By His Stripes

Healing is one of a million favorite topics between Julie and me. We've talked and prayed through various healings for five years. Although she's alluded to it in comments, today I've asked her to share her story in more detail. And later you can read Julie's own blog, crying out for the political healing we need, so to speak:Truth, Justice and the American Way.

As a Bible-believing Christian who was raised Catholic, my understanding of healing has greatly evolved over the years. In Catholicism, suffering is often seen as a badge of honor. Nuns take vows of poverty, and the saints of old committed grotesque acts of self-flagellation. But why shouldn’t we gladly bear with pain and illness? After all, our Savior endured the most horrible agony imaginable for our salvation. The Catholic ideal of embracing suffering sometimes made me reluctant to pray for healing. I often thought a severe stomach ache would help me do penance for my sins if I “offered it up to God,” to borrow a phrase from the nuns.

While in graduate school, I was stuck with an excruciating and chronic back condition, seemingly out of nowhere. I was getting up off a chair, and a shooting pain traveled up and down my spine. In a matter of seconds it was gone, only to return a week later. Eventually, I couldn’t sit, walk, or lie down without knifelike pains in my mid and upper back.

Thus began a journey toward eventual healing that spanned 17 years, four chiropractors, dozens of physical therapy sessions, and countless prayers and tears. Although an orthopedic surgeon and a bone scan failed to diagnose the problem, X-rays taken by a chiropractor revealed that I had completely lost my spinal curve, most likely due to a fall that caused my spine to become misaligned. Because the problem was never corrected, it gradually worsened until I was incapacitated.

While chiropractic care initially did wonders for me, my continued dependence on those weekly visits was an ongoing source of frustration and a financial drain (there were times when I needed anywhere from two to five adjustments a week). Meanwhile, I had rededicated my life to Christ, left Catholicism, and joined a Pentecostal church. I attended numerous healing services, and I can’t count how many times I was anointed with oil.

A turning point came when a friend gave me a booklet on how to pray like Jesus. The premise was that our Lord prayed the solution, not the problem. He took authority over illness and even death. He told the lame to get up and walk, and He commanded the dead to live. His disciples did likewise.

Although this smacked of the “name it and claim it” teachings I had often been warned about, I couldn’t deny what the Scriptures plainly said. So I followed Jesus’ example. Whenever I took authority over the pain in the Name of Jesus, it immediately left. Unfortunately, the effect seemed temporary. If God really wanted to heal me, why did the pain always return days or weeks later?

To this day, it’s difficult to give a definitive answer, though I can now testify to being completely healed. All I know is that I didn’t receive lasting healing until after I stopped seeing my chiropractor for good, a decision I never would have made on my own. I showed up at his office one day to learn that he had abruptly left the country. The chiropractor who shared his office offered to take me on as a patient, but he wasn’t in my provider network. Since I couldn’t afford to pay extra, I would have a find another chiropractor.

During the next several weeks, as I asked around about a good chiropractor, something dawned on me—I had been pain-free for over a month, without any chiropractic treatment or physical therapy. Normally, this would have been impossible. Had I been healed?

I began to sense the Holy Spirit telling me not to resume chiropractic care, so I obeyed. The longer I went without treatment, the better I felt. Occasionally, I’d have a slight twinge of pain, but I rebuked it in the Name of Jesus, declaring that by His stripes I was healed, and the pain left. I also had a major relapse at one point, but I refused to go back to the chiropractor. I was convinced it was God’s will to heal me, and He didn’t need a chiropractor to do so (though I realize that in many cases, God chooses to work through traditional, natural, and alternative medicine in delivering His people from physical affliction). I also began to view those back spasms as an attack from the enemy, not something I should be resigned to. Within a week or two, I was fine.

Today, I am completely free of pain. I can do things I never thought I’d be able to do again, though I’m careful not to push myself beyond the limits of common sense. I cannot say I followed a formula that is “guaranteed” to work for all believers, because each person and situation is unique. There were deeply personal issues related to my healing that I had to deal with as well.

The only thing I can say for sure is that God, in His great goodness and mercy, healed me. Divine healing is not about charismatic formulas or stirring up faith; it’s about the character of God and His heart to redeem every area of our lives. Healing—not pain and suffering—is His will for believers (though paradoxically, some of our deepest inner healings are often experienced in the furnace of affliction).

May we never forget that the most significant healing work God does in us is the healing of our hearts through the forgiveness of sin.

“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.
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:5-6).