These Bible verses for prayer for healing give you words when your own run out. They include the honest cries of David, Hezekiah and Moses, the promise that God hears those who call on him, and Paul’s reminder that grace is enough even when an answer is slow. Use them to pray for yourself or for someone you love.
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 simple, confident prayer: heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed.
Have mercy upon me, O Lord; for I am weak: O Lord, heal me; for my bones are vexed. My soul is also sore vexed: but thou, O Lord, how long? Return, O Lord, deliver my soul: oh save me for thy mercies’ sake.
Psalms 6:2-4 (KJV)
David prays for mercy and healing because his body and soul are deeply troubled.
Turn again, and tell Hezekiah the captain of my people, Thus saith the Lord, the God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will heal thee: on the third day thou shalt go up unto the house of the Lord.
2 Kings 20:5 (KJV)
God tells Hezekiah that he has heard his prayer, seen his tears and will heal him.
And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, Heal her now, O God, I beseech thee.
Numbers 12:13 (KJV)
Moses cries out on behalf of his sister, Heal her now, O God, a model of praying for another.
I said, Lord, be merciful unto me: heal my soul; for I have sinned against thee.
Psalms 41:4 (KJV)
David asks God to be merciful and heal his soul, joining confession with his request.
Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:6-7 (KJV)
Paul says to bring every request to God with thanksgiving, and his peace will guard your heart.
And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.
1 John 5:14-15 (KJV)
John gives confidence that God hears us when we ask according to his will.
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:
Matthew 7:7 (KJV)
Jesus invites us to ask, seek and knock, promising that the Father responds.
The righteous cry, and the Lord heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles.
Psalms 34:17 (KJV)
When the righteous cry, the LORD hears and delivers them from their troubles.
O Lord my God, I cried unto thee, and thou hast healed me.
Psalms 30:2 (KJV)
David remembers crying to God and being healed, a testimony that encourages bold prayer.
Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms. 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.
James 5:13-15 (KJV)
James tells the afflicted to pray and the sick to call the elders, promising the prayer of faith will raise them.
The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed.
Matthew 8:8 (KJV)
A centurion trusts Jesus to heal his servant with only a word, a model of humble faith in prayer.
Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.
Romans 8:26 (KJV)
When we do not know how to pray, the Spirit helps us in our weakness.
Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.
Hebrews 4:16 (KJV)
We are invited to come boldly to God’s throne to find mercy and help in time of need.
Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.
Psalms 55:22 (KJV)
David urges us to cast our burden on the LORD, who will sustain us.
For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. 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 12:8-9 (KJV)
Paul prayed three times for relief and heard that God’s grace is sufficient in weakness.
Scripture shows that it is right to ask God directly for healing. Moses prayed simply for his sister, and Hezekiah wept before the Lord and was heard. You do not need polished words. Pick a verse, read it slowly, then tell God in your own language what you need.
It can help to pray with a pattern. Begin with thanks, as Philippians 4:6 encourages; bring your request plainly; and end by trusting God with the outcome, as 1 John 5:14 describes. When you are too tired or unwell to pray, Romans 8:26 reminds you that the Spirit helps in your weakness.
Share your prayer needs with others too. James 5:14-15 calls the church to pray over the sick, so let your pastor and friends know how to pray. Keep working with your doctors and caregivers, asking God to guide their hands. If the answer is slow, 2 Corinthians 12:9 offers comfort: his grace is sufficient for you.
James 5:14-15 works well as a template: naming the person, asking for healing, and inviting others to pray alongside you rather than praying alone.
Bible Verses About Healing the Sick and Bible Verses About Faith in Hard Times explore related themes.
All Scripture here is quoted from the King James Version, which you can read in full at Blue Letter Bible.
If you want to keep reading, Bible Verses For Happiness and Bible Verses For Self-Control sit close to this topic.
Bible Verses For Blessings and Prosperity and Bible Verses For Inner Peace are good companions to this page.
This subject overlaps with Bible Verses For Following God and with Bible Verses For Children.
Two nearby collections worth opening next are Bible Verses For Faith and Healing and Bible Verses About Faith and Healing.
Bible Gateway makes it easy to compare a verse across several English translations.
Bible Hub collects commentary on every verse if you want to study one more closely.
Consider asking someone else to pray alongside you, following the pattern James describes.
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 praying for someone else’s healing and it’s taking longer than you hoped.
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 their healing, and for your patience while you keep asking.
