Dustin Woolam | Pastor & Lead Elder

The Heart of the Message Summary

When asking "does God still heal today", the heart of Pastor Dustin Woolam's message rests not on rigid human formulas or guaranteed earthly outcomes, but on the unchanging character of God. Scripture and modern testimonies confirm that God is indeed still healing people today, yet believers must also navigate the tension of persistent sickness and unanswered prayer, as seen in Paul's thorn in the flesh or Timothy's frequent stomach ailments. In addressing these difficult questions, the sermon anchors our faith in two foundational truths: God is 100% in control of whatever He does, and God is deeply, undeniably good. Rather than placing our trust in human assistance, manufactured emotionalism, or strict ritualistic formulas, We are encouraged to pray boldly for complete, miraculous healing while remaining fully surrendered to His sovereign will—resting in the promise that whether He heals in this life or grants ultimate restoration in the resurrection, Jesus has won the victory and is worthy of our complete hope.

TRANSCRIPT (word for word)

Opening Prayer

Let's pray. Father, We're grateful to You for Your word. We're grateful to You for each other. Where We ask that as We open the word and as We seek after You that You speak to us. Holy Spirit, come and teach us to help us to be good and ready students. Our prayer is, Lord, what's from You would remain and then what's not of You, Lord, that those things would just fade away. Lord, that each of us, whatever it is that We need from You, Lord, that We'd have that living water in our souls. In Jesus' name, amen.

Overview of John 5

We're gonna start in John chapter 5. And I wanna say that not for the first time in my life, the irony of how the Bible lines up with what's happening in my life is not lost on me. We're gonna read, I'll give you a quick overview of what's in John chapter 5 that We're gonna talk about. We're gonna read it, I'm not telling you the story in replacement of reading it. But in John chapter 5, Jesus goes to the Pool of Bethesda. Now, the Pool of Bethesda was a place where people would go. They'd wait for the water to bubble up or to swirl or whatever it was that the water was doing and then they would try to get in the water in order to be healed. Jesus shows up, there's a whole bunch of people here. He walks to a man, the only thing We know about him, there's nothing really the Bible tells us about him except for that he had been lame for 38 years.

And Jesus asks him, "Do you wanna be healed?" and his response is, "I can't. There's no one to help me". So then Jesus says, "Well, pick up your mat and get outta here". It's on the Sabbath, so the Pharisees get really mad 'cause you're not supposed to work on the Sabbath and there's this big back and forth between Jesus and the Pharisees. I skipped a little bit, but We're gonna read it. We'll catch all the details when I read it. And then Jesus makes His comment. He says, "The Father tells Me what to do, right?" So He's doing what the Father wants Him to do. And I've said that a couple of times. We'll see that in John 5 as We talk about this series.

Searching the Full Counsel of Scripture

The series is "Give Me Jesus," and We're looking at the things Jesus is doing. We have spoken a lot about Him healing people, and today I wanna really look at and focus, let's just consider what does it mean that Jesus is the healer. Hebrews chapter 13 tells us that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. I like to just put all my cards on the table. I wanna just be really clear. This is my goal: I just wanna look and see what does the Bible say in its full context, from Genesis to Revelation. It'd be really easy to get hyper-focused on something. Like Paul in Timothy says, there's two things that he says in Timothy—in First Timothy and Second Timothy, two different books, two different statements. In one book, he says, "I left Trophimus sick at Miletus". And then in another one, he tells Timothy, "Hey, man, you're sick all the time. Why don't you drink some wine? It's good for your stomach".

And then We look at Second Corinthians in chapter 12 and Paul gets what the Bible calls a messenger from Satan, and it's a thorn in his flesh. Pretty sure he had some kind of physical ailment. Scholars kind of think that maybe Paul had bad eyesight, maybe as a fallout from the scales on his eyes—we don't know, it's all conjecture, but the point is, Paul had something that was wrong with him and the Lord said, "I'm not going to heal you because My grace is sufficient for you". And Paul said that it was there to keep him humble. So We look at all that and We're like, look at, after Jesus left, there's all this falloff. But then We also see passages where it says that Jesus went and healed everybody who came to Him. And We look in the Old Testament and in the Old Covenant, the Jews didn't get sick and their clothes didn't wear out and the Lord took care of them because they were His people. So what do We do with both of those?

Historical and Modern Views on Miracles

When you fast forward into the future, a couple thousand years later, Christians start trying to explain what's happening. And the first couple hundred years after the church, there are documents from the early church fathers where they're writing about their concern of the reduction of people being raised from the dead. Just a couple hundred years after Jesus, they're like, "Hey, We're noticing people being raised from the dead is reducing. We're wondering what's happening here".

