The Lord protects us when we do His work. I visited Borneo and the Philippines more than twenty times in the 80s and 90s, and the first few times before going had precautionary injections. Later, I went without them.
During those visits I laid my hands on hundreds of people who were suffering from dangerous diseases. Typhoid fever, diphtheria, scarlet fever and other diseases were still around in the Philippines. Scalps weeping from skin infections were common in the provinces. I climbed up into the back of a 5-ton truck once to pray for a man whose right leg was swollen with elephantiasis.
By the grace of God, I suffered “none of these diseases” (Exodus 15:26). Nor did my wife Lorraine, while we lived in thatched nipa huts and prayed for the sick together. God protected us through it all!
Years later I had a close call at home with extreme bronchitis, but was prayed for and healed by the Lord Jesus over three months. Medicine and physicians deserve our respect because they fight for the sick to be healed much more than do some pastors.
If your pastor does not believe in Divine Healing (unless at God’s Sovereign discretion) then I urge you to find one who does! Or to get medical assistance because doctors believe that sickness is foreign to the body which defends and repels diseases as much as its strength allows. Jesus said, “Those who are sick are in need of a physician.”
Our Lord Jesus is The Great Physician, and paid for our healing 2,000 years ago, when lashed with whips by Roman soldiers so we could be healed. The prophecy of Isaiah 53:5 is seen as fulfilled in 1 Peter 2:24 and became a fact in the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. We who believe are not “standing on the promise” but rather claiming that its fulfillment made it a fact.
I say again, Healing is no longer a prophetic promise because the accomplished “It is finished” work of the Lord Jesus made it a fact!
Medical Insurance is good but Blessed Assurance is better! Healing was and still is in the Atonement! Sound Doctrine on Healing is not based on Exceptions to the Rule but on the Body of Biblical Evidence which establishes it in the Bible.
I lived through a time period when zealous Pentecostal preachers scorned medical help, doctors and holistic good health in swinging away from “If it be thy will” to the extreme, which was that it’s always God’s will” to heal (1 Thessalonians 5:23). However, the pendulum that swung between extremes found its balance during the latter part of the 20th century (much as did the opposing views of Calvinists and Arminians between God’s Choice and Man’s Will in regard to Salvation). Strong swings away from accepted views can be necessary corrections, but Truth — Thank God! — eventually comes to rest between opposite extremes.