After Abimelech unknowingly took Sarah into his household, God closed the wombs of every woman there, and Genesis 20:17 says Abraham prayed unto God, and God healed Abimelech, his wife, and his maidservants. This is one of the earliest recorded answers among these verses, and it is notable because Abraham prayed for the very man who had wronged him, not only for people close to him. The healing that followed shows prayer reaching an entire household at once, not only a single person.
In Acts 9:36-42, a disciple named Dorcas died after a life spent making clothes for widows, and the grieving believers sent for Peter. He put everyone out of the room, knelt down, and prayed, then turned to her body and said, Tabitha, arise, and she opened her eyes and sat up. This account is often searched alongside these verses because Peter prayed alone first, away from the crowd’s noise, before he spoke a single word to Dorcas herself.
James 5:17-18 points back to Elijah, a man with feelings like our own, who prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain for three and a half years, then he prayed again and rain returned. James uses this ordinary, feeling-filled man as proof that the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. these verses often lean on this same passage, since James mentions Elijah’s prayer directly beside instructions for praying over the sick with oil in the verses just before it.
After weeks of unhelpful advice from his three friends, Job was told to pray for them, and Job 42:10 says the Lord turned his captivity when he prayed for his friends, restoring twice what he had before. His own healing and restoration came while he was praying for the very people who had made his suffering harder. Bible Verses For Prayer for Healing sometimes work this way, turning outward toward someone else’s need before turning back to bless the one who is praying.
When Solomon dedicated the temple, he prayed in advance for future sickness and plague among the people, asking God in 1 Kings 8:37-39 to hear from heaven and forgive, and to give to every man according to his ways, for God alone knows every heart. Solomon prayed this prayer before anyone was even sick yet, building a pattern for Bible Verses For Prayer for Healing that a nation could return to for generations. He assumed sickness would come and prepared a prayer for it in advance.
Praying alone for a sick family member is good, but praying together adds something a solitary prayer cannot, letting a child see a parent voice their own fear honestly before God. Keep it short enough that young children can follow along, and let everyone add one sentence if they want to. Bible Verses For Prayer for Healing read aloud together, even briefly, teaches a family that prayer belongs to ordinary evenings, not only emergencies, and that everyone’s voice is welcome in it.
Writing down what you asked for, and the date, makes it possible to look back later and notice answers you might otherwise forget were ever prayers at all. A simple notebook works fine; there is no need for anything elaborate. Include the specific Bible Verses For Prayer for Healing you used that day, along with a line or two about how the person seemed. Months later, reading through old entries together with the person you prayed for can turn into its own quiet form of worship.
Prayer for healing was never meant to replace calling a doctor, and Scripture does not treat the two as competitors. Luke, the author of a Gospel and Acts, was himself a physician who traveled with Paul. Continue seeking appropriate medical care while also praying, and feel free to pray honestly for wisdom for the doctors and nurses involved. Bible Verses For Prayer for Healing sit comfortably alongside a prescription bottle on the same nightstand; one does not cancel out the other.
Instead of only asking freely in your own words, try praying a verse back to God almost exactly as it is written. Say Psalm 41:3 as a request: Lord, strengthen him upon his bed of languishing, make all his bed in his sickness. This method borrows the Bible’s own language rather than searching for new words every time you feel stuck or unsure what to say. Bible Verses For Prayer for Healing become even more personal when spoken directly toward God instead of only read silently to yourself in a quiet room.
James 5:14-15 tells anyone sick to call for the elders of the church, who pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer of faith shall save the sick. This is one of the clearest Bible Verses For Prayer for Healing instructions in Scripture, giving a specific, practical action rather than only a general feeling. Anointing with oil was a common medicinal practice in that era, so the passage joins ordinary care with genuine spiritual prayer rather than treating them as competing options.
Praying the same words every day can feel repetitive, so rotating through a short list of verses keeps the prayer time fresh. Each one works well as its own short Bible Verses For Prayer for Healing to speak aloud.
Lord, I am holding my phone right now, praying for someone I cannot reach out and touch. Thank you for hearing prayer across any distance, whether spoken in a hospital room or whispered over a call late at night. I ask you to be near them right now, to steady their fear, and to guide the hands of everyone caring for them today. These are simple Bible Verses For Prayer for Healing words, not fancy ones, but I trust you hear them exactly the same either way, Lord.
Matthew 6:7 warns against vain repetitions, using many words as though God only listens once enough words pile up in a long, polished request. Bible Verses For Prayer for Healing were never meant to reward the longest, most eloquent request someone can manage under pressure. A single honest sentence, prayed with real trust, carries the same weight before God as a paragraph carefully composed for the moment. Length was never the measure Scripture uses for a prayer God actually hears and answers in his own time.
