“God Wants You Well” Book Summary, Short Version

Nearly everyone recognizes that God has the power to heal, but not many people have confidence that God wants to heal them. God is concerned about more than your emotional well-being. He wants your physical body to be healthy also.

Sadly, some people are teaching that God controls everything in this world, and that no one can get sick unless God wills it—but that is absolutely wrong. God doesn’t give people cancer. It isn’t God’s will for children to be sick or for anyone to be born with a disability. God wants His children to be well, and Jesus paid the price to purchase health for us.

Healing doesn’t happen accidentally. In our fallen world, it’s easier to get sick than it is to be well. Everything in the natural world goes from good to bad, and from health to sickness. If you want to receive healing, you have to pursue it. You can’t just throw a prayer out there, half hoping that God might do something. You won’t get healed by saying, “God I know You can heal, and if it be Your will then heal me.”

You have to know it is God’s will to heal when you pray. In my estimation, grabbing hold of the
truth that God wants you well is one of the most important steps you can take toward receiving healing.

It is popular in some circles to think that God causes sickness, or allows it, in order to accomplish His will or to teach you something. Nothing could be further from the truth. For one thing, if you believe it is God’s will for you to be sick, then you shouldn’t fight against Him by going to the doctor and trying to get better. I don’t think anyone would argue that it is wrong to want to be healthy. Even the people who think God is the source of illness believe it is okay to try to get better. Yet if it is God’s will for you to be sick, then you shouldn’t try to get well; you should stay sick and learn what God is trying to teach you. But it isn’t God’s will for you to be sick, and He never causes your sickness to teach you anything.

We should be fighting against sickness. God has clearly revealed that His will is for us to be well, not sick. And we aren’t merely hoping that God wants us well, we know it.

“Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person,
and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself
purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.” (Hebrews 1:3)

Jesus is the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of His person. This scripture isn’t talking about an “image” that hints at the glory of God the Father. No, the Greek used here means a perfect representation. Jesus is the perfect representation of God the Father. Jesus said that He only did what He saw His Father do, and He told His disciples that to see Him was to see the Father (John 14:9).

Jesus represented God perfectly, so if we want to know God’s will
concerning healing, all we have to do is examine the life and teachings of Jesus.

Jesus never caused anyone to be sick, and He didn’t use sickness to teach people lessons. Yet people today are saying God has “blessed” them with sickness because it captured their attention and drew them to the Lord. People are crediting God with making them paralyzed or ill, but Jesus never used illness to accomplish His will. Sickness is never a “blessing in disguise,” it’s a curse (Deuteronomy 28:15-68).

There is not a single example in Scripture of Jesus doing the things that religion is blaming God for today. Jesus said, “…he that has seen me has seen the Father.” One of the greatest testimonies in Scripture that God wants you well is the fact that Jesus’ life expressly shows His desire to heal the sick.

When the Apostle Peter was preaching the Gospel to the Gentile household of Cornelius, he summarized the life and ministry of Jesus by saying:

How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power, who went about
doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him. Acts 10:38

It says that Jesus “went about doing good.” Not only did Jesus heal those who were oppressed of the devil, He healed them all. He didn’t just go around healing some people. Jesus’ actions are a demonstration of God’s will to heal everyone, not just a select few.

Teaching that God uses sickness to accomplish His will causes people to drop their guard and to embrace something that is actually from the devil. Scripture says that those whom Jesus healed were oppressed by the devil, not by God. The Lord’s command to us is clear:

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. James 4:7

Some things in life are from God. Other things are from the devil. We are supposed to submit to God, and resist the devil. Anyone who wrongly interprets sickness as being from God is submitting to the devil instead of resisting him. It is important to know when to submit and when to resist.

Religion is the source of a lot of confusion. It replaces a vibrant relationship with God
through Jesus, with obeying rules and regulations. In the case of healing, religion teaches that
sickness is a blessing in disguise, and that God uses it to humble you or to make you a better person.

It is calling evil good, and good evil. In effect, this confusion causes you to embrace the devil and prevents you from receiving healing from God. Obviously, sickness is not going to flee from you as long as you are embracing it. You have to resist the devil in order to make him flee.

To effectively resist the devil, you have to understand that God wants you well when you pray, because half-efforts at resistance won’t work. The Bible says:

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without
reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who
doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that
he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. (James 1:5-8)

This principle of not wavering when you petition God isn’t limited to requesting wisdom. It can be applied to healing also: you won’t receive healing if you are asking God to heal you, but at the same time wavering in your heart about whether or not it is God’s will to heal. That’s being double minded, and you won’t receive anything that way. You have to believe you receive when you pray (Mark 11:24). In order to believe without wavering when you pray, you have to know that God wants you well. It must be settled in your heart.

God is not the author of sickness, and He doesn’t use sickness— or any other kind of evil—to accomplish His will. God has nothing whatsoever to do with sickness. James, a leader in the early Jerusalem church, wrote:

Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil,
nor does He Himself tempt anyone. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes
down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. (James 1:13 & 17)

Wrongly believing that God is behind sickness, pain, and suffering is going to affect your understanding of His love. Associating God with sickness is propaganda from the enemy. The idea behind propaganda is that if you repeat the lie enough times, people will start believing it. Even if you can see the fallacy, the lie can work its way into your belief system because you start thinking that there must be some truth to something you hear over and over again.

