How Should I Pray for the Sick?

Question 11123.

prayer for healing belongs at the heart of ordinary Christian life, not at the fringes of it, and I want to say that plainly because some believers, wary of the excesses they have seen in certain corners of the charismatic movement, quietly stop asking God for physical healing altogether. Scripture never gives us that option. James commands the church directly to pray over the sick, and the whole of Christian history, my own pastoral experience included, testifies that God still, genuinely, sometimes dramatically, heals in answer to prayer.

Why We Pray for Healing at All

Sickness entered a good creation through the fall, and every physical ailment we now suffer is part of the wider brokenness Genesis 3 describes. God remains fully able to heal, has healed throughout biblical history, and continues to heal today, though not on demand and not according to a formula any believer can control. Prayer for healing is simply bringing that brokenness honestly before the God who made the body and who has, in Christ, already begun the work of putting all things right, a work completed fully only at the resurrection.

This means praying for healing is never a mark of insufficient faith in God’s ordinary providence through medicine, nor a superstitious alternative to it. It is the normal Christian instinct to bring every genuine need, including physical suffering, directly to the Father who cares for His children’s bodies as much as their souls.

James 5:14-15 as the Governing Text

The clearest New Testament instruction comes from James: is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. Notice the structure. The sick person takes the initiative, calling for the elders, rather than the elders imposing themselves uninvited. The elders pray, accompanied by anointing with oil, a practice with both medicinal and symbolic precedent in the ancient world, representing the Spirit’s presence and the setting apart of the sick person to God’s care.

The prayer of faith James describes is not a magical formula guaranteeing recovery regardless of God’s will, but genuine, confident prayer offered in submission to a God who is able to heal and who is asked to do so. James assumes real, expectant faith, not resigned fatalism, while never suggesting the outcome is mechanically guaranteed by the strength of that faith alone.

It is worth adding that James addresses this instruction to the whole congregation through its elders, not to a single celebrity healer or travelling ministry claiming special power. Ordinary prayer for healing, offered by ordinary, recognised church leadership, is the New Testament norm, not a dramatic platform ministry.

Praying With Faith Without Presuming on Outcome

There is a real tension here worth naming honestly rather than smoothing over. We are to pray in genuine faith, believing God is able and asking Him earnestly to heal, while also recognising that Scripture nowhere promises every prayer for healing will be answered exactly as requested. Paul himself (2 Corinthians 12:8-9), no stranger to genuine faith, asked the Lord three times to remove his own thorn in the flesh and was told instead that God’s grace was sufficient for him. Faith is trust in God’s character and power, not certainty about a specific outcome He has not promised.

I have prayed for healing many times over years of ministry and watched God answer in ways that took my breath away, and I have also sat with believers for whom healing did not come this side of glory, whose faith was every bit as genuine as those who recovered. Both experiences belong within the same biblical faith, held together rather than treated as contradictory.

Why Not Every Prayer for Healing Is Answered as Hoped

Scripture gives us several reasons healing does not always follow prayer as requested, without ever reducing the matter to a tidy formula. Some suffering serves purposes we are not shown, as with Paul’s thorn. Some healing is reserved for the resurrection rather than granted now, since ultimate healing of the body awaits the age to come, not this present one. And some illness runs its course within the ordinary ways God has structured a fallen creation, through means, medicine, time, and the body’s own God-given capacity to recover, rather than through instantaneous miraculous intervention.

None of this should discourage continued prayer for healing. It should simply guard against the damaging teaching, heard too often in certain circles, that unhealed illness reflects a deficiency of faith in the person praying or the person prayed for. That teaching has wounded grieving and suffering believers badly, and it finds no genuine support in careful reading of Scripture.

The Place of Doctors and Medicine

Prayer for healing and the ordinary use of medicine are not competitors for a believer’s trust. Luke, Paul’s travelling companion, was himself a physician, and nothing in the New Testament suggests medical treatment reflects insufficient reliance on God. God ordinarily works healing through the means He has built into creation, the body’s own recovery processes, medical skill, medication, exactly as He ordinarily works provision through employment rather than only through unearned gifts falling from the sky.

I would actively caution against any teaching that pits prayer against medical treatment, urging a sick believer to refuse treatment as evidence of stronger faith. That is not biblical faith; it is presumption dressed up as spirituality, and it has caused real, preventable harm in cases I am aware of within the wider church.

How to Actually Pray for Someone Who Is Sick

Practically, praying for the sick need not be complicated or theatrical. Name the specific illness honestly before God rather than vague generalities. Ask directly for healing, according to His will, while also praying for strength, peace, and the doctors and treatments involved in the person’s care. Where appropriate, and especially where James 5 is being followed formally, involve the elders of the church, anointing with oil as a physical symbol of the request being brought before God, though the oil itself carries no power; the power belongs entirely to the Lord being asked.

I have found it pastorally important to pray specifically rather than only generally, naming the actual diagnosis, the actual fear, the actual practical need, since vague prayers tend to produce vague faith, while specific, honest prayer tends to deepen both the one praying and the one being prayed for.

Guarding Against Manipulative or Presumptuous Practices

Prayer for healing has, sadly, been exploited by some within the wider charismatic movement in ways worth being alert to. Claims that healing is guaranteed if faith is strong enough place an unbearable, unbiblical burden on suffering believers, effectively blaming the sick for their own unresolved illness. Practices that treat healing as something to be commanded or demanded from God, rather than humbly requested of Him, misunderstand who is in the relationship and who holds the authority within it. And ministries that charge money, directly or through pressured giving, for healing prayer or anointing have strayed into territory Scripture condemns outright, echoing Simon Magus’s attempt to purchase spiritual power in Acts 8.

None of this should make a believer wary of ordinary, humble prayer for healing offered within a local church by elders who love the person they are praying for. The abuses are real and worth naming, but they are departures from the biblical pattern, not evidence against it.

What Faith Actually Looks Like in This Prayer

Genuine faith, in this context, is not a feeling of certainty conjured up beforehand, nor the absence of any lingering doubt or fear. It is simply bringing a real need honestly to a God who is real, trusting His character even when the specific outcome remains unknown. Many of the most faith-filled prayers I have witnessed over years of ministry were offered through tears, by people entirely unsure what God would do, who prayed anyway because they trusted who He is rather than because they were confident of the answer they wanted.

This is worth saying clearly because some believers, feeling doubt or fear alongside their prayer, wonder whether their faith is too weak for God to honour. Bring your prayer for healing exactly as you are, doubts included, and trust that the God who welcomed a father crying out, I believe, help my unbelief, welcomes your honest prayer just as readily.

Related Reading

For more on the specific gift of healing and why answers vary, see the gift of healing and why some prayers for healing fail, and for a broader look at unanswered prayer, laying on of hands for healing.

So, now what?

If someone in your life is unwell, do not hesitate out of fear that prayer for healing sounds too bold or too uncertain in its outcome. Bring the need honestly to God, involve your church’s elders where appropriate, use the medicine and medical care He has provided, and trust Him with the outcome, whichever way it goes. Who is on your heart right now that you have not yet brought honestly before God in prayer for healing? He hears you either way.

Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.

James 5:14 (ESV)