"Does all healing come in Heaven, not here?" The lady who asked me was sincere. She had experienced a healing herself not long ago. She and her friend were attending the same Truth Project training session that the Westerbys and I were attending this past April.
The question was born from a statement her preacher made from their pulpit, and it bothered her. It touches on the idea that God’s answer to one’s prayer may be "no." It runs amok in the face of Jesus’ promise that He made to his Apostles, "Whatever you ask in My Name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in My name, I will do it." (Jn. 14:12–13)
When one looks at the ministry of Jesus, the main focus of His healing ministry was more toward that of spiritual sicknesses (Mk. 2:17; Lk. 4:18), although He also healed physical ailments (Mtt. 9:35). If Jesus’ main mission was to heal all physical ailments, He failed, for there were times when He did not heal everybody (Mk. 6:5, eg).
The purpose of the miraculous healings in both Jesus’ and the Apostles’ ministries was to create belief in the message of God’s gift of His Son (Jn. 20:30–31; Mk. 16:20). Having no confirmed, written Word from God in the immediate time following Pentecost, the miracles were the evidence of divine authorship of the message preached.
To imply that all physical healings, requested in Jesus’ name, must be fulfilled in this lifetime is to imply that God cannot say "no" to a request. It is to further imply that the person praying knows God’s will and what will be best to further His will.
At least two remarkable examples come to mind of when God said "no": to Jesus, to His prayer in Gethsemane, and to Paul, concerning his "thorn in the flesh." God had a greater purpose to accomplish in the sufferings of these two, dear children of His.
Tevya, in his soliloquy to God in Fiddler on the Roof, asked God, "Would it upset some grand, eternal plan, if I were a wealthy man?"
In the place of wealthy, one could add "healthy," "famous," or any number of adjectives. The rhetorical answer would be, "It just might." We are not always privy to the glory our ailment or deprivation can bring to God (Phil. 1:20; II Cor. 12:9–10). This is His story down here on Earth, not mine. Whatever it takes to glorify Him, has to be all right with me!
