What the Placebo Effect Shows Us About the Miraculous

All day long according to science your body is tirelessly thwarting nasty unseen organisms called germs, bacteria, and viruses. In a healthy body we don’t even think about it. Science attributes our health to the immune system. We, as Christian’s attribute good health to God, because he created the human body. Carnal-minded scientists won’t attribute good health to God. They will attribute it to a good working immune system. Yet, this denial doesn’t change the truth that God is the one responsible for our good health. In spite of denying this truth the immune system keeps functioning. Don’t overlook my point, God is the Healer whether a person believes that or not.

You have a headache, without giving it much thought you head to the medicine cabinet and pop a pill called an aspirin. The headache goes away and you’re able to go about the rest of the day. Once again, a medical scientist will explain that the medicinal qualities in the pill caused the headache to go away. But is that really the truth? Isn’t a closer version of the truth, that the pill caused the partaker to believe that they were healed, so they were healed? Isn’t the outcome more related to the individual’s expectation that the headache would leave, than the physical substances within the pill? Scriptures tell us that as a man believes in his heart, so is he.

Clinical research has established that there is a phenomenon called the placebo effect. In clinical research there is a control group that helps to determine a medicine’s actual effectiveness. A placebo, which is often a sugar pill that has no healing qualities whatsoever, is given to the control group. Another group called the treatment group is given the actual medicine being tried. Amazingly, subjects in the control group are often relieved of symptoms similar to those in the treatment group, in spite of the placebo having no medicinal qualities whatsoever. These results are qualified by true physiological changes in their bodies. The healing wasn’t a figment of their imagination, rather real changes occurred in their bodies. Let us call that what it is, a healing miracle. There was a physical change in the body, and the symptom that had been present for a long amount of time suddenly disappeared, that is a miracle. Forget your religious prejudices, we’ve already established that God is the healer in spite of who or what man gives credit to. It doesn’t change the truth. A healing miracle occurred. In fact, this article is written to show how simplistic supernatural healing is, because God is a healer and healing is His very nature.

Think about this: A person going through a clinical test has to meet certain standards. One standard is that they’ve undergone a variety of treatments and no other treatment helped. The subject is placing their expectation in the medicine, not on Christ (presumably). Unsurprisingly, they are healed without any adversity, nor does God withhold their healing based on a lack of belief, holiness, sin in their lives, or any other religious excuse, that man has come up with. These excuses are all contrary to what scriptures tell us. They simply walk into the study, expecting to receive real medication and instead receive their healing based solely on an expectation. They believed they were healed so they were.

There was a study done in which fake surgeries were the placebo. In this study the control group thought they were having knee surgery. The end result was that the control group success rate equaled those who actually had the surgery.

Let’s look at the implications that this should show us. Through the cross and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, supernatural healing is available to everyone. The only requirement is an expectation that what we desire to happen, will happen. This is regardless of what our expectation is in. With that expectation alone there is nothing that can block healing. Plant your expectation in Christ and the result is always healing and even divine health.

Tony Myers is the founder of Outside the 4 Walls Ministry. He was healed from Lou Gehrig’s Disease, and now teaches others to walk-in relationship with the Holy Spirit, which includes healing. Tony is the author of The Lord Jesus Healed Me – Journey of an Atheist to the Truth, Unlocking the Mystery of Divine Healing, Divine Healing DIY – Yes You Can, Knocking Food off its Pedestal and Pushing the Boundaries in Christ – Living Supernaturally. His website is www.tonybelieves.com.