If you have questions about Christian healing, this site will help you find resources for your journey. If you have a desire to bring wholeness to broken and troubled people, situations, and places, the information at this site will guide you toward ways of doing that.

A brief history of healing,

and the need for it today.

Healing is central to the gospel: healing the relationship between God and humankind is the very essence of Christ's work in his life, death, and resurrection.

During his ministry, Jesus healed lepers, blind men, the lame, a hemorraging woman, the demon-possessed, and even raised the dead. Morton Kelsey identifies 41 such instances in his book Healing and Christianity. Jesus involved his disciples in the work of healing; the book of Acts contains accounts of healing by Christ's followers, and the epistles of Paul discuss healing as a gift of the Spirit. For nearly 300 years, physical healing was an integral component of Christian life and faith as a sign of God's love, compassion, and care.

In the 4th century, influenced primarily by Western theologians, Christians began to regard illness as punishment or correction from God rather than a manifestation of evil or a condition contrary to God's perfect will. Spiritual and physical health increasingly became divided and compartmentalized. The grim realities of the Dark Ages, and an attitude in subsequent centuries toward faith as an intellectual rather than experiential exercise, further diminished the ministry of healing in the church. The Reformers continued to view salvation as health for the soul, not the body.

Despite these trends, individual Christians continued to receive healing from God, and history records their testimonies. In the mid-19th century, people began to reaffirm the relationships between mind, emotions, body, and spirit -- between faith and health. Today, while a holistic, integrated view of health emerges in medicine, a renewed church is opening up space for the Holy Spirit to move powerfully in the lives of the faithful in the ministry of healing.

This page last updated March 2, 1999. Please send comments, suggestions and updates to Michelle Howard.