Bible verses for prayer and healing give words to those who are sick, recovering, or sitting beside someone they love in a hospital room. Scripture speaks of the Lord who heals, both body and broken heart, and invites us to bring every need to Him. These verses can steady you while you wait, pray, and trust Him with the outcome.
Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
James 5:14-16 (KJV)
The sick are encouraged to call the elders to pray, and the prayer of faith is linked with healing.
Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved: for thou art my praise.
Jeremiah 17:14 (KJV)
A short, personal prayer for healing: Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed.
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases;
Psalms 103:2-3 (KJV)
David blesses the Lord who forgives all iniquities and heals all diseases.
And said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the Lord that healeth thee.
Exodus 15:26 (KJV)
God reveals Himself to Israel as the Lord that healeth thee.
He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.
Psalms 147:3 (KJV)
Healing includes the heart, since God binds up the wounds of the broken-hearted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
Isaiah 53:5 (KJV)
Christians read this prophecy of the suffering servant as the foundation of healing and peace through Christ.
Have mercy upon me, O Lord; for I am weak: O Lord, heal me; for my bones are vexed.
Psalms 6:2 (KJV)
In weakness, the psalmist simply asks for mercy and healing.
O Lord my God, I cried unto thee, and thou hast healed me.
Psalms 30:2 (KJV)
David remembers crying out to God and being healed, a testimony that gives hope.
Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.
3 John 1:2 (KJV)
John’s prayer for a friend’s health is a model for praying for loved ones.
And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.
Matthew 9:35 (KJV)
Jesus’ ministry included healing every sickness and every disease among the people.
And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.
Mark 5:34 (KJV)
After a woman touched His garment in faith, Jesus told her to go in peace and be whole.
The Lord will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing: thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness.
Psalms 41:3 (KJV)
God’s care reaches the sickbed, strengthening the weak and comforting the ill.
And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
2 Corinthians 12:9 (KJV)
When healing does not come as hoped, God’s grace is still sufficient and His strength shows in weakness.
Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.
Isaiah 41:10 (KJV)
For fearful days of illness, God promises to strengthen, help and uphold.
My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh.
Proverbs 4:20-22 (KJV)
Holding God’s words close is described as life and health to all our flesh.
For I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds, saith the Lord; because they called thee an Outcast, saying, This is Zion, whom no man seeketh after.
Jeremiah 30:17 (KJV)
God promises to restore health and heal wounds, words of hope for those waiting to recover.
Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Matthew 11:28 (KJV)
Jesus offers rest to all who are weary and heavy laden.
When illness comes, it can be hard to know what to pray. Jeremiah 17:14 offers a simple prayer you can repeat: Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed. James 5:14-16 encourages believers to call for the elders of the church and pray together, so consider asking your pastor or a trusted group to pray with you and for you.
Praying for healing goes hand in hand with wise care. God often works through doctors, nurses, counsellors, and medicine, so keep following professional medical advice and seek help from a qualified professional when you or a loved one is struggling, including with emotional or mental health. Psalm 147:3 reminds us that God cares for the broken in heart as well as the body.
On difficult days, read Psalm 41:3 or Isaiah 41:10 slowly and let them turn into rest rather than striving. Paul prayed for relief and heard God say, My grace is sufficient for thee, in 2 Corinthians 12:9. Whatever the answer, you can bring your requests honestly and trust that the Lord remains near.
James 5:14-15 works well as a template: naming the person, praying specifically, and inviting others to join you.
Bible Verses About Knowing God and Bible Verses About Motherhood pick up threads that run through these verses.
All Scripture here is quoted from the King James Version, which you can read in full at Blue Letter Bible.
For a related angle, see Bible Verses For Love and Relationships or Bible Verses For Overcoming Fear.
This subject overlaps with Bible Verses For Relationships and with Bible Verses For Discipleship.
You might also turn to Bible Verses For Finances and Bible Verses For God's Peace.
