For most of us, the desired result of getting healed is simply to feel better, to get out of a particular situation, to solve a problem or fix a relationship. Fortunately getting healed has a much greater effect on our entire being. As we get healed in our soul (our mind, will and emotions), our body is relieved of much of its physical stress. Likewise, as we get healed in our physical bodies, our soul is freed from the distractions of pain. But since our spirit does not receive healing, since it is not wounded, is our spirit affected when our soul and body are healed? Absolutely! Because it is through the soul and the body that the spirit expresses itself. God’s true nature is to give, and since we now also have that nature, our true nature is also to give. As our soul and our body are healed, both God and our spiritual selves are freed to be true to their giving nature.

Here are some other beneficial results of getting healed:

Getting healed results in being made whole emotionally. This is a gradual process that will take many of us by surprise. Being whole in our emotions does not mean we will always feel good or happy, or even that we’ll feel anything at all. In fact, getting healed in our emotions means we will not be dependent on how we are feeling to determine how we are doing, if we are loved, if we are accepted, or if we are valued. Getting healed in our emotions will result in the flow of God’s life not being hindered by our emotions, even as we as individuals learn to appreciate and enjoy our emotions according to the temperament God has given us.

Getting healed results in a yielded will. As we are healed our will becomes freed from flesh and we learn how to join our will to God’s, taking on His desires as our own, learning to want what He wants not because we understand or feel like it, but simply because He wants it. Healing for our will frees us to choose His way; it is not until our will is healed—released to have the strengths or weaknesses God created our particular will to have—that we can have a free will. As we grow in dependence, we grow in the freedom and responsibility to the point where God even let’s us choose for ourselves, confident that because we have His nature, we have His motives, and will choose them for ourselves.

Getting healed results in our mind being renewed to Truth. Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. This Truth isn’t “right doctrine” as opposed to “wrong doctrine,” but is a description of the character of God, a character and identity we now share. Truth is the reality and substance of the existence and nature of God Himself. As our mind is healed, we not only come to know and understand things about God, we are made able to experience His mind, His thoughts, His ways. Our mind is also renewed to the Truth about ourselves; as we are healed, we more and more can acknowledge the overarching plan of God concerning His purposes and plans for us as individuals and for this world and the eons. Our healed, freed mind is then able to receive and give His thoughts, which are Creative Life. We are also more and more able to appreciate and enjoy the unique characteristics God created in our own personal mind.

Getting healed results in satisfaction and contentment. As we are healed, we not only agree that God is everything, but that He is enough. We become content to the degree that if our circumstances never changed, that would be okay. If the promises that He has made were never fulfilled, that would be okay. If we never felt His presence again, that would be okay. As we are healed we realize that ministry, relationships, even supernatural experiences do not satisfy. Only knowing God through dependence fills our needs, which is why Jesus Himself could say, “My meat is to do the will of Him who sent me.” As we are healed we are satisfied with the freedom to work, and the contentment of His rest to enjoy that freedom.

Getting healed results in loving ourselves now, despite our actions. Getting healed makes us able to receive love from God on His terms—unconditionally. Since God’s nature and our identity are love itself, whether or not our behavior reflects our identity we can experience and share love. So even if we don’t feel loving, or feel loved, we know we are loved because we have experienced His true nature and have been freed to live and love according to our nature.

Getting healed results in being able to accept ourselves now, despite our failures and flaws. As we are healed we begin to see things from God’s perspective, that this life is a learning adventure, and that we are not judged according to how much we accomplish for Him, glorify Him, or even reflect His nature, but we were judged 2000 years ago, and found righteous in Jesus. As co-inheritors with Jesus, we are already sons of God, learning to rule and reign, first over our soul and body, then over whatever environment God chooses to place us in, at whatever time and place.

Getting healed results in valuing ourselves now, despite what the world says, based on what God says and the high price He paid for us. We learn to distinguish between the arrogance and pride of our unhealed soul, whose only goal is to control, and the rightful acknowledgment of the glory of who God has created us to be, in out-of-control dependence on Him for life itself. Our value doesn’t depend on what we have accomplished in the past or what we may accomplish in the future, but on the intrinsically valuable asset God considers us to be.

Getting healed results in confidence in His love for us. One of the major benefits of going through the healing process is gaining true confidence in God’s commitment to His plans for us. He is committed to our wholeness, and as we build a relationship with Him over time we come to not only believe but to know by experience that He will never leave or forsake us, and that He is loving, kind, good, and reliable. Confidence in His love for us in turn frees us to confidently and graciously love others.

