Chronic Health Condition Prayer for Healing, Strength, Guidance and Relief

This chronic health condition prayer can help those whose daily lives are disrupted by ongoing health problems such as immune disorders, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, arthritis, migraines, asthma, obesity and lung disease, to name a few. Half of all of us in the of the U.S. are in need of this chronic health condition prayer because more than 117 million have one or more chronic health condition.

What is a chronic health condition?

Chronic health conditions are ones that don’t go away. For the most part, they can’t be quickly or easily cured but instead must be managed. Chronic health conditions may be very visible to others or they may not show up at all at first glance to others as outward symptoms, especially when the symptoms include pain.

Although there may not be a quick fix for many chronic health conditions, the medical field has discovered that they can be helped and managed through early diagnosis, good health habits and specific treatments according to the diagnosed disease.

How using a chronic health conditions prayer can add a new dimension of help

As Christians, we add in the powerful tool of prayer as a healing path. Here are the things that prayer can do to help us when we have a chronic illness:

Prayer can help us receive God’s guidance.

Prayer can help us find ways to manage pain.

Prayer can help us learn how to choose activities wisely and conserve our physical strength.

Prayer can help us have endurance and courage to undergo treatments.

Prayer can help us set priorities according to what really matters and let go of tasks that others can do instead of us trying to do it ourselves.

Prayer can renew our hope when it seems like we will never feel better.

Prayer can enable us to reach out to others for support.

Prayer can help us find ways to continue to be productive and make a difference in the world when chronic illness limits us.

Prayer also enables us to find God’s way of being productive in His Kingdom when we’re unable to be productive doing normal daily activities.

As an example, my friend Judy Guilfoil underwent chemotherapy for cancer and during that time she used her own physical sufferings to pray for others. You can read about how to do this in her article Praying Your Pain with Christ’s.

Another friend, Guideposts writer Roberta Messner, started a personal giving ministry that helped her through a lifetime of suffering from a tumor disease called nuerofibromatosis which caused her to undergo 37 surgeries during her lifetime. Roberta has a doctorate in nursing and she tells me that giving to others actually produces physical results in our bodies by releasing endorphins which elevate our mood and lesson our pain.

Chronic Health Condition Prayer

The following is a guided chronic health condition prayer that you can personalize by filling in details about your own situation as you talk to God and seek his directions on your unique healing path.

Dear Heavenly Father,

I come to you today bringing my chronic health condition to you. Here is the problem that I have ______________________________________________________________________________

This has been going on long enough that I sometimes forget what it feels like to wake up in the morning feeling rested and energetic and ready to do the things I need to do and want to do. Here are some things that are really hard for me about my health problem and things that I really wish I could do that I can’t ___________________________________________________________________________

I sometimes feel all alone because my friends and family don’t really understand how I’m feeling because they’ve never experienced this health condition. Here are ways that it seems others don’t understand my health problem or don’t understand about how I’m feeling or about what I’m able to do and not able to do______________________________________________________________________

God, I’m concerned about how my chronic health condition affects my family. Here are some things that I’ve noticed that we need your help with____________________________________________________

I thank you for the gift of modern medical care that can put a name to my illness so it can be treated. Please guide me as to whether or not my diagnosis is correct or if I need to seek more tests and information to accurately pinpoint my problem _____________________________________________

I thank you for treatments that have been developed for my condition. I thank you for the following treatments that I feel have helped me the most ______________________________________________

I ask for your wisdom and guidance about treatments that don’t feel like they have worked well for me. Here is a change in my treatment that I need your help in discussing with my doctor so we can come up with a good solution _____________________

I ask for guidance as far as other ways and means of healing help that might be out for me that I haven’t tried yet. Please send me guidance ________________________________________________________

I pray for the gifts and strengths that modern medicine can’t give me.

I pray that you will direct me on a healing path through all ways and means available.

I pray for a clear mind to grasp and understand my condition and the educational information I need to make good choices.

I pray for patience when I must wait for test results, medication to work and healing to happen.

I pray for strength when I must endure treatments.

I pray that you will help me have good plans in place with people who can help and support me when I experience times when my condition worsens.

