Healing and why God doesnt bother with it (sometimes)

The gift of healing is an awesome thing. I whole heartedly believe in healing, and I have experienced it firsthand. When I was 12 years old I badly sprained my arm after falling down. I was taken to hospital and after x-rays my arm was put into a sling. A night or two later I was sat in a meeting for kids my age and they played my favorite worship song at the time, 'showers of blessing'. All the kids except me went down the front to jump about to the song, and I sat miserable at the back.

One of the helpers who I only knew by his nickname 'Jamie J-Cloth McHairbrush' came to the back and asked me if he could pray for my arm. I said ok. He prayed for me by putting his hand on my arm and asking Jesus to heal it. I remember thinking to myself, 'go ahead and pray, nothing is going to happen' but as he prayed I felt a tingling like pins and needles all up and down my arm, and when he finished he asked me to try and move it. I did, and it was totally better, completely healed, no more pain. I was able to take my sling off and go down the front and jump around with the rest of the kids.

So why did God do it? I have no idea. In my life I have broken over 20 bones, sprained and hurt countless limbs but this was the one that God healed. There have been incidents where I have been praying earnestly for something which to me seemed a much nobler cause, and with much more faith than I had in the arm incident, and nothing has happened time after time. The vast majority of the time, in fact, nothing happens. People are taken ill, people die, often slowly and painfully, in spite of fervent prayer. 

Because of the healing I personally experienced I can never deny the truth that Jesus heals, but I don't have any way to deconstruct the example and explain what was different and why God healed me. 

There are lots of scriptures which I hear quoted at 'healing meetings' and the like, such as James 5:14; Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up.


I have been prayed for by the elders of my church, anointed with oil, and full of faith that I would be healed, but repeatedly have not been. So what is going on? In my opinion the answer can be seen by looking at the broader picture of scripture. God is a person, with a personality, an opinion, and he makes his own decisions. Often, for reasons of his own, he simply chooses not to heal, and that is just that. It is a wonderful thing that now and again he does bless someone with healing, but most of the time he does not in the biblical miraculous sense.

The fact that God is a person is a much more prevalent theme in the bible than when and where he heals. Jesus said that the most important thing was to love the Lord with your everything, and that is a person to person thing. He also gets irate with people when they keep badgering him for miraculous signs and wonders when the most important thing is loving God himself.

Although there are certain ingredients which should be present for healing to take place (faith, prayer etc) the bottom line is, if God wants to heal, He will, and if He doesn't want to, He won't, simple as that, because God is a person, not a slot machine.