Pip: If you've ever prayed hard for someone's healing and watched it not work, you probably didn't need a theology degree to feel the weight of that question — you just needed to survive it.

Mara: Today we're working through a post from Jim Holbeck that takes that question seriously: why are some people not healed after faithful prayer? It's honest, it's personal, and it draws on a wide range of scripture to hold the tension without collapsing it.

Pip: Let's start with what the Bible actually says — and what it doesn't.

Why Prayer for Healing Doesn't Always Look Like We Expect

Mara: The post opens with some of the most cited promises in healing ministry — Mark 11:24, James 5:15, 1 John 5:14 — and the honest admission that even people who acted on those promises with real faith sometimes received little healing, while others with apparently little faith were greatly blessed.

Pip: That asymmetry is the whole problem, isn't it. The promises are clear on the page. The outcomes are not.

Mara: And the post doesn't paper over it. It describes years of healing ministry, seminars on barriers to healing, and then this: "Sometimes it seemed that many who had recognised and, by God's grace, removed the barriers to healing, remained not fully healed."

Pip: Which is a remarkably honest thing to write when you've built a ministry around those promises.

Mara: It gets more personal. The post describes praying for Carole, his wife, through thyroid cancer, then breast cancer, then uterine cancer — joined by many others in prayer. The cancer spread. Doctors gave her three days. On the third day, leaving the hospital, he prayed over her and said, "Carole, if you want to go home to Jesus I will be ok. I love you." She passed two hours after he got home.

Pip: That's not a theological abstraction. That's the question with a name on it.

Mara: And the answer he arrived at was grounded in 2 Corinthians 5:8 — "Absent from the body. Present with the Lord." He writes that death and passing into the presence of Jesus is the ultimate healing.

Pip: Which reframes the whole framework — healing isn't absent, it's just not always the kind we were expecting in the room.

Mara: The post then works through six biblical reasons why healing may not occur as expected. God's sovereign purpose — Paul's thorn in the flesh, God answering "my grace is sufficient." Delayed healing tied to the resurrection. Sin as sometimes a factor, though never a blanket explanation. Unbelief, carefully handled so it isn't used to blame the unhealed. Suffering as a path to maturity. And God's answer simply being no rather than not yet.

Pip: The list is careful not to let any single reason become a weapon.

Mara: Exactly. The post is explicit: "Scripture does not teach that lack of healing automatically means a person has insufficient faith." It maps God's possible answers as yes — immediate, yes — gradual, wait, no with grace to endure, and ultimate healing through resurrection.

Mara: The closing turn is Job — recognising God's omnipotence while admitting his own understanding was insufficient. The post lands on Proverbs 3:5: "Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding."

Pip: Which is less a theological resolution than a posture. You don't get the answer. You get a way to stand when the answer doesn't come.

Mara: And for those who've prayed and felt let down, the post reframes the problem: our expectations may be at fault, not God's faithfulness. His expectations are based on his character, his will, his purposes — and those remain beyond full human comprehension.

Pip: Heavy territory. But handled with the kind of care that only comes from having actually lived inside the question.

Mara: The through-line here is holding two things at once — pray expectantly, submit humbly — without letting either one cancel the other.

Pip: Which is harder than it sounds, and probably why the question keeps coming back.