I pray for self control when I must change my diet or daily habits.

I pray for motivation and energy to engage in healing physical activities and therapy.

I pray that you will give me the ability to get a good night’s sleep.

I pray for hope that I can have good days.

I pray you will help me continue to pray with faith and trust even when no easy answers come.

I pray that you will keep my moods regulated and that you will guide me to seek professional help when I become depressed, stressed or despondent.

I pray that I will find rest and solace in the promises you give us in the Bible.

I pray that you show me a way to make my times of pain and suffering productive in your Kingdom.

I claim in prayer the following promises from the Bible

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Matthew 11:28,29 NIV)

“He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary and young men stumble and fall, but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” (Isaiah 40: 29-30 NIV)

“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. Se we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on w hat is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18 NIV)

“He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering…and by his wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:3,5 NIV)

“Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits – who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” (Psalm 10 3: 2 – 5 NIV)

I now bring my whole self to you, oh Lord, body, mind, soul and spirit. I depend on you to give me the help and strength I need day by day. May your healing power be at work in me in a powerful way. Come Lord Jesus. May your grace be sufficient for all of my needs, today and forever. Amen.

Chronic health conditions and healing in the Bible

In the Bible, we find many examples of people who suffered chronic illnesses ranging from blindness to skin diseases like leprosy which caused sufferers to be cast out of society to live as beggars.

When Jesus began his ministry, healing was one of the tools he used to show God’s care and power to the people he was evangelizing. The Bible tells us, “The news about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various disease, those suffering severe pain, the demon possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed and he healed them.” (Matthew 4:24 NIV)

Such miraculous healings served to set Jesus apart from other teachers and preachers and showed that God’s power was with him. It drew the crowds who could then hear the message of salvation which Jesus longed to give them.

The chronically ill woman who was healed by touching Jesus’ cloak

A vivid example of a woman with a chronic disease being healed by Jesus is found in the book of Mark in the Bible. The woman is described as having some sort of bleeding disease. In the Jewish religion there were many laws about “uncleanness” which separated people from others and prevented them from going into the Temple or taking place in religious ceremonies.

Any kind of blood flow was grounds for being “unclean,” including after childbirth or during a woman’s normal monthly cycle. There were purification rules, ceremonial cleaning baths and set time periods to wait before worshipping. Even touching articles of clothing belonging to the bleeding person would make a well person ceremonially unclean. So the woman’s chronic health problem not only plagued her physically, but turned her into a social and religious outcast no one wanted to touch.

Then Jesus came on the scene. The Bible says;

“A large crowd followed and pressed around him. (Jesus) And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better, she grew worse.

When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, ‘If I just touch his clothes I will be healed.’ Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.

At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, ‘Who touched my clothes?’ ‘You see the people crowding against you,’ his disciples answered, ‘and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’

But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his fee t and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, ‘Daughter, you faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.’” (Mark 5:24 – 34 NIV)

The Bible doesn’t specifically say why some people are healed miraculously and others are on a different healing path.

The story of the woman in Mark 5 gives us reason to pray for healing for our chronic health condition. However I would caution against using this verse as a formula that if you pray and act with enough faith it guarantees that you will be healed in the way that you had wanted. I believe in asking God for our heart’s desire and then listening to his guidance and following his lead as to the specific healing path He wants to take us.

I will leave the question to greater minds than mine to figure out why God heals some people with chronic diseases instantly and miraculously like the woman in Mark 5 and why others in the Bible weren’t healed but rather given a different sort of consolation or answer from God. The Bible gives examples of both being a satisfying answer that made sense to the person with the chronic illness.

A prime example of a prayer for healing of a chronic condition that wasn’t answered the way we might imagine happened to St. Paul who was one of the greatest evangelists and Christian theologians and writers in history. Paul didn’t receive healing from an unnamed chronic disease. Paul writes:

“To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations (a vision he had of being in heaven), there was given me a thorn in my flesh (some people think some kind of chronic pain or disease), a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me…For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:7-10 NIV)

As a result of his prayer, Paul received a word answer from God that helped him understand God’s direction and purpose for his life and how his chronic condition could be used as a vehicle of faith and reliance on God.