Bible Verses For Prayer and Strength and Bible Verses About Prayer and Strength explore related themes.
Bible Gateway makes it easy to compare a verse across several English translations.
To trace a verse through the rest of Scripture, the cross-references on Bible Hub are useful.
Consider following this pattern directly, inviting someone else to pray alongside you.
These verses were never meant to sit on a page as decoration \u2014 they’re meant to shape how you actually respond the next time you’re not sure how to pray for someone whose healing looks uncertain.
You don’t need polished or formal language for it \u2014 an honest, plainly worded sentence is enough, something as simple as telling God directly for the right words to pray over someone else’s healing.
Unable to get near Jesus through the crowd, four friends carrying a paralyzed man climbed onto the roof, dug through it, and lowered him down on his mat right in front of Jesus (Mark 2:1-5). Scripture says Jesus saw their faith, not only the paralyzed man’s, before forgiving his sins and healing his body.
Bible Verses For Prayer and Healing include this account because the friends’ determined action functioned like a prayer offered on someone else’s behalf. Sometimes healing comes because other people refuse to give up on getting a person in front of Jesus.
Sitting by the roadside begging, blind Bartimaeus heard that Jesus was passing by and cried out loudly for mercy, refusing to stop even when the crowd told him to be quiet (Mark 10:46-52). Jesus stopped, called him over, and asked what he wanted before restoring his sight because of his faith.
His prayer and healing began with a request too loud and persistent for the crowd to silence. Bible Verses For Prayer and Healing include Bartimaeus because sometimes the prayer that gets heard is the one refusing to be quieted by everyone around it.
Ten men with leprosy cried out to Jesus for mercy and were healed as they went to show themselves to the priests, yet only one, a Samaritan, turned back to fall at Jesus’s feet giving thanks (Luke 17:12-19). Jesus asked plainly where the other nine were before telling the man his faith had made him whole.
Bible Verses For Prayer and Healing include this account because it separates receiving healing from recognizing its source. Physical healing had come to all ten, but only one returned to complete the exchange with gratitude.
Finding Peter’s mother-in-law sick in bed with a fever, Jesus simply took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left immediately, so completely that she got up and began serving them that same hour (Mark 1:29-31). No lengthy prayer or public spectacle accompanied this healing, only a quiet visit to an ordinary home.
Bible Verses For Prayer and Healing include her account because it shows healing reaching someone in the most private, unremarkable setting imaginable. Her immediate return to serving suggests healing that was both physical and complete.
After Miriam was struck with leprosy for speaking against Moses, he immediately cried out to God with a short, urgent prayer asking simply that she be healed, and God responded by limiting her condition to seven days outside the camp rather than something permanent (Numbers 12:10-15). Moses prayed for the very sister whose complaint had caused the conflict in the first place.
Bible Verses For Prayer and Healing include Miriam’s account because it shows prayer and healing offered generously even after real conflict and hurt between the people involved. Moses did not withhold his prayer to make a point.
A nobleman whose son lay dying traveled to find Jesus and begged Him to come down before his child died, but Jesus simply told him to go, that his son would live, and the man believed the word Jesus spoke and started home (John 4:46-53). On the way, his servants met him with news that the fever had left at the exact hour Jesus had spoken.
His prayer and healing worked across a real distance, with no physical touch or visible sign at the moment of asking. Bible Verses For Prayer and Healing include this account because it shows that trust in Jesus’s spoken word alone can be enough, even when the person needing healing is somewhere else entirely.
Lord, You saw the faith of friends who tore open a roof to bring a paralyzed man to You, and You stopped for a blind man whose cry the crowd tried to silence. You noticed the one leper who returned to give thanks, and You reached quietly into Peter’s home to heal his mother-in-law with a simple touch.
You answered Moses’s urgent prayer for Miriam even in the middle of real conflict, and You healed a nobleman’s son from a distance through nothing but a spoken word. These Bible Verses For Prayer and Healing remind me that no situation is too far or too small for You. Hear my request today, whatever form it needs to take. Amen.
