Will God heal me if I have enough faith?

Have you ever prayed—really prayed—only to find that… nothing happened? Maybe it’s an illness, maybe it’s a loved one’s suffering. And then, maybe someone, however well-meaning, said something like:

"If you just had enough faith, you’d be healed."

And perhaps now you’re wondering: Maybe my lack of healing is a sign that my faith isn’t strong enough? After all, didn’t Jesus Himself said things like, “Your faith has made you well.”?

So, ‘Will God heal me if I have enough faith?’

I want to approach this carefully because for many of us, this isn’t just a theological question—it’s deeply personal. It’s the cry of a weary heart, and it deserves more than a generic answer. Now, I obviously don’t know who’s watching this or what you’re going through, but rather than offering a one-size-fits-all response, what I want to do is just walk through a few things that Scripture says about this for you to consider in light of your own personal situation.

First, sickness is a symptom of a broken world, not necessarily a lack of faith

The Bible is clear: We live in a world that is groaning. Romans 8 tells us that all of creation groans under the weight of sin, longing for redemption.

Now, when Christians talk about the world groaning under the “weight of sin,” what do we mean?

Well, sin is not some floating, dark mist that pervades the universe, like the Force in Star Wars. It’s not an invisible toxin that randomly infects people. At its core, sin is separation from God—the Creator of the world. It is choosing to live apart from Him and outside of His design for how we were meant to live.

Think of it like an electrical appliance. It was designed for a specific purpose and must remain connected to its power source to function properly. If it is unplugged, and used, say, a toy to be thrown around in the back yard, it not only won’t work as intended, but it will likely break apart and become unusable.

In the same way, if God is life, then living apart from Him leads to death. That is why the Bible talks about death as the ‘wage’ or consequence of sin—it’s the logical dead end of living apart from God. And it explains why we experience sickness, disease, and suffering; even just the anxiety that comes with worrying about it all—the deep uneasiness about the fragility of life that Hebrews 2 describes. Deep down, we all sense that something is not as it should be.

Now, to be clear, sometimes suffering has an obvious cause.

• If I drink poison, I will get sick.

• If I make reckless life choices, there will be consequences.

But often, sickness comes without explanation. And when that happens, we need to heed the words of Jesus in passages like Luke 13. A tower falls killing a number of people; a seemingly ‘natural disaster’ or what we might hear on the news as an ‘act of God’, and Jesus’ friends ask Him: “Were those who died more sinful than anyone else?” Jesus’ answer? No. Suffering does not necessarily discriminate in a world like ours. It is just a part of the world in which we live.

Hence this first point, that Sickness is a symptom of a broken world, not necessarily a lack of faith.

And that is why we, as Christians—especially preachers and teachers—must be extremely careful before rushing to assign blame when calamity strikes.

But that still leaves us with a question: If God can heal, why doesn’t He always do it?

Second, God is more interested in your eternal healing than your temporary comfort

This is a hard truth, but it’s an important one. Nowhere in Scripture does God promise that believers will be free from sickness and suffering in this life. In fact, the opposite is true—Jesus tells us that in this world, we will have trouble (John 16:33).

And yet, God does heal. We see it all throughout Scripture. Miracles happen. But what we also see—perhaps more surprisingly—is that even when healing could happen, Jesus prioritizes something deeper.

Consider Mark 1. Jesus is healing the masses from dawn to dusk, and he’s exhausted by the end of the day. The next day comes, he gets up early in the dark to pray. His disciples find him and say ‘hey, Jesus, everyone is looking for you’—like, all these sick people are just flowing in from all over the place to get healed… But what Jesus says next is stunning… He says ‘let’s go to the next town that I may preach there also for that is why I have come…’

Now, think about that. If physical healing was the ultimate goal, why didn’t Jesus stay? The simple answer from Mark 1 is that Jesus came for something greater than just physical healing. Clearly He was interested in physical health, but not just for the sake of it. There is something DEEPER here tied to the message Jesus came to preach.

