A dear friend of mine and our church died of cancer this week. She was (and is) a great woman of faith with an amazing family of faith. We all believed God for healing. She certainly believed God for healing. She, of course, has received ultimate healing in heaven but that is not what we prayed for. So what do we do when we stand on the scriptures, when we know others who have been healed, and when we believed God for healing but our loved one dies?

Often, our first thought is birthed by our disappointment. We may be disappointed in God or with ourselves. We may feel that God has let us down and didn’t keep his word or that somehow we weren’t enough or didn’t do enough to merit God’s healing for the one we had been praying for so earnestly. I know in moments like these I often default to those feelings and thoughts. It’s very human to do so but not very beneficial nor does it reflect the mind of Christ.

If no one was ever healed of cancer or if we believe that God does not heal today then we would simply write it off as something God doesn’t do. We would simply accept the individual’s death as inevitable and pray for a peaceful passing. But when we have seen people healed or, at least, believe that healing is still for today, we are left not only with the loss but also with a myriad of questions. Often those moments create a crisis of faith.

In the midst of loss, they’re a few things that I hang on to. First of all, I need to stand on what I do know rather than bowing to what I don’t know. I know that God is love. I know that he is good. I know that he is compassionate. I know that he is eternal and unchanging. I know that he is present because he has said he will never leave us or forsake us and, in fact, lives within us.

Whatever my questions are that may go unanswered I must frame my conclusions with the things I do know about the nature of God. If you wonder about who the Father is or what he is like you can look at Jesus. Jesus told Philip that if we have seen him, then we have seen the Father. In this life, believers must be willing to live with some mystery about God’s decisions, answered prayers, seemingly unanswered prayers, why some are healed and some aren’t, etc. God has an eternal perspective that we rarely have. Ultimately, our reward is heaven. As Christians we profess that we long to be in the presence of God. We profess that we are restless as we wait for the return of Jesus. We declare that all we want is to enter his presence and hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” And yet, when a loved one crosses the finish line earlier than we anticipated, we are often upset with God.

There comes a time when we must trust his goodness and his grace and even his judgment over our own. The hard part is navigating the waters of loss when we have believed God for healing without taking offense at God or ourselves. We sometime assume that the loss of our loved one was punishment for something we did or didn’t do. There are times when illness is a result of unrepented sin on the part of the one who is ill but repentance opens up the pathway for healing again. In addition, a scan of the gospels reveals that healing was always about grace rather than merit anyway. Jesus healed some godly people but he also healed many ungodly people. He healed some with great faith and some who had no idea who he was. At times he healed every person in the crowd but at the Pool of Bethsaida he healed only one. Our reasoning finds it hard to explain God’s choices and so faith trusts his nature and his character and believes that all of his choices are grounded in love and compassion. We then give thanks for the time we had with the person we are grieving for and trust God for the future. There are simply some things we don’t know.

The truth is that, as believers, we will see that person again if he or she was also in Christ. For them, the separation will only feel like minutes. Not only that but our loved one is now immersed in perfect health and indescribable joy. We grieve for ourselves and if we let him, God will fill the void with his love and with the love of others he has placed in our lives for moments like this.

As the saying goes, “No one gets out of this world alive…unless the Lord returns.” Death was not God’s doing. Adam and Eve chose it when they chose rebellion. It is now a part of every life and we must trust God with it. The contemporary church is just beginning to embrace the reality of healing again and there is much we still don’t understand.

So again, we need to stand on what we do know rather than bowing to what we don’t know. God has a heart for healing. It is his nature for he said, “I am the God who heals you.” If healing were not in his heart, he would not have given gifts of healing to the church nor would Jesus have made that a touchstone of his ministry. So why are so many not healed? I think the problem is on our end, not his and so we must continue to pray for healing while we learn more of God’s ways regarding that.

The loss of a loved one to sickness can have two effects. We may become discouraged and decide that God does not answer our prayers for healing and so we never ask again or we can determine to press in harder for more faith, greater understanding, and the biblical standard of healing. I have determined to go with the second option and I hope you will too. I have seen many healed. I have also seen many godly people who were not healed. But I am also confident that we will continue to see an increase in healing in the church in the days ahead and an increase in the expectation of healing until we are perplexed when someone is not healed rather than being surprised when they are. Be blessed in him to day and if you are in need of his grace may the God of all comfort and compassion, comfort you in all of your troubles (2 Cor. 1:3-4).