When Healing Surprises You: How Goodness Becomes Something You Never Expected

At Resurrected Life, we often witness how healing is discovering a kind of goodness that feels entirely new, more radiant, more specific, and more alive than we imagined. C.S. Lewis captured this beautifully in The Great Divorce, where he reflects on the journey toward heaven and wholeness. In the preface to his book (pages VIII–IX), Lewis writes something that feels perfectly linked to what happens in healing ministry:

“Good, as it ripens, becomes continually more different not only from evil but from other good.”

The short sentence contains a profound truth we see again and again in prayer ministry. When people come to Jesus for healing of wounds, lies they have believed, fear, resentment, or pain, they may expect a simple return to “neutral.” However, that is never what God has in mind. Healing is not just the removal of darkness but the unfolding of light, a goodness that becomes sharper, more particular, and more personal as it grows.

In the early stages of healing, a person may say, “I just want peace.” Later, that peace matures into a joy that feels completely distinct from the peace they first imagined. As the Lord continues to work, that joy blossoms into a vast freedom. There is a sense of being fully themselves in God’s love, and even that is not the end.

Lewis goes on to write:

“It is … a mistake to think that some elements of the world we know will just be intensified and prolonged into eternity. But it is nearer to the truth to say that heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And it is meaningless to say that ‘good is everything’ and ‘heaven is everywhere.’”

Healing ministry shows us this backward-working grace in real time. As the Holy Spirit heals old memories and restores broken places, people begin to see that even their past suffering, when surrendered to God, is somehow woven into their unique story of redemption. Their goodness becomes not just the absence of pain but a wholly different kind of good, one that bears little resemblance to the untested, fragile “good” they thought they wanted.

What Lewis warns against is the vague idea that “good is everything” and “heaven is everywhere”, which is precisely what healing ministry helps correct. Healing reveals that good is not just a vague positivity, nor is heaven just a pleasant state of mind. Instead, good and heaven are concrete, personal, and transformative, as different from superficial peace as ripe fruit is from a green shoot.

At Resurrected Life, we marvel at how the Lord meets each person in a uniquely personal way. No two healings are identical, just as no two kinds of ripened goodness are the same. Healing draws us into a holiness that is more different from our former wounds, and even from our previous ideas of “good,” than we ever could have imagined.

Just as Lewis suggests, the good ripens into something surprising and singular, a foretaste of the distinct heaven God has prepared for each of us.

If you are longing for healing, know this: what God has in store for you is not just more of what you already know. It is a goodness so particular and so alive that it will feel entirely new, and when you receive it, you will feel more yourself than ever before.