Can People Lose Their Healing?
This is part of an interview I did with S.J. Heald for Heaven Connect. The entire interview can be found here.
SJH:
Can people lose their healing? If so, why?
Praying Medic:
There are two situations I can think of where people might lose their healing after they have been healed. In many cases the return of symptoms after healing is evidence that a little more warfare needs to be done. I had a chance a couple of years ago to help my sister in law obtain healing for an occluded artery in her leg. She had poor circulation in her leg for years and her foot was always cold and numb. Her doctor considered placing a stent in the artery to keep it open. One day, I asked if she wanted to be healed and she said “yes.” I commanded the artery to be open and the circulation to return. She didn’t feel anything different until the next morning, when she woke up with a warm foot that had normal sensation and circulation. Later that day, her foot became cold and numb and she thought she had lost her healing. With a worried heart she asked me what happened. This is a classic case of how sometimes our symptoms will return after we are healed.
I sat her down and explained that healing and sickness are a battle between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness. I told her that God wants us to be healed and the enemy wants us to be sick. She immediately understood. I explained that the enemy brought the symptoms back to convince her she wasn’t healed and that we needed to do some more warfare. I commanded her leg to be healed again and in a few minutes the circulation returned. I told her that all she needed to do was to resist the enemy’s tactics if it happened again. With a smile of understanding she confidently maintained her healing and she’s had normal circulation since that day.
Some diseases and painful conditions are spiritual in nature and the return of the symptoms indicates a return of the spirit and a need to find out why it returned. The bible gives examples of people who had physical symptoms with spiritual causes (see Luke 13:10-13 as an example.) In such cases the spirit must be removed before the symptoms will leave. But when a spirit of pain or sickness returns, it’s often because it has a home in the person (See Luke 11: 21-26.) The key to preventing the return of the spirit and a return of the symptoms it causes is to remove the demonic home.
Demonic homes are created by things we believe about God, about ourselves or about others that are not true, or by sinful behaviors and attitudes that we allow in our hearts. These things give spirits opportunities to exert their influence over us. If you believe for example, that God the Father cannot be trusted, because your father abused or neglected you, the mistrust you have in your heart toward God the Father will allow an orphan spirit to influence your thinking. It will continually remind you that God the Father is like the abusive Father of your childhood and that He can’t be trusted. Many people live their entire lives under the influence of such spirits. Evil spirits only have influence over us to the degree that we permit them, and most of what we allow them to do to us is permitted because of what we believe. A slightly different way in which spirits can affect us is through sinful attitudes we have. Allow me to illustrate with one of my own experiences:
I had been seeking permanent healing for chronic neck pain for a long time. I received prayer a number of times and the pain would always leave temporarily, only to return a few days later. One day, a woman praying for me asked if I had anger toward anyone. God showed me in a vision, a person I had been angry with for a long time. I knew that I needed to let go of the anger I had toward them. When I released the anger to God, the pain in my neck immediately left and never returned.
I allowed a demonic home to be created by my anger. When people prayed for my healing, the spirit would leave but it always returned because its home was still there. Identifying wrong views, attitudes and behaviors and renewing our mind to the truth about them (repenting) removes demonic homes. Once this is done, and the spirit no longer has a home, it can be removed and the symptoms usually will not return.
Related: Keeping Our Healing
Love it great info explains why some I work with don’t stay healed
Thanks for explaining this so well. I’d heard of different reasons why one would lose their healing. In all, the blame lay with the one who had received the healing for not continuing to believe that God had healed them. That places a lot of guilt on a person. When we start speaking of spirits causing the illness and wanting to return home to where they were cast out, that makes a lot of sense. The healed person, also, has a role to play in believing that God healed them and that their healing will remain. Also, one is not to go side with the devil in any areas. That opens doors to letting demons in. This isn’t to scare anyone for greater is He that is in us that he that is in the world. We have the victory! Thanks for sharing.
Anyone who does not have a foundation of the word of God about healing, or their salvation, will not be able to maintain a healing very long after they receive it.
Wow thank you Praying Medic this hits home with me.. I had, had many demonic deliverances over the years and recently, commanding them to leave, my nervous system and other places that C F S / FIBROMYALGIA/ BRAIN DAMAGE, etc would afflict,. to go in Jesus’s name, [I laid hands on various places, on my body], then suddenly, my hands started twitching,for awhile.I prayed and Father God and after awhile I had thoughts go through my mind, abandonement, Orphan…so this makes sense as to why satan wants to continually afflict me. I was delivered from a spirit of Imfirmity, but symptoms didn’t seem to go.NOW THE LIGHT IS ON ABOUT WHY THIS IS HAPPENING. I had been very badly mistreated all my life, abandoned, yes felt like an orphan….Well there is much more but GOD has it! I’m positive about this and understand more.. PRAISE THE LORD and you and everyone for their input..TO GOD BE THE GLORY ALLWAYS! Value continual prayer too , nbt know you have so many people to pry for, Thank you GOD BLESS YOU and YOURS….Patricia [Trish ] Hale.
Albert Barnes’s Commentary on Matt 12:-43-45:
This shows the scope and design of this illustration. The state of that man was a representation of that generation of people. Much might be done to cure their unbelief, much to reform them externally; but such was the firm hold which the principles of infidelity and wickedness had taken of their minds “as their proper habitation,” that they would return, after all the means used to reform them, and they would be worse and worse. And this was literally accomplished. After all the instructions and miracles of the Saviour and his apostles; after all that had been done for them by holy people and prophets, and by the judgments and mercies of God; and after all their external temporary reformations – like the temporary departure of an evil spirit from a man possessed – yet such was their love of wickedness that the nation became worse and worse. They increased in crime, like the seven-fold misery and wretchedness of the man into whose bosom the seven additional evil spirits came. They rejected God’s messengers, abused his mercies, crucified his Son, and God gave their temple, and capital, and nation into the hands of the Romans. and thousands of the people to destruction.
It is not “proved” by this passage that evil spirits actually “dwell” in deserts It is proved only that such was the opinion of the Jews; that that opinion was drawn from some expressions in the Bible; and that “such expressions were sufficiently clear to justify the Saviour in drawing an argument from them to confound those who firmly believed that such was the case.” Nor is there any absurdity in the opinion; for,
1. There are evil spirits. See the notes at Mat_8:33.
2. They must exist in “some place.”
3. There is as much propriety that they should be located about our earth as anywhere.
4. The clear doctrine of the Bible is, that many of them have much to do with our world.
5. It is as reasonable that they should dwell commonly in desolate and uninhabited regions as anywhere else.