Getting healed results in change in behavior and language. As we are healed, we venture into the rest of our lives learning that every opportunity, every circumstance has been arranged to reveal a place where we have a need for healing, a place where we need to depend on God. As our beliefs change, so does our behavior and language, how we face stress, plan for the future, treat ourselves and others, and how we engage the world system. We learn to be in the world, but not of it, when and how to love, and how to overcome the devil and our flesh.

Getting healed results in freedom from control. As we are healed, we overcome the control that comes from our flesh, our family, our past, present, or future. We are free to obey the Lord, love and be loved, and enjoy true intimacy with the Lord, whether we experience a particular feeling or not. We are experientially freed from sin’s control as we learn to live according to the law of love, which fulfilled the law of sin and death 2000 years ago. Our captivity is turned into freedom and wholeness, and we learn to live as new creatures.

Getting healed also prevents control from regaining a stronghold in our lives. When we’re healed the devil cannot find a chink in our armor, so he has no legal avenue into our life. Since we live and move and have our being in the spirit, we no longer need the flesh to give us control or make us feel better. And because we now see things from God’s perspective and have all our needs met in Him, the world system has only a circumstantial effect on our lives. Because we have received His life, we are no longer vulnerable to control by the world, the flesh or the devil.

Getting healed results in resting in His labors. As we are healed, we are also learning to let Jesus work in us and through us. The job of the branch is to simply stay connected and receive its life from the vine. The branch produces the character of the life that flows through it, after first receiving life for itself. The branch doesn’t produce the fruit, it only bears it. Yet every fiber of the branch is involved in the fruit-bearing. So in the fullness of time, we experience that restful balance of being fully involved in working while being perfectly at rest. This includes being an active participant in what God is doing both in our own lives and in this world as we enjoy and express His life, victory and freedom.

Getting healed results in quietness. Quietness is enjoying being ourselves in Him and with Him. As we are healed we will not only seek out a quiet atmosphere in which to dwell, but we will also become quiet, having had our thoughts, decisions and emotions quieted by our spirit. Our words become fewer, our activities, even our relationships become simpler as every part of us becomes more available to the Lord. This quietness is a strength that the Lord can use to still the storm in others, so don’t anticipate that this quietness will keep us out of the chaos, but more likely, we’ll be sent into it. Where are the peacemakers needed most? In the midst of the war!

Getting healed results in bringing healing to others. Part of the process of receiving healing is learning how to join God in extending it to others. To know Him intimately is to be secure, peaceful, strong, confident, patient, courageous, etc., not just to have security, peace, strength, etc. God uses us to be a sustaining word to those that are weary, teaching by example how to go to the Father. If we have not been healed, if we don’t have the confidence in Who God is based on personal experience, we really have no business going to anybody else and praying for them to be healed. We need to be the first partakers. Our faith in God’s healing needs to be by firsthand experience. Once we’ve experienced it, because of our giving nature, we will want to bring others to the Healer as well.

Getting healed results in our investing our inheritance as sons of God. The more we experience healing, the more of God’s life is flowing to and through us. Part of that life is the desire to carry out His purposes on this earth. He chooses how He works through each one of us, yet in every circumstance He is also teaching us to grow up into the full stature as His Son Jesus learned while He walked this earth. Though the task of redemption has been completed, each of us has a project (or projects) God wants us to be working on while we are here. Not because He needs us to do it, but because part of our dependence training is learning how to wisely steward our inheritance, the Kingdom.

Getting healed in one area encourages us to persevere and desire more healing. As discussed elsewhere, God uses our need for healing to get our attention in order to draw us into dependence on Him. But God is not a tease; He doesn’t draw our attention to a need or a wound without having the fulfillment or healing ready according to His timing. So the desire and need for healing is one of the ways God teaches us perseverance, part of which is learning to overcome the fear of making mistakes or wasting time.

Getting healed results in intimacy with God. This relationship is unlike anything we have experienced, so it is hard for us to comprehend. Suffice it to say that all the work that it takes to learn to depend on Him for healing is worth it.

On a practical note, learning to go to the Lord to get healed also frees up the time of those within the body who have a specific skill or gift so they can minister and help those who have not yet learned how to go to the Lord for healing.

The Challenges of Getting Healed

As with most things in this life, getting healed through dependence on God brings not only benefits but challenges as well. Nobody likes the stress that comes from change, yet it is being changed that keeps us dependent on God, and provides this life with its adventure.

