Have you ever sought healing but got overwhelmed with the huge range of options? One way to categorize and evaluate the many different healing models is to look at their roles and responsibilities, one of which will be your own. Behind those roles are common philosophies, assumptions and approaches to healing, so you can discern a lot about a healing model by analyzing the terms they use to describe themselves as the healing service provider and yourself as the healing consumer. This article will help you understand these different healing service models and whether they line up with a biblical theology of healing, and then offer a strategy of how you can choose the right healing model among the plethora of options.

Models of Healing as a Service

The three types of healing as a service arise from the different philosophies of where service providers believe you will find your healing.

If they believe the healing is in you, then they will use a coaching model to draw that healing out of you and remove barriers within you to help you follow through with your own solution. If the answer is in a third party with authority, here called a ruler, then they will take an advocacy model to get a favorable ruling from the ruler over the agent that is causing your problem. If they believe the source of healing is in their expertise, then they have positioned themselves as an expert over you who can solve your problem. It is possible and somewhat common for a healing provider to use multiple healing models, even within the same healing session, depending on the issue at hand. For example, pastors may use their biblical expertise to show you that the answer is in the Bible, but then switch to an advocacy model to pray for God to heal you based on that Bible passage.

Coaching Services

Coaching services are not just restricted to sports, but include all domains where your performance depends heavily on your execution rather than just your knowledge.

Formal coaching services can be expensive because they are usually led by a domain expert who is also an accomplished professional in the field; examples include executive coaching and Solution-Focused Based Therapy. The person doing the coaching is called a coach, while you take on the role of a coachee.

Informal coaching (aka: mentorship) on the other hand, is usually based on your relationship with the mentor with you as the mentee. Informal coaching is usually episodic and short-term rather than a long-term goal-oriented service. A special type of informal coaching is called group coaching, where a facilitator meets with a group of participants to raise the answer within the group rather than focusing on a particular individual. Examples include Christian discipleship groups, family group therapy and Alcoholics Anonymous.

Advocacy Services

Advocacy services are distinguished from coaching services in that they always involve an advocate by definition. An advocate understands the rules and customs of the court to represent you in front of the ruler who has the power to make and enforce a decision over you, the subject. If you choose to represent yourself, then you have taken a self-service model of healing and should read this article instead.

If the ruler does not have the power or jurisdiction over the matter, then you will not find relief; therefore, you must wisely choose which ruler to appeal to based on the advice of your advocate. If you choose a human ruler, it means that you believe you can find the answer in that human, a form of human advocacy. If you choose a divine ruler, then you are engaging in divine advocacy and are thus attempting a religious solution. When you go the divine advocacy route, rulers, advocates, and subjects do not have to be people; they can be spirits or even inanimate things like idols. If the divine ruler you choose is God, then He has jurisdiction over everyone, including Satan (Job 1:6–11).

⁶Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them. ⁷The LORD said to Satan, “From where have you come?” Satan answered the LORD and said, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.” ⁸And the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?” ⁹Then Satan answered the LORD and said, “Does Job fear God for no reason? ¹⁰Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. ¹¹But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.”

If you choose anyone other than God, then you put yourself under that god’s authority; the Bible calls this idolatry.

Human Advocacy

Human advocacy believes that humans provide the answer rather than a god.

It is possible to engage in human and divine advocacy at the same time (e.g. praying for a Supreme Court decision), but the solution lies in the power of the human judge even though they may be influenced behind the scenes by the divine being. The two types of human advocacy are social action which appeals to the governing authorities to fix the problem in society, and justice initiatives which appeal to a human judge or a king to punish the accused, whether it be criminal sentences that take away their freedom or civil penalties that force them to make reparations to you.

Divine Advocacy

Divine advocacy moves beyond the realm of humanity to access the spiritual world. It comes in two flavors.

The most common one believes that the god who can solve your problem is distant from you. The way to get the attention of this god is through performing a ritual. The priest (aka: shaman, witch doctor, medium, etc. depending on the religion) specializes in performing this ritual, and it has to be performed exactly or the god will not grant you, the petitioner, your desired outcome.

