I needed a healing. I had several “medical conditions” in my physical body that manifested in a string of strange ways. The root of it was a whacked out sympathetic nervous system that caused my heart to beat too fast and my blood pressure to rise up to the point that I would become too dizzy to stand. I was taking medications for this “condition” for which there was no cure, and the medications, of course, caused more unwanted symptoms. I needed a healing.
When I got saved, someone told me God could heal people. They told me testimonies of seeing limbs grow out of stubs, blind eyes opening, and other miraculous works. They told me of ministers like Benny Hinn and Oral Roberts. They told me healing is for today. I decided to give it a try. (That was my first mistake. You don’t give God’s Word your best shot. You give it your whole heart.)
I asked God to heal me. Nothing happened. I went to the church to have the elders lay hands on me. Nothing happened. I drove 300 miles to attend a Benny Hinn conference, determined to get my healing. Nothing happened. (Determination alone won’t deliver results. You have to believe from your heart and speak with your mouth over and over again.)
I needed a healing, but all I wound up with was disappointment and that disappointment led me into the death grips of doubt. The devil really had a heyday in my mind. He filled my head with all sorts of doubt; doubts about the truth of healing for today, doubts about God’s ability to heal this rare “condition,” even doubts about my own salvation. Once you entertain one doubt, you invite a ballroom with guests like uncertainty, misgivings, qualms, distrust, suspicion, skepticism and, of course, unbelief. It’s time to crash the party with your faith and send those rascals home so you can see God move in your life.
Breaking Doubt’s Vicious Cycle
My healing testimony is one example of how the doubting devil sets us up: If you’ve been praying for the same thing for years and you haven’t received an answer, or if your prayer-answer-track-record is poor, then it gets harder and harder to believe that God wants to answer you the next time you pray. The devil introduces doubtful disputations to your mind. It becomes a vicious cycle that only faith can break.
As F.F. Bosworth said, ‘believe your beliefs and not your doubts.’ But make sure you’re believing God’s Word without wavering. There have been mountains of books written on mountain-moving faith. We won’t review all those truths here. What I want you to see in this section is why your prayers ultimately go unanswered.
Assuming you are asking (the Bible says you have not because you ask not) and assuming you aren’t asking so you can consume it upon your lusts, and assuming you are praying in line with God’s will, the reason you are not getting prayer answers is because you are believing your doubts instead of believing your beliefs. You are believing the circumstances instead of believing the Word of God. You are believing what you see with your eyes rather than what you hear by the Word.
Maybe you don’t even know what the Word says about your situation, so you don’t have a Scripture to hang your faith on in prayer. If we pray according to God’s will, we know that He hears us and we can believe that He will answer us (1 John 5:14-15). Doubt comes in when we aren’t sure what the will of God is.
Your prayers aren’t getting answered because you are wavering from faith to doubt to unbelief to fear to faith to doubt to unbelief to fear – it’s that vicious cycle we talked about earlier. It can only be broken by unwavering faith. Faith that refuses to doubt God’s Word no matter what your physical body or your soul screams. What forces the devil to flee? Faith that arises from your spirit because you’ve sowed the Word in your heart and spoken it out of your mouth with conviction.
“If any of you is deficient in wisdom, let him ask of the giving God [Who gives] to everyone liberally and ungrudgingly, without reproaching or faultfinding, and it will be given him. Only it must be in faith that he asks with no wavering (no hesitating, no doubting). For the one who wavers (hesitates, doubts) is like the billowing surge out at sea that is blown hither and thither and tossed by the wind. For truly, let not such a person imagine that he will receive anything [he asks for] from the Lord.” (James 1:5-7 AMP)
I like this verse. You could put any Bible promise in place of the word “wisdom” in that verse and it would still ring true. If any of you lack – provision. If any of you lack – healing. If any of you lack – peace. If any of you lack – whatever you lack God is willing to provide all of your needs according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. But He doesn’t respond to your needs. And He certainly doesn’t respond to your doubts. He responds to your unwavering faith. The storms will come, but they won’t blow you hither and thither if your faith is unwavering.
If you don’t doubt God’s Word in whatever storm you find yourself in, you can simply cast the care, take care of your responsibility in the matter, and take a nap like Jesus did (Matthew 8:23-27).
Doubt Will Destroy Your Prayer Life
The Apostle Paul used doubt and wrath in the same breath when he gave his spiritual son Timothy instructions for godly behavior. “I desire therefore that in every place men should pray, without anger or quarreling or resentment or doubt [in their minds], lifting up holy hands” (1 Timothy 2:5-9 AMP). Resentment, quarrelling and anger will hinder your prayer life – but doubt will destroy it.
You don’t have to take my word for it, but you do have to take the Word for it. Jesus said, “Whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith” (Mark 11:23).
Would it be fair, then, to read it this way?: Whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; but shall doubt in his heart, and not believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall not have whatsoever he saith. Indeed, it is fair. That’s the message Jesus is trying to get across. You’ve got to believe you’ve got it before you get it. But if you doubt you’ve got it – if you’re like Doubting Thomas and demand to see it before you believe it – you’ll never get it.
It’s been said that doubt makes the mountain that faith can move. But why create a mountain of doubt to begin with? Doubts will come, but why use it as evidence to build a case against the Word of God? Faith is the evidence of things hoped for, and your expectation shall not be cut off (Proverbs 23:18). If you believe you receive and refuse to back down from what the Word says, you will see the promise manifest.
I finally did receive my healing. Do you want to know how? It wasn’t in a prayer line; it wasn’t by calling the elders to anoint me with oil and pray for me. There’s nothing wrong with having a point of contact with God and I encourage the laying on of hands. But that’s not how I got my healing. It wasn’t from a conference. It wasn’t from a TV show.
I got my healing by meditating on what the Word of God says about healing. By confessing healing Scriptures out of my very own mouth. By praying in the Spirit to build up my most holy faith. By pleading the blood of Jesus. By thanking God that His Word is true. By faith and patience. And, at the same time, by casting down imaginations when symptoms would arise. By binding up those symptoms in the name of Jesus. By resisting the devil. By fighting the power of doubt and unbelief until the devil got so tired of hearing the truth come out of my mouth that he fled seven ways. Ha! You can do the same.
Build up your faith in whatever area you are believing for before you pray. Get that truth in you solidly before you release your prayer. Then stand on His Word and defy doubt. Whatever things you ask for in prayer, believing, you will receive (Matthew 21:22).