Some assume healing prayer only counts when the sick person prays it themselves. The paralyzed man’s friends correct this clearly, since Jesus responded to their faith on his behalf, and Moses’s prayer for Miriam confirms the same pattern from a very different setting. Bartimaeus corrects a second assumption, that a quiet, polite request is always more appropriate than a loud, persistent one.
The ten lepers correct a third misunderstanding, that receiving healing is the same as recognizing God’s hand in it, since only one returned to give thanks. Peter’s mother-in-law corrects a fourth, that healing prayer requires public drama, and the nobleman’s son corrects a fifth, that healing requires physical closeness at all. Bible Verses For Prayer and Healing describe several different paths toward the same restoring touch.
Each day highlights a different way healing came in answer to prayer.
Take a few quiet minutes to reflect using these questions.
A few more to consider:
If someone you love is struggling, consider becoming one of their carrying friends this week, bringing their need to God persistently even if the way forward looks difficult. If your own request feels like it keeps getting drowned out, let Bartimaeus encourage you to keep asking anyway. For more encouragement, see Bible Verses About Prayer for Healing and Bible Verses For Faith and Healing.
Take time this week to specifically thank God for a past healing you may have moved on from too quickly, following the one leper’s example rather than the nine. Trust that God can work in quiet, ordinary settings, just as He did for Peter’s mother-in-law.
If conflict is complicating your prayer for someone, let Moses’s example encourage you to pray for their healing anyway, and if someone you love is far away, let the nobleman’s trust remind you that distance is no obstacle to these Bible Verses For Prayer and Healing.
Isaiah 38 gives us one of the most human sickbed scenes in Scripture. Hezekiah, king of Judah, has been told by the prophet Isaiah to put his house in order because he will not recover. No second opinion, no negotiation. So the king rolls over, faces the plaster, and prays. Verse 2 says he “turned his face toward the wall, and prayed unto the LORD.” A man with an army and a palace full of advisors, and he ends up talking to a wall because there is nobody else to talk to.
God answers before Isaiah has even left the courtyard: “I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will add unto thy days fifteen years” (Isaiah 38:5). Notice what is said. Prayer was heard. Tears were seen. Then a poultice of figs was laid on the boil, as verse 21 records, which means the healing came with an ordinary remedy attached. Faith and a fig poultice were not rivals.
Many of the passages on this page are short, but Hezekiah shows how a long, ugly illness can sit behind a short verse. After he recovers he writes a poem about it, and it is not all cheerful. He remembers the bitterness first. If your own prayers in a hospital bed sound more like complaint than worship, you are standing on well-worn ground.
Naaman commanded armies, and he had leprosy, which in his day meant a slow social disappearance. A captive Israelite girl in his household mentioned that a prophet in Samaria could help. That is how healing started in 2 Kings 5: a servant child said something kind that she had no reason to say.
Then comes the part nobody enjoys. Elisha does not even come out to meet him. He sends a messenger with instructions to wash in the Jordan seven times. Naaman is furious. He had pictured a dramatic gesture, a hand waved over the spot, and instead he is told to bathe in a river he considers inferior to the clean rivers back home. His own servants talk him down, and he goes. “Then went he down, and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God: and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean” (2 Kings 5:14).
What does that say to someone praying for health today? Sometimes the answer arrives in a form we would have designed differently. A slow treatment plan, a physical therapist who pushes too hard, a change of diet. None of that cancels prayer. The story pairs a humbled heart with an unglamorous act of obedience, and it never hints that Naaman should have skipped the river and just waited for a miracle.
Here is something that surprises people who think medicine and faith pull in opposite directions. Paul closes his first letter to Timothy with a practical note: “Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities” (1 Timothy 5:23). Timothy was a young pastor with recurring stomach trouble, and the apostle who had seen miracles did not tell him to simply pray harder. He gave health advice.