Rituals are transactional in that the god requires something from you in order to grant your request. It may be something tangible such as a sacrifice, or intangible such as veneration. Performing and submitting to the ritual is called worship. Worship of a foreign god is called idolatry and will lead to slavery, because even if that god grants you healing or money, it will cost you your freedom.

Healing Prayer

Healing prayer contrasts with religious rituals in that it presupposes that God will grant your request of Him because you and the intercessor have a personal relationship with Him. We use the capital-G God here because Christianity is unique among religions in that it reveals that everyone can have a father-child relationship with the one true God (John 1:12).

¹²But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God

Sin separates you from God (Isa 59:2),

²but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.

so He sent His Son (John 3:16)

¹⁶“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

to be a blood sacrifice to atone for your sins (Rom 3:25)

²⁵whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.

and its effects, including sickness (Isa 53:5).

⁵But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.

God substituted the Old Testament rituals of animal sacrifice with the sacrifice of His Son once and for all (Heb 10:10).

¹⁰And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

We can now relate to God personally through His Son, rather than through a series of transactional rituals to somehow appease a distant and unknowable god (1 John 5:20).

²⁰And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.

God saves you because He loves you (Eph 2:4–5).

⁴But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, ⁵even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved

You receive healing as a part of that salvation (Ps 103:3)

³who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases

through His grace rather than your own works (Eph 2:8–9).

⁸For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, ⁹not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

The approaches to healing prayer are roughly divided into two schools: divine healing which focuses on healing your body, and inner healing which focuses on healing what is inside the body: your soul and spirit.

This division is somewhat artificial and has more to do with the history and culture of how the two schools developed rather than any deep theological reflection. Injuries in your body affect your soul and spirit and vice versa; healing one often heals another, or full healing in one of your parts requires you to first heal another, depending on where the injury lies (see Healing Methods Overview for more details). Divine healing techniques tend to be more event-based, a power encounter with the forces of sickness and evil as demonstrated by Jesus (Mark 1:32–34)

³²That evening at sundown they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons. ³³And the whole city was gathered together at the door. ³⁴And he healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons. And he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

and His disciples (Mark 6:13).

¹³And they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them.

They excel for the purposes of evangelism as people see immediate healing from their sicknesses.

On the other hand, inner healing practitioners prefer a more systematic and process-oriented approach to healing. They aim to diagnose and remove strongholds of sin in you. Heal those root causes of sickness and demonic oppression, and then you will find full healing in your mind, heart, spirit, and body. Inner healing techniques excel for the purposes of discipleship in that an intercessor spends extended and concentrated time with you, teaching you what is a sin and how to get rid of it and its resulting sicknesses.

Expert Services

The main decisions you make in going the expert service healing route is deciding which domain of expertise you need, and then choosing which expert in that domain you should go to.

If you lack knowledge, then the expert is a teacher and you are their student. If the problem is in your mind, heart, or behavior, then you go to a counselor and you are their counselee or client. If the problem is in your body, then you go to a doctor and you are their patient. If you are attending a public healing event, then the expert is a performer and you are part of the audience. The performance may genuinely heal someone (Luke 4:40)

⁴⁰Now when the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to him, and he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them.

or just be a form of entertainment. Examples include counselors who hold call-in radio programs and televangelists who heal in front of a large audience.

A special type of performance is called deliverance where the source of your problem is a demon and the solution is to forcefully remove it. Deliverance ministers must be experts in spiritual warfare, able to determine whether the demon is inside of you or outside of you and then remove it through the power of God; otherwise, they are liable to be attacked themselves (Acts 19:13–16).

¹³Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.” ¹⁴Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were doing this. ¹⁵But the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?” ¹⁶And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.

If any other power is used, then at best, you have just traded one demon for a stronger one.

Counseling Services

Two types of Christian counseling are worth mentioning. The first is Christian counseling (aka: integrative counseling), a Christian attempt to integrate secular methods into a Christian worldview and context. They are licensed by a governing authority and charge for their services.

