If it wasn’t God’s will to heal then He would have to change His name! What do I mean? One of God’s seven redemptive names is Jehovah Rapha which means I am the Lord who Heals you.
Before I verify this truth about healing from the scripture, I want to share why encountering the Lord as Jehovah Rapha is so important. Healing reveals God’s nature. Think about it, if a person brought their four year old daughter to me who had leukemia and I had all power to heal and I refused them, do you think they would think I am good? Would you think I am good? If we drop all the religious pretext around healing would anyone want a relationship with me if I could heal an innocent four year old girl, but wouldn’t? I don’t think so.
God’s will to heal reveals He is good, but how do we know it is always God’s will to heal? Look at Exodus 15:26:
26“If you diligently heed the voice of the LORD your God and do what is right in His sight, give ear to His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have brought on the Egyptians. For I am the LORD who heals you.”
In this passage from Exodus 15, the Lord had just healed the waters of Marah because they were bitter and undrinkable. If He would not have healed the waters, the children of Israel would have died of thirst. After healing these waters, He went on to say He would heal the children of Israel and protect them from disease and then announced Himself as Jehovah Rapha or the LORD who heals.
The word rapha is used 69 times in the Bible and the vast majority of the times it is used, it refers to physical healing. The word rapha is the same word used in Isaiah 53:5 which talks about the redemptive work of Jesus on the cross:
53 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.
Matthew quoted Isaiah when he wrote about an event when Jesus healed many people in Matthew 8:17:
17 that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying: “He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses.”
The Apostle Peter quotes Isaiah and Matthew to refer to the promise of physical healing for servants who were abused by there master in 1 Peter 2:24:
24 who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed.
I would encourage you to study all of these passages and others about healing to be assured about God’s will to heal. Many struggle to receive God’s healing because they aren’t fully persuaded He wants them well. We must lay this foundation so we can live in faith about God’s will to heal!
Once we know it is God’s will to heal, we have to learn to receive our healing. The key to doing this is to apply a lesson from Moses in the story of the healing of the bitter waters in Exodus 15:25:
So he cried out to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a tree. When he cast it into the waters, the waters were made sweet. There He made a statute and an ordinance for them, and there He tested them,
As the children of Israel began to complain about the bitter waters of Marah, Moses cried out to God for wisdom. The Lord spoke to Moses about casting a tree into the bitter waters of Marah, which made them sweet. This tree is symbolic of the cross. When we apply the finished work of Jesus Christ to our hearts we will receive healing and our bitter waters will be made sweet.
There are many ways we can apply the finished work of the cross to our lives. Below is a short list of things the Lord has shown me over the years, but there are probably many other ways to receive healing.
- We declare our healing and command our body to get in the line with the word of God.
- We have others who are strong in faith agree with us for our healing.
- We receive communion, which is a reminder of what Jesus did for us on the cross. As we do, healing will manifest in our body. If you’d like to learn more about how God heals through communion, check out this article.
- We ask the Lord if there are hindrances in our heart such as fear or bitterness that are keeping us from receiving our healing. 3 John 1:3 says we will prosper and be in health as our soul (mind, will, and emotions) prosper. Many times sickness is a fruit of an unhealthy soul that is bound with fear, stress, and unforgiveness.
Sometimes healing comes quickly and easily and sometimes it comes with a fight, but healing will always come to those who receive Him as Jehovah Rapha. I hope this article has encouraged you about who your Father is and about His will to heal. As I said at the beginning of the article, if God refused to heal, He would have to change His name because a name defines who someone is and reveals their nature. Your Father wants you to know Him as the God who heals. This truth wasn’t just for Jesus and the apostles or a select few super-duper ministers today. This message is for all of us.
Understanding the truth about God’s nature and desire to heal is essential if you are going to experience the fulness of eternal life. As a reminder, according to what Jesus said in John 17:3, eternal life isn’t just about going to heaven, it is about knowing God.
3 And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
If you would like to find out more about Eternal Life, click here to read the rest of the articles I have written in my series on Eternal Life.
