Healing By Faith

Healing by faith shows healing that happen miraculously, through prayer practice instead of using medicine, the intervention of doctors or other regular medical care. These forms of healing are usually called miracles. According to Fletcher (2015), Healing occurs through knowing God, and not having more knowledge about God. The English Oxford Living Dictionaries defines faith as a “strong belief in the doctrines of religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof” (Faith, 2017).Spiritual practices and prayer involve many psychological elements such as altruism, gratitude, optimism, meditation, mindfulness, and forgiveness. These positive and influential passions of the mind that are recognized for making the best use of mental health are the fundamental constituents of an individual that has faith.(Moll, 2014).

Throughout history, healing by faith has been universal among believers who follow different religions in healing illnesses. The process of healing by faith includes visiting holy places such as the church or laying hands on sick people. The practice is, nevertheless, more frequent among Christians in comparison to other religions. Healing by faith has been employed to heal various life-threatening illnesses such as blindness, deafness, defective speech, anemia, growth disorder, AIDS, cancer among other many diseases. According to Baker (2015), “the full force of Christianity, hence, as far as divine personages are concerned, controls the widespread presence of the believer’ s attitude, is brought into play by an agency of pure ideas.

Healing by Faith as a Miracle

Divine healing occurs in the supernatural. Hence it is a natural intervention. Some people do not readily believe that miracles can happen, which is acceptable. Nevertheless, faith enables people to believe in the existence of God’s power through prayer. Some people even doubt how some individuals are divinely healed while others, in spite of their immense faith are not cured. It may impossible to explain this situation because nobody understands the intricate nature of miracles, yet people still have hope and believe that (Dvorak, 2012). When Jesus performed miracles, He seemed very powerful before people. These people did not need first to witness the wonders to consider the unique nature of Jesus. Similarly today, people do not need to understand the healing power of faith to believe in its originality. Therefore, a potential exists in the divine healing that happens across the world. When Christians think of miraculous healing, they learn to acknowledge how the use of healing power helps the sick in ways that could not be imagined. The supernatural power witnesses heal the inside of people and enable them to discover the presence of significant and fantastic power at work (Randall, 2014).

Christians Belief in Healing by Faith

The doctrine of healing by faith has been commonly employed by Christian to heal disorders and diseases. The New Testament presents several stories of the healing process through prayer (Clark, 2015). For example, in numerous cases, Jesus taught individuals that prayer had the power to cure several illnesses. His disciples also performed many healing miracles through using his name to pray. These biblical narratives also indicate that if Christians pray in the name of Jesus, they can be healed through his name. Therefore, Christians use the name of Jesus while praying with the belief that a godly intervention will happen to terminate the suffering caused by various illnesses. Furthermore, Jesus healed many individuals by praying to God, and he trained his followers to use prayer for healing. Today’s Christians who believe in healing through prayer have been frequenting holy places like shrines to pray (Greer, 2015).
According to the Catholic Church, healing can happen through divine intervention (Baker, 2015). The church performs intercession on behalf of sick people by praying in Jesus’ name while trusting in the Holy Spirit. Names of saints are also implored for healing to occur. There are various cases that miraculous healing has happened through healing by faith in the Catholic Church. For instance, numerous healing episodes have been announced by those who mentioned the name of the Pope and other saints in prayer (Balboni & Fitchett, 2015). Furthermore, various Catholics have miraculously been healed following visits to several shrines in Jerusalem.

The Pentecostal organizations have also adopted healing by faith. Reports have been received from across the world regarding numerous cases of miraculous healing that have occurred. Evangelical leaders like Benny Hinn have cured many illnesses using divine healing (Fletcher, 2015). For instance, it was reported that Kathryn Kuhlman, a faith healer, performed miraculous healings for any people in1967 during which a woman suffering from spinal cancer was healed. These form of cures caused faith healers to attract significant populations of followers worldwide (Dvorak, 2012). Furthermore, another faith healer, Jack Coe was reported to have miraculously healed a young boy suffering from polio in 1955.Christian Science, which associates healing by faith to the magnitude of God’s creation, hold the ideology that miraculous healing can only happen if the sick people acknowledge that God created what is fulfilling (Randall, 2014). This argument has been criticized from various angles with different opinions.

Benefits of Healing By Faith

From a religious perspective, healing by faith has led to enormous transformations in Christians’ lives across the world. Healing by faith results into cure from various illnesses hence restores health. Divine healing has resulted in the treatment of multiple diseases that lead to trauma in people (Dvorak, 2012). When a Christian goes through healing, they can proceed with normal activities because the suffering has ended. There have been various situations of healing by faith. For instance, in 2009, Clark (2015) reports that Shannon Hickman and Dale believed that their sick baby was miraculously healed. Attendants of Followers of Christ church, the couple did not take their infant to a health facility. Two years earlier, two members of the same religion, Raylene, and Carl Worthington reported that their daughter had been healed miraculously. The couple fasted and prayed as they remained patient for the Holy Spirit to intervene.

