Faith in the Hands of Jesus

Everywhere He went, people came for healing. Crowds pressed in, shouting, reaching, sometimes desperate enough to tear open a roof or push through a mob just to touch the hem of His garment. Some limped. Some were carried. Some had given up years ago but found themselves stumbling forward anyway. And not once—not once—do the Gospels record Him refusing.

Jesus never turned anyone away.

A leper knelt before Him, skin ravaged, shame clinging heavier than the disease. People drew back in disgust. Jesus reached out a hand and touched him. “Be clean,” He said, and the man was. A woman, bleeding for twelve years, came up behind Him in a crowd, certain she had no right to bother Him. She touched His robe, and power went out from Him. He stopped, not to rebuke her but to call her “Daughter.” A blind man on the roadside kept crying out even when others told him to hush, and Jesus called him closer. “What do you want me to do for you?” The man asked for sight, and sight was given.

This is who He is. Healing was not decoration on His ministry—it was the kingdom breaking in. Mercy in motion. Compassion that could not be contained. When sickness or despair met Jesus, the outcome was never in doubt. He healed them all.

And then He said something that still startles: “Whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these.” He wasn’t teasing His followers with something impossible. He was pointing to what life in His Spirit would look like. So He sent them out, two by two, with instructions as blunt as they were bold: “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.”

Imagine hearing that as a fisherman, a tax collector, an ordinary person with trembling faith. Imagine being told to do what only God Himself had done. Yet they went. And they saw it happen.

Peter, who only weeks before had sworn he didn’t even know Jesus, walked to the temple one afternoon. At the gate called Beautiful, a crippled man begged for coins. Peter had none. What he did have was faith in the name of Jesus. “Silver and gold I do not have,” he said, “but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” And the man’s feet, useless since birth, grew strong beneath him. He leapt. He shouted. He clung to Peter as if to anchor himself to this new life. The miracle wasn’t proof of Peter’s holiness—it was proof that Jesus had risen and was still healing through His people.

Paul carried this same authority. In Lystra, he looked at a crippled man and saw faith shining in his eyes. “Stand up on your feet,” Paul commanded, and the man did. Later, pieces of cloth touched to Paul’s skin were carried to the sick, and they were healed. Not because Paul was extraordinary, but because Jesus was present. The Spirit had not grown weak. The mercy had not run dry.

We tend to tuck these stories safely in the past, like relics from a world no longer available. But God keeps reminding us. In every generation, voices rise to testify that Jesus is still the healer.

Smith Wigglesworth was one of them. He was no polished preacher, no scholar with degrees. He was a plumber from Yorkshire, barely literate until his wife taught him to read the Bible. He preached with rough edges, sometimes with words that shocked genteel ears. But his faith was simple: Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever—and if He healed then, He heals now.

There’s a story of a woman brought to one of Wigglesworth’s meetings, so frail she had to be carried in on a stretcher. He prayed for her, then—without ceremony—he pulled her to her feet. Gasps filled the room. For a moment, she swayed, as if she would fall. Then strength surged through her legs. She walked, then ran. The crowd erupted, but Wigglesworth didn’t. To him, this wasn’t spectacle. It was obedience. He had prayed, he had believed, and God had honored that faith.

He once said, “I am not moved by what I see. I am not moved by what I feel. I am moved only by what I believe.” And what he believed was the Word of God. Through that faith, countless lives were touched.   His story reminds us: healing is not locked away in ancient pages. It is alive. God still honors faith.

And here we come to the ache we cannot ignore: not everyone we pray for is healed. We’ve stood by hospital beds and gravesides where our prayers seemed to fall silent. We’ve asked with tears and received only mystery. That tension is real. To deny it would be dishonest. But Jesus never taught us refusal. He never modeled walking away. Our calling is not to explain the mysteries or guarantee outcomes. Our calling is to keep asking, to keep laying hands on the sick, to keep believing that His compassion has not changed.

Healing, after all, is never only about the body. Sometimes it is despair lifting like fog. Sometimes it is a tormented mind finally coming to peace. Sometimes it is a heart that has been stone for years cracking open with forgiveness. Healing comes in flesh and bone, yes, but also in spirit and soul, in places unseen but no less broken. The mercy of Jesus touches all of it.

So we keep going. Into hospitals and homes, into quiet living rooms where someone has almost given up. We don’t come with silver or gold. We come with His name. The same name Peter spoke. The same name Paul carried. The same name that made demons flee and blind eyes open. The name that is not weaker now than it was then.

“The kingdom of God is not a matter of talk,” Paul wrote, “but of power.” And power, in His hands, looks like mercy. It looks like wholeness where there was only ruin. It looks like Jesus.

Faith is what joins us to that power. Faith is what dares to believe that what He did then, He will do now. Faith is what stretches out trembling hands, what speaks His name into silence, what risks looking foolish because it trusts Him more than what it sees.

“Faith in the Hands of Jesus” We don’t carry a guarantee. We carry faith in His promise. And faith, in His hands, is enough.