent believing prayer for our God is indeed a wonder working God.
Glorification healing
Unfortunately, since we are all born in a world where sin is so prevalent our world has gone haywire. And despite our best efforts to stay healthy, sickness and disease are part of the curse that our world is still under. While, as Christians, we are promised forgiveness for our sins, we are not immune from sickness, disease, and physical death. But thank God even when we succumb to the worst form of illness – death – we will get the fifth and ultimate form of healing – glorification healing. Here all believers one day will receive their glorified bodies where perfect health will reign for all of eternity.
Healing, and answered prayer for healing, as we can see, can take several forms, but as I hope you can also see, all five of the forms we just shared are all from the Lord. So whatever type of healing God performs in our lives we need to be careful to give Him all the glory!
“But thank God even when we succumb to the worst form of illness – death – we will get the fifth and ultimate form of healing – glorification healing. Here all believers one day will receive their glorified bodies where perfect health will reign for all of eternity.”
Scripture paints this picture and it is indeed “glorious!”
“Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” Rev. 21:3-4
Of course, this “glorification healing” takes place in the “dwelling place of God.” In context, that means there’s a sense in which these “former things” have already been inaugurated in their beginning stages of a progressive reality. How do we know this? The “dwelling place” is the New Jerusalem, the bride, the wife of the Lamb (verse 2 & 9), which is the church.
There is a “glory that is to be revealed to us” and “we wait for it with patience.” Rom. 8:18 & 25