Prosperity gospel proponents have told me that if I had prayed in faith, my body would have been healed, my son would have been spared, and my marriage would have been restored. It was all up to me. If I just had the faith, I would have had a better outcome. Their words have left me bruised and disillusioned, but that theology is not the gospel. God’s response to our prayers is not dependent upon our worthiness but rather rests on his great mercy.

There is a great phrase many say: “God is good.“ That is certainly true and an appropriate thing to proclaim. However, many of us say it routinely only when life goes our way. “Traffic was easy today, I made all the lights, and I wasn’t late for work or class—God is good!” When we hear that God has healed someone, inevitably someone says, “God is good.“ True enough.

But when God chose not to answer our prayers for my wife Nanci‘s healing after 4 1/2 years of almost never missing our evening prayer time, does that mean God was, in our case, not good? Of course not. God is not only good when He does what we want, but also when He doesn’t do what we want. This is when people who lose their faith are right in losing it, because they are losing a faith that is not a true biblical faith.

As long as we hold on to vestiges of prosperity theology (which teaches that God will bless with material abundance and good health those who obey Him and lay claim to His promises), we set ourselves up to lose our faith, and perhaps ultimately to walk away from God. Because if God has to do what we want in order for us to be happy, then He is not our master but our servant.

I believe prosperity theology is from the pit of Hell. It confuses and misleads people about God and what He has and has not promised. When my friend Greg was dying when I was 16 years old and he was 18, I thought I knew beyond any shadow of doubt that God would heal Him. I claimed the reality of that healing, fully expecting it. When he died, I learned the painful lesson that we do not necessarily get our way when we pray.

It doesn’t mean God does not answer prayer; it doesn’t mean that God is not honored by our prayers. It certainly does mean that we need to be careful when we claim Christ has promised things, because when we proclaim false promises, we misrepresent Him, undermine His truths, and distort the reality of how He loves His people.

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