Getting healed challenges us through change. As we are healed, we are changed on many levels. Very often the way we relate to people, our selves, our past and our future is changed. Even our beliefs change. This often causes stress. There’s the old saying: “Misery loves company.” If we have been miserable, to whatever degree, people have gotten used to us behaving that way. It will take time for people to treat us differently and for our beliefs to line up. Some people will not want us to change, and decisions will have to be made accordingly.

Getting healed challenges us to submit to the authority of God. One of the beliefs that will likely be challenged regards who has authority in our lives. When we begin to be healed God begins to exercise His authority on all levels, spiritual, soulical and natural, and brings us out from under the authority and control of others. People who have been getting their needs met through controlling others will react, sometimes quite strongly, when healing begins to bring confidence and dependence to those they could once manipulate. This was what upset the Pharisees so much about Jesus; because He had confidence in Who He was (and is) and what His Father thought about Him, He was not vulnerable to the religious manipulation used by church leaders and was in turn an example to others.

Getting healed challenges us to become needy and out of control. The more healed we get, the more we recognize and experience our need for God. The more dependent we become, the less control our soul (mind, will and emotions) has over its environment. As we are healed, we become less and less under the influence of our own thoughts, decisions, and emotions. This will at times feel and look like being out of control, though we are actually coming under the greatest spiritual discipline, the strictest control of our spirit. This too will bring separation from both the world system and other believers that haven’t experienced this freedom.

Getting healed challenges us to freedom, which entails responsibility to grow up in our soul and body into sons and joint-heirs. We can no longer get away with letting our mind think what it wants, letting our emotions dictate our actions, or making decisions based on our own assessment—this is where God’s discipline comes in. His ways are not soulical, and as we learn to walk by the spirit, by His freedom, we will also learn the discipline and responsibility that comes with it. We learn to walk in wholeness (“I am a spirit, I have a soul, I live in a body”) in total dependence on Christ.

Getting healed challenges us to change our standards. As we are healed, we learn to recognize the Lord’s voice and His way of doing things. What excites many in the church today—a supernatural experience, a word of prophecy or an angelic visitation—will be objectively evaluated by those who have learned by experience to distinguish the still small voice of truth, uninfluenced by emotional pleas or creative marketing campaigns and undistracted by that which may impress others.

Getting healed challenges our patience, something we find particularly hard to desire. Learning to live as healed, whole persons takes time, especially taking into account that some of the generational wounds we will be coming up against have been passed down from Adam. But Jesus can undo them all in an instant if He chooses, so our attitude is one of persistence and patience.

Getting healed challenges us to vulnerability toward God and toward others. As whole persons we are willing to be wounded and rejected, even in the same way, by the same person, if God so desires. Many of us have been taught that our main goals in life are to protect ourselves from being hurt and to keep from making mistakes. But this is not God’s way. Jesus was the ultimate example of being willing to be wounded because the Father asked Him to, and since He “learned” obedience, He also made mistakes as part of the process. Remember, He was in all ways tempted as we are, including being tempted to discouragement and self-blame because of failures during the learning process. But as we learn to depend on God for His life, we become “tender hearted yet thick skinned,” remembering that the church was never meant to be a sanctuary from the world.

Getting healed challenges us to be willing to go into any battle, with Him. When He was on this earth, Jesus overcame both the world and the devil. Then why are we still struggling with them? Because it is through the battle that we become overcomers. Settle it, then, that part of the healing process will be a struggle and warfare, so that we can learn to depend on Jesus for training, strategy, strength, and leadership.

Getting healed challenges us to give to God our past, our present, and our future, abdicating all of our rights to control what He does in, to and through us. When we let God do what He wants, He does whatever is needed—in us and in others—whether it is evangelism, healing, deliverance, revelation, etc. We don’t even need to know about it.

Getting healed challenges us to be willing to make mistakes. As we are healed and give up our rights to control, we become willing to do things poorly before we can do them excellently. We learn to lighten up on ourselves, knowing that success is not measured by how well we perform, but on if we depend.

Jesus Our Example

Jesus Himself was wounded on many occasions, but had learned how to go to His Father for healing. He did not heal Himself, and He did not look to others to heal Him, but He depended on His Father for healing, and that’s how He walked through this life, as the Son of God and the Son of Man because He knew how to go to His Father for healing. He could go to the cross because He had already experienced the faithfulness of His Father. He didn’t heal Himself, nor do we.

How did Jesus handle wounds? He went to the Father to get healed.

How do we handle wounds? We learn how to go to the Father to get healed.

Adapted from Getting Healed by Dianne Thomas