First, we remember that God is healing people all the time. Second, we realize that the question isn’t actually whether God will heal our children but when. And third, we see that praying is about asking God to do now what he will certainly do then: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). It’s about staring into the furnace, like the three men in Daniel 3, and saying, “Our God is able to rescue us, O king, and he will. But even if he doesn’t, we’re still going to trust him” (Daniel 3:17–18).

Theological Reflection

At some point or other, every Christian with a disability is going to have to figure out how to think about physical healing. In our case, theological reflection on healing has been essential: we help lead a large charismatic church that sees dozens of people physically healed each year; I have talked about God’s healing power in at least three of my books; we both speak at conferences and churches where people get physically healed in response to prayer; and yet we also have two children with special needs who have not been healed, as well as many friends for whom that is also true. All this, in a very good way, has forced us to think carefully about the subject.

When it comes to physical healing, the extremes are relatively easy to see. We have the loony prosperity gospel preachers and their shallow messages of permanent health and wealth for everyone who follows Jesus. Then we have the starchy cynics who think that everyone who claims to have experienced divine healing is either lying or delusional. The first group acts as if God always heals today because the kingdom of God is entirely now; the second group acts as if God never heals today because the kingdom of God is entirely not yet. The biblical picture (to summarize a huge amount of theology in one sentence!) is that it is both now and not yet. We should expect both miracles and disappointments, physical healing and physical death, to form part of our experience until Jesus returns.

So far, so good. But even when people agree on those things, there can still be confusion. We have Tigger types, who bounce around insisting that God will always heal us if we just have enough certainty that he will, and we have Eeyore types, who mope around mumbling that disabilities are just part of the way things are and that asking God to heal us is a waste of time. Being a Winnie-the-Pooh type in the middle, believing that God wants to heal but trusting him when he doesn’t, can be exhausting. The Tigger types make you feel guilty; the Eeyore types make you feel grumpy. And you’re still the one with the disabled child.

So it has helped us to realize that, although we often talk as if there is only one type of divine healing, there are actually four, as far as we can tell. Most people instinctively prefer some to others, but they’re all there.

Type 1

A virus enters my body, and my white blood cells are launched into action like a rabid dog, hunting down the perpetrator to kill it. I cut my hand, and immediately a combination of clotting blood cells and replacement skin cells begin the patch-up job. Every second, as my heart beats, tiny bits of mineral and organic material are sent to parts of the body that need it, performing ongoing repairs that will never finish, like painting the Golden Gate bridge hour after hour, year after year.

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