Religion claims that God loves us but then goes on to say that God makes babies sick or
gives people cancer because He loves them and wants to teach them something. That isn’t love.

Imagine if a man had the power to give you cancer, cause debilitating pain, or inflict babies with deformities. After he had done those things, no one would look to him and suppose he did it out of love. There isn’t a civilized nation on the face of the earth that wouldn’t prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law. A man such as that would be thrown in prison for criminal behavior. Yet religion is trying to say that God causes tragedy because He loves you. It is a lie that has been repeated so often, people have started believing it.

The destructive power of this lie is that it renders you unable to reconcile the love of God with the use of sickness as a teaching tool. Deep down in your heart, whether you understand it or not, it’s going to affect your relationship with God and your understanding of how much He loves you. You can’t blame God for causing tragedy in your life and trust Him wholeheartedly at the same time.

I read a news article about the recent earthquakes in Haiti that was exploring questions surrounding the tragedy, and how such a terrible thing could happen. Several people were quoted as saying that the earthquake was God’s judgment upon the nation for its history of voodoo or other problems in society. The author was describing how so much blame for the tragedy was being placed on God that it was shaking the faith of many Haitians.

The article contained a poignant photograph. Dozens and dozens of corpses could be seen piled high in a mound, testifying to the immense cost of life, and the mound itself was being consumed by flames as part of a drastic effort to stop the spread of disease. In front of the fire, an elderly woman was frozen in time as she walked by. She must have reached into her purse and pulled out her Bible just before the photo was taken. Although her arm was captured in stillness, the action was clear: she was tossing her Bible onto the heap of burning bodies.

It’s not surprising to see people reject God when they
are told He is responsible for the death and pain in their life.

Jesus “went about doing good.” It is good to be well, it’s bad to be sick. Sickness is not a blessing from God sent to make you holy. Sickness is an attack from the devil. Sometimes it is completely demonic and spiritual in its origin, other times it is just the result of living in a fallen world, but sickness and tragedy are never from God. Jesus, out of His great love, took our sin and our sicknesses upon His body on the cross. The Word of God is very clear on this point:

Surely, he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken,
smitten of God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our
iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:4-5)

This bold declaration clearly says that by the stripes of Jesus we are healed. Religion enters in with its customary confusion and tries to spiritualize this scripture by saying we are only healed in our hearts. Religion says this means that in your heart and emotions you were healed from the hurt and the pain of sin.

It is true to say that, but it isn’t the whole truth. Yes, Jesus came to set us free emotionally and spiritually, but He didn’t stop there. This scripture also applies to the healing of our physical bodies. The Gospel of Matthew tells how the people brought their sick to Jesus and He healed them all (showing His desire to heal everyone), and then it references this exact prophecy, saying:

That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet,
saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses. (Matthew 8:17)

Jesus took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses in His body on the cross. It is a part of the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ for you to be healed. Jesus doesn’t want you to be sick any more than He wants you to sin.

NUGGET
Again, religion will try to confuse the matter by pointing out that Christians die of sickness—even some who believed God would heal them. Religion concludes that it must not have been God’s will to heal in those cases, rather than accepting the possibility that healing was available but, for some reason, those people weren’t able to reach out and take advantage of God’s healing power. Rather than risk hurting anyone’s feelings or accepting any responsibility, religion places the blame on God.

I don’t know why everyone who believes for healing isn’t healed, but I know it isn’t God’s fault. Whatever unanswered questions we have about healing does not change the fact that the express will of God, as seen in the life of Jesus and written in the Word, is that God wants you well. Jesus paid for sickness in the atonement so that you can be well, and untold numbers of people are being healed by the power of God all over the world today.

The Bible puts the healing of your physical body and forgiveness of your sins in the same category. It’s a package deal. They even appear together in the same verses:

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits, who
forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases. (Psalm 103:2-3)

Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to
sins, might live for righteousness—by whose ^[stripes you were healed. (1 Peter 2:24)

There is simply no doubt that Jesus provided for healing in the atonement and that God wants you well. In fact, the Greek word sozo that is translated “save” over 300 times in the New Testament is also used to describe healing. It means to save, make whole, or to heal. A classic example of the use of this word sozo is found in the letter of James:

Is any sick among you? 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 shall save the sick, and
the Lord shall raise him up; and if he has committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. (James 5:14-15)

It’s obvious that the physical body is what will be healed. Some in our time have tried to separate salvation and healing by saying that salvation is for everyone, but healing is an add-on, like it costs extra. That just isn’t true.

The Bible unquestionably teaches that Jesus died to heal your body at the same time He died to forgive your
sins. You are just as much healed by the stripes of Jesus as you are forgiven and made righteous by His sacrifice.

Jesus would no more put sickness on you than He would lead you into sin. He wants you well just as much as He wants you forgiven of your sins. The first step in receiving healing is to know beyond a doubt that God wants you well.

You have to understand that God is not only capable of healing, but He wants to heal you. Once you understand that, it will be easy to believe in your heart when you pray for healing, and to see yourself healed.

Andrew Wommack