No easy answers: Finding hope in doubt, failure, and unanswered prayer

[W]hen my wife, Jan, and I were on Campus Crusade staff at Northern Illinois University our movement was infiltrated by certain Christians who believed that physical healing was included in the atonement of Christ, and thus no Christian ever needed to be sick. Just pray to God and He will heal you!

Well, the result of this was that some of our students were throwing away their glasses, claiming that they were healed, even though they couldn’t see any better. I remember confronting one of them by asking, “Are you healed?” He said, “Yes, I am.” So I said, “Well, can you see any better?” “No,” he admitted. “So then how are you healed if you can’t see any better?” I asked. “Because my faith isn’t strong enough,” he said. “I am healed, but I just don’t have faith to believe it.” And so these poor, nearsighted students were going around trying to study and attend classes without their glasses, claiming that they were healed but that they lacked the faith to believe that God had answered their prayers. I wonder what those Christians would say about someone who dies from cancer despite prayers for healing: that he really was alive and well but just appeared to be dead because he lacked the faith? What those Christians needed was not more faith, but some common sense!