Now also in John 5, Jesus says that part of what's witnessing of Him being the Messiah is the miracles that He's doing. And so modern people who have seen fewer and fewer miracles have said, "Well, if the miracles were for the witness, once the Bible was completed, We didn't need those miracles anymore". And so people have said, once We have the scriptures and now We have a witness and We have this tradition, We don't need these miracles. Other people have dealt with it by saying, well, it's just not the Lord's will. But how do We know what the Lord's will is? Well, We need to read the Bible and help discover that. Some people have said, well, the Lord heals people through medicine now. We have medicine; God's means of grace to us is medicine. I don't doubt that nor do I deny it. Go see a doctor, do that. I went to a doctor, I had surgery, I've done the whole bit—not opposed to modern medicine.

I think the human mind and God's gift to us is great. Didn't you see stories like one I shared a couple of weeks ago where a guy's deaf, he's not even looking to be healed and then can hear? I remember being at a youth camp—I was a youth pastor—I had taken my youth group to camp and there was a guy in the sound booth who couldn't see out of one of his eyes, and during the worship service he was healed and could see out of both of his eyes in the room for that. Knew the guy, right? So We have modern examples of people being healed, and not just from physical things, but from mental things.

Addressing Sickness, Sin, and Brokenness

There's a lot that can be said for adrenaline and for excitement and then, "Oh man, my joints don't hurt," and then you leave and it all comes back and you feel like God betrayed you. But man, I just don't see that as the character of the Lord. Nor do I see in the scriptures where when God heals someone, later it comes back. Now We will read that Jesus warns this guy not to sin or it could be worse. So something is happening in the scriptures where some sickness is connected to a demon or a choice. The Bible says not to be an alcoholic, and We know that if you're an alcoholic, you are risking alcohol poisoning and destroying your liver. That's a result of not following God's word. And so God could heal the person who has the liver disease from alcoholism, but if they continue to be an alcoholic, that disease will return as a result of their behavior, not as a result of God saying, "Well, too bad, here's your sin".

And so all of this is happening. If We're not careful, We're gonna pick out these little places and We're going to begin to say, "Well, it's God's will that people are healed all the time". Well, if you're gonna say that, then why do people die? Humans die. We live in a corrupt, broken world where humans die. So then We have to draw out the timeline: when does God heal? Does He heal in the resurrection, or does He heal right now on earth? What's happening with all this healing? All these questions We'll work through. This has been a place in my life where I've gone back and forth with the Lord a lot.

Personal Journey and Wrestling with Healing

Growing up when my parents were new believers, there was no internet and no talk of the gifts of the Spirit or healing. My mom was watching Reinhard Bonnke, an evangelist in Africa where people were getting healed, and when she asked her pastor, he said that's not for today. So We started visiting different churches, ending up at some with poor practices where We saw "how the sausage was made". Wanting desperately to believe everything that God says, I would find myself at times really wanting to believe and trust the Lord for healing, but then it wouldn't happen and I'd get discouraged. I prayed like, "God, You have to heal my glasses, You have to heal my teeth, You have to heal this," but whenever healing came up and didn't happen, I would be discouraged and fall away from pursuing the Lord. In fact, I spent a year drunk when I found out my dad was diagnosed with cancer, because 16 people in my family had died of tobacco-related cancer, so when I heard he had cancer, I heard that he was dead, even though he lived another eight years.

Core Truths: God's Sovereignty and Goodness

Eventually, I came to terms with what the Lord says in the Scriptures about healing. The two things We absolutely have to understand about healing are: first, God is 100% in control of whatever He does; and second, God is really, really good. One of my favorite Psalms says, "The Lord is in heaven and does as He pleases". In Matthew 13, Jesus could not do many miracles in Nazareth because of their lack of faith, yet at the Pool of Bethesda, He healed only one man among a crowd. God's ways are higher than ours, and through my father's eight-year sickness, the Lord taught me things I couldn't have learned otherwise. I understand Paul couldn't heal Trophimus and advised Timothy to take wine for his stomach, but God is still healing people today.

Scripture Reading: John 5:1–19

In John chapter 5 verse 1, after Jesus healed an official's son, He returned to Jerusalem for a Jewish holy day. Near the Sheep Gate at the Pool of Bethesda, crowds of sick, blind, lame, and paralyzed people lay under five covered porches. One man had been sick for 38 years, and Jesus asked him, "Would you like to get well?" The man replied that he had no one to put him into the pool when the water bubbled up. Jesus told him, "Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk," and instantly the man was healed, rolled up his sleeping mat, and began walking.

