How to Pray for Healing

This article explores how to pray for healing by unpacking timeless biblical principles and real-life examples of faith and surrender. While God still heals today—sometimes miraculously, sometimes through medicine—He also uses suffering to shape lives for His purpose. Readers are encouraged to pray in faith while trusting God’s greater plan.

Praying for healing is something people have been doing for centuries. There is evidence throughout the Old Testament that God has the power to heal and is pleased to do so. The New Testament is filled with passages recounting the miraculous healings Jesus did while walking here on this earth. God is still healing today, sometimes through medicine and sometimes miraculously through prayer.

Healings can be physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual in nature. There is no magical formula of how to pray for healing in a way that yields results, but there are biblical principles that are as true today as they were thousands of years ago.

Prophets of old believed in the healing power of God. In Jeremiah 17:14, the prophet Jeremiah spoke to the Lord with conviction as he said “Heal me and I shall be healed.” There was no question in his mind as to whether God was able to heal. He prayed with a child-like, matter-of-fact faith and expected God to answer him.

In Exodus 15:26 (NIV), the Lord told His people “He said, “If you listen carefully to the LORD your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD, who heals you.”

‘I am the Lord who heals you.’ What a powerful truth to stand on. God, who always speaks truth and remains the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is the God who heals you.

It is necessary to ponder the entire verse, to understand fully. God said if you listen carefully to God and do what is right in His eyes and keep his decrees (commandments and laws) He would pass by them and not bring the diseases to them. Although this was spoken centuries ago, the Biblical principles remain. We must love God and live holy lives and then pray in faith to believe for healing.

Healing Is a Response to Faith

James 5:15 tells us ‘The prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick and the Lord will raise him up and if he has committed sins, the Lord will restore him.”

Jesus asked the blind men if they believed he could heal. (Matthew 9:28) He responded to the woman who had the issue of bleeding for 12 years, and said “Go, your faith has made you well.” (Mark 5:34)

We should pray, expecting God to deliver a miracle. Just today, I read a Facebook post from a friend of mine who received miraculous healing in her knees this week. She couldn’t walk, was preparing for surgery and in constant pain. One day as she prayed, God answered and the pain disappeared. She was able to walk with no supports and continues to this very moment. Her surgery has been cancelled because she has been miraculously healed.

I have another friend battling cancer who is fighting the good fight of faith, is praying, and has thousands of others praying for her healing. Yet, the Lord God has not healed her and taken this disease from her body.

Why Doesn’t God Heal Everyone Who Prays in Faith?

That’s an often asked question. False teachers would say if you believe enough, if your faith is big enough-God will heal you. I’ve witnessed many people face discouragement and lose their faith in God, just because he has a different plan for their lives. Sometimes, God’s plan is to allow the natural things of this world, such as sickness and disease, teaching us lessons we would never otherwise learn.

Several people highlighted in the Bible faced similar circumstances and they were giants in the faith. They prayed for healing, yet our sovereign God had another plan. Paul had an unidentified ‘thorn in his flesh’ that plagued him constantly, and although he prayed for healing, God did not remove it. Job was a faithful servant and yet he suffered all manner of loss and sickness, during which time God molded and shaped him for the purposes for which he was created. Neither of these men lacked faith to believe God could heal them, but had to surrender their will to God’s. If you read accounts of their lives (and many others), they continued praising the Lord and doing the work of the ministry, despite their situations.

How Then Shall We Live?

If you are willing to surrender your will to God’s and allow him to teach you as you pray for healing, he will use you in the lives of others to bring hope and encouragement to others. If it be the will of God, as you pray for healing, he will heal you.

The model given to us is to pray in faith, believing that God has the power to heal and asking him to do so. At the same time, we must recognize that it is not always his plan to bring healing to our natural bodies. He does still love you and has a profound purpose for your life and for the pain and suffering you are going through.

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