Prayer for Healing: Biblical Prayers for Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual Restoration
Curated insights from Christ the Healer by F. F. Bosworth
Prayer for healing asks God to restore the body on the ground of what Christ already purchased at the cross. Three things have to be in place before it becomes the prayer of faith: knowing what God has promised, coming to Him with a clear conscience, and expecting the answer before there is anything to see.
Most of us start at the request. In Christ the Healer, F.F. Bosworth starts with a question instead: are we actually certain this is something God wants to give?
What Scripture says about praying for the sick
The Bible says in James 5:14–16:
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 have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. (KJV)
This instruction doesn’t expire. In Christ the Healer, evangelist F. F. Bosworth calls James 5:14 “a positive ordinance of healing in Christ’s name,” one that “is as sacred and binding on every church today as the ordinances of the Lord’s Supper and Christian baptism.” Nor is it clergy work. The command went to “the elders and even the laymen” alike.
Know what God has promised before you ask
Faith cannot reach past what we genuinely believe God is willing to do. That is why the first move in healing prayer is not asking. It is settling the question of God’s will from Scripture, because as Bosworth claims,
“Faith begins where the will of God is known.”
Ask for something you privately suspect God may not want to give, and you have already answered your own prayer.
God settled the question with a name. After the Red Sea crossing He revealed Himself as Jehovah-Rapha: “I am the Lord that healeth thee” (Exodus 15:26 KJV) which Bosworth calls “not only a promise” but “a statute and an ordinance.” The same thread runs through Matthew 8:17, where Christ “Himself took our infirmities,” and through the pattern of Psalm 107:20: “He sent his word, and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions.”
Come with a clear conscience
The second move turns the question inward, toward the person doing the praying. Our redemptive blessings are conditional, and Scripture ties healing to honesty about ourselves: “Confess your faults one to another . . . that ye may be healed” (James 5:16 KJV). The psalmist puts the negative case just as plainly: “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me” (Psalm 66:18 KJV).
The anointing oil belongs here rather than in the mechanics of the prayer. It is a symbol and sign of consecration, and the point of it is that we must desire our health for God’s glory. Health of the body and health of the soul are one subject, which is exactly what John prayed for: “Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul” (3 John 2 ESV).
Expect the answer before you can see it
Expectation is the third move, and it is not the same thing as hope. This is illustrated memorably in Christ the Healer: “Getting things from God is like playing checkers. After one person moves, he has nothing to do until the other player moves.” God moved when He sent the promise. The next move belongs to us, and it is to expect what He said.
“By expectation I do not mean hope,” Bosworth writes. Hope waits to see whether God will act. Expectation proceeds as though He already has, because He said He would. The practical difference shows up in how we read our own bodies: symptoms become information rather than a verdict. Our senses may deceive us, but God’s Word never does!
None of this means healing always arrives all at once. Bosworth points out that after Hezekiah was healed it was three days before he was strong enough to go up to the House of the Lord (2 Kings 20:5–6). Recovery and instantaneous miracle are not in the same category and confusing them costs people their confidence.
| The move | What it requires | Scriptural anchor |
| First | Knowing from Scripture that healing is God’s will | Exodus 15:26; Matthew 8:17; Psalm 107:20 |
| Second | A clear conscience; confession and consecration | James 5:16; 3 John 2 |
| Third | Expecting God to keep His promise before seeing it | Mark 11:24; James 5:14–15 |
Praying for more than the body
Forgiveness and physical healing rest on the same foundation, which is why healing prayer reaches further than the body. The ground upon which we claim the forgiveness of sins is the fact that Christ bore them “in his own body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24), and it is in exactly the same way and on the same ground that we are to appropriate physical healing from the Great Physician. Bosworth’s conclusion is worth holding onto through grief, fear, or a long discouraging stretch:
“The healing of both our souls and bodies is based on the unchangeable truth of Christ’s finished work, not on our feelings.”
The same cross that purchased healing also purchased peace. Jehovah-Rapha, “I am the Lord that healeth thee,” rests on the fact that Christ “himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses.” Jehovah-Shalom, “The Lord our Peace,” rests on the clause immediately before it in the same verse: “the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5 KJV). Bosworth presses the obvious question: If every believer has a redemptive right to obtain peace from Jehovah-Shalom, why not healing from Jehovah-Rapha?
Why some pray and are not healed
Most of the obstacles are ordinary ones. Not enough teaching, so faith has nothing to stand on. A grudge nobody has let go of, because “God cannot forgive us when we will not forgive others” (Mathew 6:15). A wrong never made right. Attention fixed on symptoms instead of on the promise. Waiting to see the answer before believing the prayer was heard at all.
Bosworth catalogs twenty-two of these obstacles in Christ the Healer— not as a rebuke, but to serve as a diagnostic. Most people find themselves somewhere on the list.
None of this is an argument against seeing a doctor. Bosworth thought the opposite position was the incoherent one. If sickness were God’s will for His children, then even wanting to get well would be a sin, and every hospital would be working against God instead of for Him. As he says, “I truly thank God for all the help that has ever come to sufferers through the physician, through the surgeon, the hospital and the trained nurse.”
Frequently asked questions
What is a good prayer for healing?
A good healing prayer brings the specific need to God and thanks Him for hearing before the answer is visible. Jesus prayed that way at the grave of Lazarus, saying “I thank Thee, Father, that Thou hast heard me” while Lazarus was still dead, and Christ the Healer urges the sick to pray on the same pattern.
What does the Bible say about praying for healing?
The Bible instructs the sick to call for the elders of the church and be anointed with oil, promising that “the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up” (James 5:14–15 KJV). This is a standing ordinance for the church, as binding today as the Lord’s Supper and baptism.
Can prayer heal emotional pain and not just physical illness?
Scripture ties the health of the body to the health of the soul. John prayed that his readers would “prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth” (3 John 2 KJV), and forgiveness and bodily healing rest on the same finished work of Christ.
Why isn’t everyone healed when we pray?
Most failures trace back to something identifiable rather than to mystery. Insufficient teaching, unconfessed wrongs, unforgiveness, and attention fixed on symptoms account for the majority, and Christ the Healer lists twenty-two such reasons in detail.
Further Reading
Christ the Healer by F. F. Bosworth collects the sermons of a traveling evangelist whose radio ministry drew more than 225,000 letters, built on the seven redemptive names of God and the argument that healing is included in the Atonement. It lays out the full scriptural case behind these three steps, along with a sermon-length treatment of Paul’s thorn and all twenty-two reasons people fail to receive. It is for readers who want the argument settled in their own minds before they pray.
This article was drafted with an AI research tool and reviewed and verified against the source manuscript by Joyce Perez, Marketing Manager.