Because this happened on the Sabbath, Jewish leaders objected to him carrying his mat, but he explained that the Man who healed him told him to do so. Later, Jesus found him in the temple and said, "Now you are well. So stop sinning or something even worse may happen to you". When the man told the Jewish leaders it was Jesus, they began harassing Him for breaking Sabbath rules. Jesus replied, "My Father is always working and so am I". They tried all the harder to kill Him because He called God His Father, making Himself equal with God. Jesus explained, "The Son can do nothing by Himself; He only does what He sees the Father doing, for the Father loves the Son and shows Him everything He is doing".

Praying in Trust of God's Character

When I pray for someone who is sick, I start with what the Father is doing. First, I know God is really good; second, I know He loves us as His children and won't give us a stone if We ask for bread. So I pray trusting in the goodness of who God is, asking Him to heal completely and miraculously. I am cautious of fake miracles or charlatans who manipulate emotions or use tricks, but that doesn't mean We don't get to trust the Lord. Jesus responded to critics by declaring that both He and the Father are always working. Furthermore, Jesus doesn't always work using a formula—sometimes He casts out a demon, other times He puts mud on eyes. When We turn prayer into a strict formula, We miss that God does not grant requests outside His will or asked with wrong motives.

Scripture Reading: Luke 4:14–30

In Luke chapter 4 verse 14, after fasting and resisting the devil's improper use of scripture, Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Holy Spirit. In the synagogue at Nazareth, He read from Isaiah 61: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, for He has anointed Me to bring good news to the poor, release to captives, sight to the blind, and freedom to the oppressed". He told them that no prophet is accepted in his own hometown, pointing out that Elijah was sent only to a widow in Zarephath and Elisha healed only Naaman the Syrian. Furious at His words, the crowd mobbed Him and tried to throw Him off a cliff, but He walked right through them.

Putting Our Hope Entirely in Jesus

Just as I never doubted my earthly father's willingness to share what he had with me, We should trust that God will never hesitate to share good things with us. While doctors and medical care are good resources We should use, the goodness of God is our ultimate hope. Rather than arguing with God or demanding miracles, We should put our hope directly in Jesus rather than in bubbling water, human help, or our own ability to believe. There is nothing that the resurrection will not fix at the end of the age when God comes back and We are all resurrected.

Grief, Loss, and God's Faithfulness in Death

When my uncle was rushed to the hospital with a lung mass and died, all my old questions about faith and God's will returned. Yet I was reminded of the song, "Sometimes the Lord calms the storm and sometimes He calms His child". On Easter during my dad's illness, as I helped carry him up the stairs, the Lord clearly spoke to my heart: "Your dad's going to die and I want you to walk with him". Even in his final days, the Lord never abandoned my father, but continued sanctifying him and bringing him peace. When praying for healing, We should expect God to be good and pray for His complete healing, while remaining completely surrendered to whatever He gives.

Scripture Reading: Revelation 5

In Revelation chapter 5, John sees a scroll in the right hand of the One sitting on the throne, sealed with seven seals. When no one in heaven or earth is found worthy to open it, an elder tells John, "Stop weeping. Look, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Heir to David's throne, has won the victory; He is worthy to open the scroll". The elders fall down before the Lamb, holding gold bowls of incense which are the prayers of God's people, and sing a new song praising Him for ransoming people for God. Millions of angels proclaim: "Worthy is the Lamb who was slaughtered to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing!" Every creature sings: "Blessing and honor and glory and power belong to the One sitting on the throne and to the Lamb forever and ever!" Because the Lamb has won and because the Father and the Lamb are good and love us, We can pray with confidence. When Jesus says to stand up, pick up your mat, and walk, We must dare to do what Jesus says.

Closing Prayer

Let's pray. Father, thank You for Your goodness. So grateful to You, Lord, that beyond all reason You love us and You're good to us. When We see troubling things like sickness, Jesus, You went right to that guy and You found him. You came to this earth to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and sight to the blind and freedom for the captives. Lord, I don't ever want to lose hope; I want to always trust in Your goodness and Your faithfulness. Holy Spirit, give us eyes to see what You're up to. When We feel like the person with no one to put us in the water, Jesus, We know that You will come find us. We love You. Ask You to watch over us and go with us. Amen.