Healing by faith causes Christians to receive spiritual nourishment (Greer, 2015). When a Christian gets healing through a miracle, constant prayers increase their spiritual food. This nourishment is crucial in the development of Christians because it draws them nearer to God. People who are spiritually nourished may also experience the urge for transforming their lives positively.

Healing by faith also causes a Christian to have more profound faith in God. Individuals who have experienced miraculous healing can develop trust before the Supreme Being (Moll, 2014). Furthermore, healing by faith can influence those who have no belief in prayer to alter their views. Healing through faith has led many Christians to become active followers who persistently seek spiritual intervention.

Spiritual healing can also cause Christians to begin preaching the Gospel to non-believers. People who have witnessed miraculous cure can be expected to participate in spreading the preaching’s of the Bible, an act that is encouraged by Christians. Today, there has been an increase in the number of individuals who believe in the healing power of faith.

Critics of the Healing Power of Faith

Miraculous healing has been criticized thereby eliciting mixed responses from individuals of different religions. Two principal arguments have been employed to criticize miraculous healing. The first case is the effect of Placebo that asserts that an ill person may receive healing from a specific illness because they have a firm belief and not necessarily due to the power of healing by faith (Randall, 2014). Furthermore, a healer may help an ill individual to be cured however it is not the process of divine healing that causes the person to be cured of the illness, rather the belief of the healer that the disease is being healed. Those who support this argument have suggested that miraculous healing does not result in the cure of different illnesses.
Another argument that has been presented to disprove divine healing is the post hoc ergo propter hoc (Randall, 2014). According to this ideology, a person can be cured when the healing happens separately and not brought about by miraculous healing. Nonetheless, the process of healing is determined by the natural ability of the body.

Healing by faith also has a negative impact on the use of traditional medicine in treating illnesses. It is because people who believe in healing by faith do not seek medical attention. These people prefer perfect cure that they think will offer spiritual nourishment. Some individuals have been seen to profess falsely to cause the healing of sick people through healing. Some religious workers have employed faith healing to lead people astray into thinking that they can cure the sick people (Dvorak, 2012). Such cases have led to severe impacts on the sick peoples’ health. People who have confessed to having been healed from a particular disease will, hence, abandon traditional medicine, and the illness may lead to serious health effects or cause such victims to die.

Another factor that has caused divine healing to face criticism is the extortion of favor or money by people who claim to perform divine healing (Dvorak, 2012). Some healers have a habit of demanding for cash before commencing the healing process. In a majority of situations, the faith healing fails to heal the illness, and the sick person continues to ail from the disease.

Conclusion

To conclude, the impact of healing by faith has tremendously altered the view of individuals regarding the use of traditional medicine in the treatment of diseases and disorders. Divine healing has allowed humans to comprehend the association between God and various experiences of human beings and how people form spiritual practices. Individuals can develop religious and moral traditions gradually via regenerative change. Some individuals believe that healing through faith as a divine and efficient way of treating sick people. Nonetheless, other individuals think that spiritual divine healing does not work efficiently in curing diseases and that medical care that is recommended by doctors should be adopted in treating illnesses instead of divine healing. Most scientific studies show that the process of religious healing failed to offer evidence regarding how different individuals received miraculous healing.

References

Baker, J. (2015, December). Faith: A Foundational Companion to Hope. AORN Journal, 102(6), 559-560. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aorn.2015.10.011.

Balboni, T., Balboni, M., Fitchett, G. (2015, October). Religion, Spirituality, and the Intensive Care Unit: The Sound of Silence. JAMA Internal Medicine, 175(10), 1669-1670.

Clark. R. (2015). Power to Heal: Keys to Activating God’s Healing Power in Your Life. Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image Publishers, Inc.

Dvorak, B. (2012). Dare to Believe: The True Power of Faith to Walk in Divine Healings and Miracles. Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image Publishers, Inc.

Fletcher, D. (2015, October 20). Healing – Being in God’s Presence. Faith and Health Connection. Retrieved from http://www.faithandhealthconnection.org/healing-being-in-gods-presence/.

Greer, D. (2015). The power of prayer. Journal of Christian Nursing: A Quarterly Publication of Nurses Christian Fellowship, 32(1), 57.

Moll, R. (2014, November 03). The Surprising Links Between Faith and Health: 5 ways your faith improves your health. Relevant Magazine. Retrieved from https://relevantmagazine.com/life/surprising-links-between-faith-and-health.

Randall. B. (2014, January 15). Faith and Healing. Alife. Retrieved from https://www.cmalliance.org/alife/faith-and-healing/.