Divine Healing
An Alliance Position Paper

Christ for the Body

The Christian and Missionary Alliance has always taught that provision is made in the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ for the healing of the physical body, and that prayer for the sick and anointing with oil are taught in the Scriptures as privileges for the Church in this present age. Dr. A. B. Simpson, Alliance founder, wrote: "The scriptural doctrine of Christ for the body is not a matter of professionalism in the hands of miracle workers. It is simply the realization that the Lord Jesus has purchased and provided for His believing and obedient children physical strength, life and healing. From His risen life and living touch, our faith may still take health and strength until our life work is done."

You must receive divine healing straight from God. And the best part of it is not His healing, but the blessing it brings to you through knowing Him. If you are sincere in your desire for God's best, you will cherish these seven secrets:

Be in Touch with Christ
Divine healing, like every other blessing of the gospel, is centered in our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, we must be in touch with Him. It is Christ who is our life, and we must know and receive Him before we receive anything from Him. "And all who touched him were healed" (Matt. 14:36 NIV).

Be Right with God
The first promise of healing, recorded in Exodus 15:26, was conditioned upon the obedience of the people: "If you listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, who heals you" (NIV).

He does not demand that you be perfect, but that you be sincere in your desire to please Him, and walk in all the light He gives you. You alone can answer this question: Are you living so that your heart does not condemn you, and that you can come to God with humble confidence and claim His blessing as an obedient child?

Hold onto the Promise
Faith comes from knowing God's will. You can only ask God for as much as He has authorized you to ask; and if you find from your Bible that He authorized you to ask for healing, you need have no trouble about the faith needed. The faith comes instinctively by knowing the truth and understanding your rights under the will of your Father. "For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ" (2 Corinthians 1:20 NIV.)

Be Committed
It is one thing to be willing to take the Lord, to intend to take the Lord, to be trying to take the Lord for the blessing you need but it is quite another thing to take the Lord and count it done, this is commitment. It is to "let your letter go and leave the responsibility of its delivery with the post authorities."

Many people are simply trying, but not trusting. Often we hesitate and struggle until, at last, we just let go, and then it is easy for God to do anything for us. The prayer of faith is a transaction which you must settle at a definite moment and must ever after count it settled. "Commit your way to the Lord; in him; and he will do this" (Psalm 37:5 NIV)

Be Obedient
Your prayers, and even your faith in some cases, will not bring results until you act by moving from your weakness and your fears. You must begin to go forward as if it were really done. Then God will meet you: "As they went they were healed" (Luke 17:14 KJV) After long sickness and suffering, both mind and body are sunk in a habit of conscious helplessness, and the sense of helplessness holds us by a power that we must break. Only as we rise up and put forth the power of a believing will, and begin to act, will we find God meeting us with new strength and healing.

Keep Receiving
Your communing with Christ is the source of your life. Abide in Him and draw life from Him every moment, as the root draws nourishment from the soil, as the branch takes life from the vine, as the lungs absorb oxygen from the atmosphere. Faith feeds upon God, even as your physical body feeds upon appropriate nourishment. It is not enough to receive the Spirit by an act of faith, we must continue to feed on the life of the Spirit by a constant habit of receiving.

God will teach you this. It is an instinct of the new nature and cannot be taught by set rules. It is an instinctive reaching out of the spiritual life to God. It will find its exercise in prayer and silent communion, as if to take more from Him. You may not get your healing all in a flash; frequently it comes breath by breath, as you keep taking the Lord Himself for new life. "If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you" (John 15:7 NIV).

Keep Following
A flash of ill temper, a cloud of despondency, an impure thought or desire can poison your blood, inflame your tissues, disturb your nerves and interrupt the whole process of God's life in your body! On the other hand, the spirit of joy, freedom from anxious care and worry, a generous and loving heart, the sedative of peace, the uplifting influence of hope and confidence-these are better than pills, stimulants and sedatives, and the very nature of things will exercise the most benign influence over your physical functions, making it true in a literal as well as a spiritual sense, that "the joy of the Lord is your strength" (Nehemiah 8:10 NIV).

The writer remembers in his early ministry a certain man who was given up by physicians to die. He was expected to die that night but was converted to God in his illness, and was filled with such an ecstatic joy that for several hours, while he was supposed to be dying, he just poured out his heart in the rapturous expression of divine love and devotion.

Next morning we went back to console the family on his death, which we supposed had come in the night, but to our surprise we found him almost well, and he lived for many years afterward as a happy Christian. The physician could only explain it as the result of an extraordinary stimulant that his new happiness brought into his system, which acted better than any medicine could have done and lifted him above the ordinary laws of physiology.

Solomon said, "A cheerful heart is good medicine" (Proverbs 17:22 NIV), and there is no joy like the joy of the Lord!