And here’s that deeper reality. The reason physical healing was not Jesus’ end during the first century is because even those he healed would one day still suffer and die. Every blind person who received sight, every lame person who walked, every leper who was cleansed—every daughter of Jairus or brother of Mary and Martha who was raised from the dead—would eventually return to the grave.

But the deeper message Jesus came to preach, is how people can arise from that grave unto life everlasting.

In the end, the greatest healing is not freedom from sickness, but freedom from sin—and that is the miracle Christ guarantees. Salvation in Jesus is the key to understanding many of the passage we read in the New Testament about faith and healing. Take James 5, for example, which says “the prayer of faith will save the sick.” On first reading, that sounds like a guaranteed miracle. But the Greek word for “save” here is sozo—a word often used for salvation. The promise here is not just physical restoration, but spiritual redemption, which, oh by the way, does include a physical restoration when Jesus returns!

So let’s reframe the question:

• Does God heal? Yes.

• Does He always heal in this life? No.

• But will He ultimately heal His people at the resurrection from the dead? Absolutely. As sure as He walked out the grave, we can be confident of this.

And that should change the way we think and pray about our sickness and suffering.

Third, suffering is not a sign of God’s absence—often, it is the very thing that draws us closer to Him

One of the most insidious lies in certain corners of Christianity is the idea that faith is like a formula:

"If I have enough faith, God will do X."

That’s not Christianity. That’s a transactional religion. And it’s a false gospel.

Think about it: What makes the message of Jesus “good news”?

That He has paid it all. That He is sufficient. That His grace is enough.

But what does this prosperity-gospel formula teach instead? That you need to contribute something. That your faith level determines God’s willingness to act. That you must believe hard enough to receive healing. This is not just false—it’s dangerous. Because it shifts the burden from Christ to you.

I mean, look at Paul. Here’s a man who had more faith than most of us could ever dream of having. And yet, in 2 Corinthians 12, he speaks of a thorn in his flesh—some kind of persistent suffering—that he pleaded with God to remove. And what did God say? "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."

Paul wasn’t healed by grace. But Paul was held by it. And sometimes, that is the greater miracle. That’s what’s so amazing about grace. That is the greater miracle, the revelation of God in and through our suffering.

Christian faithfulness is no shield against suffering—if anything, it is the banner we carry through it. To follow Christ is not to walk an untrodden path of ease, but to tread the well-worn road of saints and martyrs, trusting God not in the absence of suffering, but precisely through it—knowing that He refines, sustains, and leads us closer to Him in the very midst of our trials. These things happen in life so that the redemptive work of God might be displayed in the life of a believer—transforming suffering into a testimony of His sustaining grace.

Is that not the testimony of Jesus? Who for the joy set before Him ENDURED the suffering of the cross, scorning its shame. Are we greater than our Lord? To ask ‘Why does God allow suffering?’ is to forget that God Himself did not avoid it.

Christians do not have faith in our own faith—because that shifts the focus onto ourselves. We have faith in Jesus. And that faith—whether as towering as a mountain or as small as a mustard seed—is enough. Not because of its size, but because of who it is placed in.

And when our eyes are fixed on Jesus—the author and perfector of our faith, the one who begins and completes, who calls and sustains, who wounds and heals—it is enough. Because faith is not the power to bend God to our will—it is the trust to rest in His. That is what will empower us to get up tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, running with perseverance, because we do not run toward victory; we run from victory—Christ has already conquered the grave!

So, does God heal? Yes.

Will God heal me if I have enough faith? That’s the wrong question, because healing is not about the amount of faith—it’s about the object of our faith.

If our hope is only in this life, we will cling to comfort like a man drowning at sea—but if our hope is in Christ, we will walk on the waters of suffering knowing that the golden shore is certain and in the meantime, He will not let us sink.

So, if you’re suffering today, I want to encourage you: hold on to Him, because He is holding on to you. God’s love for you is not measured by the length or comfort you experience in this life—but by the world changing reality that God so loved the world that He sent His one and only Son to die on a cross, so that we who believe in Him might receive life everlasting.