For years, I’ve been asking the Lord for healing in different areas of my life. Some things happened right away, others took time, and a few stories are so funny that I can’t help but share them. But through it all, God has been teaching me one thing: faith is a rest.
It started with a root canal that went wrong. The infection began eating into the bone of my jaw, and the area was tender all the time. I went to a specialist, and he told me, “To fix this, I’ll have to drill into the side of your jaw and do some pretty extensive work. But since it’s only tender and you can still eat, we can wait if you want.”
I decided to wait. And I’m so glad I did because the Lord healed it. One day, I was sitting outside, and I heard the Lord say, “Did you notice?” I thought, “Notice what?” He said, “Touch your jaw.” I did, and realized it was completely healed. No more pain, no surgery, no lingering issues.
I didn’t even realize it had happened until God pointed it out later!
I also dealt with a nasal polyp that had been lodged in my nose for three years. It was about the size of a green olive, blocking my right nostril completely. No air moved through that side of my nose. You could even see in old pictures that my nose looked bigger on that side.
I prayed for healing, hoping for a dramatic miracle, maybe at a revival service where the polyp would suddenly fall out on the floor. But it didn’t happen that way.
Instead, after years of asking, I felt the Lord tell me something unexpected: “Stop using your hair gel.” I had been using the same brand every single day for ten years. I didn’t know what that had to do with my nose, but I obeyed.
Within two weeks, the nasal polyp was completely gone. Just like that. Something I had carried for years disappeared when I finally rested in God’s instruction instead of striving for the miracle on my own terms.
Before that, I had also been delivered from a spirit of infirmity that caused me to throw up constantly. I couldn’t get free of it until the Lord intervened, but once I was delivered, everything changed. It has now been three years, and I haven’t thrown up once. Not a single time.
Now here’s the funny part. After experiencing God’s power in big ways, I decided to trust Him with something small: warts on my thumb and finger. They weren’t life-threatening, but I didn’t like them.
So I cursed them and commanded them to go. But nothing happened. They stuck around for months. Finally, I stopped stressing about it and left it in the Lord’s hands.
Months later, I felt my thumb one day and realized it was completely smooth. The huge wart was gone without a trace, not even a scar. I checked between my fingers, where another wart had been, and that one was gone too.
I laughed to myself thinking, “Pastor healed of his warts. There’s a headline for you.” But that’s exactly what happened. And again, it wasn’t by striving, it was by entering God’s rest.
Through all these stories, God has been teaching me the same lesson over and over: faith is rest.
If you’re striving and struggling for what you’re believing for, you’re not in a place of faith. Faith is not worry. Faith is not frustration. Faith is not hustling or trying harder. Faith is rest.
When you truly believe that God will do what He said He will do, you can relax. You don’t have to be uptight. You don’t have to pressure yourself or try to make things happen on your own.
The problem comes when we start focusing on time. We expect God to move instantly, maybe within the hour, or right when hands are laid on us. But time is often the great enemy of faith. If you can give your timeline over to God, you’ll find peace.
So what does it mean to rest? It doesn’t mean checking out of life, binge-watching TV, or sleeping all day. That’s not biblical rest—that’s lethargy.
Biblical rest is having a firm expectation that God is going to do exactly what He said He would do. No matter how long it takes, you trust Him. You don’t worry about it, and you don’t get frustrated.
Faith means you can enter into His rest forever. Whether your healing comes tomorrow, in two weeks, or in several months, you can rest in the confidence that God is faithful.
Faith is rest. That’s the lesson God has been writing into my life through every healing, big and small. And it’s the invitation for you too: stop striving, and start trusting.
Watch the entire sermon that this message comes from.