Paul also traveled with a doctor. Colossians 4:14 says, “Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas, greet you.” The man who wrote the Gospel with the most detail about Jesus healing the sick was himself trained in the care of bodies. Early believers did not treat the clinic and the prayer meeting as enemies.
That matters when you read the passages collected here. James 5 tells the sick to call for elders, and nothing in the passage forbids calling a nurse too. If a friend tells you that taking medicine shows a lack of faith, you can point them to Timothy. Pray, ask others to pray, see the doctor, follow the instructions. Gratitude for a good physician is a kind of thanksgiving to the God who gives skill to human hands.
Not every healing psalm ends with relief. Psalm 38 is a hard one to read aloud, because David describes a body that is failing and friends who stand at a distance. He says there is “no soundness in my flesh” and that his heart pants and his strength fails. Then, in the middle of the misery, comes a line worth keeping: “Lord, all my desire is before thee; and my groaning is not hid from thee” (Psalm 38:9).
Groaning counts as prayer here. You do not have to organize your words. Sit in a waiting room at two in the afternoon with a clipboard on your knee and the only thing you can manage is a sigh toward heaven, and the psalm says that sigh is not hidden. Whoever wrote the heading on this psalm called it “to bring to remembrance,” as if the point were to place the suffering plainly before God and let Him handle the memory.
A caution belongs here. Sickness is not always punishment for something you did, and Job’s three visiting friends were rebuked for saying it was. David links some of his pain to his own failure, but he does not hand that explanation to everyone else. Use these passages to pray, not to assign blame to yourself or a sick neighbor.
So far we have mostly spoken to the person who is ill. What about the one standing beside the bed? Jesus lists a visit among the deeds that matter: “I was sick, and ye visited me” (Matthew 25:36). He treats an afternoon spent in a hospital chair as time given to Himself.
A few practical thoughts from years of sitting in those chairs. Say less than you want to. Ask whether the person would like you to pray out loud, and if so keep it short and specific, the way James 5:14-16 shows. Bring a meal to the spouse, who is probably not eating. Offer to drive the children to school. Prayer that never turns into a casserole or a ride to the pharmacy can feel thin to someone worn out by caretaking.
Pay attention to how you listen, too. Avoid promising a certain outcome. You do not know it, and the sick person can hear the hollow ring. What you can honestly say is that you are praying, that you are not going anywhere, and that God has not stopped caring. Write a short note if words fail you in the room. A card with one verse and a plain sentence is often kept on a nightstand for months.
Acts 3 opens at the temple around three in the afternoon, the hour of prayer. Peter and John are walking in, and a man who has been lame from birth is being carried to his usual spot to beg. He has been there so long that people step around him without looking. He expects a coin.
Peter fixes his eyes on him and says, “Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk” (Acts 3:6). Then he takes the man by the right hand and lifts him. Feet and ankle bones receive strength, the text says, and the man goes into the temple walking and leaping and praising God.
Other collections you may find useful: Bible Verses About Prayer and Healing, Bible Verses For Prayer for Healing, Bible Verses About Prayer for Healing, Bible Verses About Healing the Broken Hearted and Bible Verses For Prayer For Wisdom.
To study these verses in more depth, try Bible Gateway, Bible Hub and Bible Study Tools.
When illness comes, it can be hard to know what to pray. Jeremiah 17:14 offers a simple prayer you can repeat: Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed.
This page brings together 14 King James Version references about prayer and Healing, drawn from 9 different books of the Bible.
Jeremiah 17:14 is one of the verses about prayer and Healing referenced in this collection, alongside James 5:14.
Yes, the verses referenced on this page, including Jeremiah 17:14, are quoted according to the King James Version (KJV), and are suitable for daily reading, memorization, or devotional use.
Beyond the references highlighted on this page, prayer and Healing appears throughout Scripture in books such as Jeremiah, James, Psalm, Isaiah, 2 Corinthians; this collection focuses on some of the clearest examples.