The other common type of Christian counseling is called biblical counseling (aka: nouthetic counseling). Biblical counselors reject secular counseling techniques as humanistic and anti-biblical because they believe that the answer is found only in the Bible. Conservative seminaries tend to produce biblical counselors who only use the Bible within a church context, while Christian counselors must use their secular healing methods or lose their license to charge for counseling.

Summary

Healing service providers follow a coaching, advocacy, or expert model of healing, depending on whether they believe the answer is in the client, ruler, or themselves respectively. The following diagram summarizes these healing models:

As you move to the right of the diagram, the type of help you are requesting becomes increasingly specialized. Anyone can do informal coaching, but it takes experience and training to become a formal coach. Advocates know how to access a ruler and that may or may not require special training. Experts require training, and some disciplines require more years of training and experience than others to pass their licensing requirements. That is why medicine is to the right of counseling. Performers are the most specialized services providers of all; not only do they need to be an expert in their chosen profession, but they need to demonstrate high-level competence in a high-pressure, public setting.

Theological Reflection

According to the Bible, the answer is found in Jesus (John 14:6),

⁶Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

not in you as the client or in the service provider as the expert. This rules out the coaching and expert models of service delivery as your ultimate source of healing. That does not mean coaches and experts are useless. God uses doctors (Col 4:14),

¹⁴Luke the beloved physician greets you, as does Demas.

and He can lead and guide them just as much as He can lead you in your healing journey. If God tells you to go to a doctor, then by all means, go to a doctor. However, if you go to a doctor or anyone else for your healing without first checking with God, then you have committed the sin of thoughtlessness, or even idolatry by putting someone else before God (Exod 20:3).

³“You shall have no other gods before me.

Since that someone else is not God, they are fallible and limited in their knowledge, especially outside their area of expertise. So if your root problem is a demon, then a doctor will not be able to diagnose or treat your problem. Similarly, if your issue is physically rooted, then a deliverance minister will not be able to help you either. Ask God which healing service provider you should go to, and then go to them. Order matters in Christianity.

Of the two types of advocacy models, human and divine, the answer is found in God rather than social action or justice initiatives. That does not mean God will not call you to advocacy in the public square, but it does mean that you have to first find your healing and purpose in God rather than a human ruler. Since Jesus Himself is our high priest and mediator (Heb 4:14),

¹⁴Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.

we do not need to perform rituals to access God; we already have access by grace through faith (Eph 2:8)

⁸For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God

for healing (Isa 53:5).

⁵But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.

That leaves healing prayer as healingmodels.org’s recommended starting point for your healing journey. No other healing model starts from the worldview that God heals you because He loves you.

Applying Theology to Our Recommended Healing Strategy

The following flowchart summarizes this theological reflection into actionable steps for getting your issue healed.

First, ask God whether your root issue is physical or spiritual. If physical, then ask Him whether He wants to heal you directly, or through a doctor. There are many types of doctors; go to the one that God tells you to. If God wants to heal you directly and supernaturally, then use the divine healing techniques found on this site.

If the root issue is spiritual, then use the inner healing techniques found on this site. You can find both types of healing prayers on our healing methods page. We take an integrative approach to divine healing and inner healing, preferring to follow the Holy Spirit in diagnosing and healing issues wherever they may lie, whether it be in the body, soul, or spirit. You are one person, so a combination of divine healing techniques to heal the body and inner healing techniques to heal the soul and spirit go into our healing methods to provide you with comprehensive healing.

Take-aways

Further Reading

The Healing Methods Overview explains the theology and process of healing you comprehensively through healing prayers, and in the process explains why experts who rely only on their physical senses cannot diagnose or heal spiritually rooted issues. How Do I Stop Sinning explains the theology of addiction and why coaching models that rely on your self-effort cannot free you from addiction. Should Healing Be Free is the companion article to this one, generalizing the discussion to include healing products and services when they are sold rather than given away for free.