A short pause before praying can make the actual words that follow more honest and specific.
The house in Capernaum was packed so tightly that nobody could get through the door. Four men carrying a paralysed friend on a mat looked at the crowd, looked at each other, and climbed the outside stairs. Mark says they uncovered the roof, broke through it, and let the mat down in front of Jesus (Mark 2:4). Imagine the dust falling on the heads of the people below.
The man on the mat says nothing in the account. The friends say nothing either. Their action was the whole petition. “When Jesus saw their faith, he said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee” (Mark 2:5). Their faith, the verse says, and the paralysed man was the one who walked home carrying his own bed.
If you are too ill or too worn down to pray for yourself, that detail matters. There are seasons when someone else has to carry the mat. Let them. And if you’re the healthy friend, don’t wait for the right words, just get the person to Jesus by whatever stairs you can find. Phone a pastor, put a name on the church prayer list, sit by the bed and pray aloud. It may feel clumsy, like tearing up a roof. He noticed that too.
Luke records a stretch of days when the crowds around Jesus kept growing. Great multitudes came to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities, and he could easily have worked from sunrise to midnight. Then comes a quiet sentence: “And he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed” (Luke 5:16).
The verse is worth sitting with because it shows the order of his work. The healing ministry did not run on adrenaline. It ran on time alone with the Father, taken even when people were waiting and needy. If the Son of God needed that rhythm, those of us who pray for the sick certainly do.
This helps anyone who is a caregiver. You may be sitting up nights with a spouse or a parent, answering calls, filling pill organisers, and you may feel guilty about any minute spent away. Taking ten quiet minutes to pray, even in the hallway or the parked car, is not selfishness. It is how the next shift gets done. Ask a relative to cover for a bit, and use that stretch to tell God honestly how tired you are before you go back in.
Scripture does not treat doctors as rivals to prayer, but one short account warns about leaving God out altogether. Asa had been a good king for decades. Late in his reign he developed a disease in his feet that grew severe. The writer of Chronicles judges him plainly: “yet in his disease he sought not to the LORD, but to the physicians” (2 Chronicles 16:12).
Notice the target of the criticism. It isn’t the physicians, who are simply mentioned. It is the “not to the LORD.” Asa had already grown hard of heart, trusting alliances instead of prayer, and illness found him with nobody to talk to above the ceiling of his own palace.
The lesson is balance. Pray, and call the doctor. Pray in the car on the way to the appointment, and pray in the evening when the results are in. A believer who refuses treatment in the name of prayer is not copying the Bible’s pattern, and neither is one who treats prayer as an optional extra when things get serious. Ask your medical team what they recommend, then ask God for wisdom to follow it, strength to endure it and peace for the days between visits.
Some prayers for a sick person are met with nothing you can feel. The weeks pass, the numbers do not move, and the prayers begin to sound like echoes. David knew that stretch. “How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me?” (Psalm 13:1).
That question is in the Bible. Nobody edited it out to make the book more cheerful, which tells us God is not shocked by it. The psalm does turn by its last verses, but notice that David gets there by saying the hard thing first and then deciding to trust, not by pretending all was fine.
So bring the raw version. Say, I’m angry, I’m scared, I don’t understand. Then keep a few small habits going: read one psalm each morning, let someone pray with you each week, write down even tiny mercies like a good night’s sleep or a kind nurse. These are not tricks to force an answer. They keep a thread tied to God while you wait, and they remind you that silence is not the same as absence. If the heaviness starts to feel like despair, tell your doctor or a counselor soon.
Other collections you may find useful: Bible Verses About Prayer for Healing, Bible Verses About Prayer and Healing, Bible Verses For Prayer and Healing, Bible Verses About Prayer Of Confession and Bible Verses About Prayer in Difficult Times.
To study these verses in more depth, try Bible Gateway, Bible Hub and Bible Study Tools.
Scripture shows that it is right to ask God directly for healing. Moses prayed simply for his sister, and Hezekiah wept before the Lord and was heard.
This page brings together 17 King James Version references about prayer for Healing, drawn from 14 different books of the Bible.
Yes. The verses about prayer for Healing gathered here include passages from both the Old Testament and the New Testament, such as Genesis 20:17 and Philippians 4:6.
Philippians 4:6 is one of the verses about prayer for Healing referenced in this collection, alongside 1 John 5:14.
Yes, the verses referenced on this page, including Philippians 4:6, are quoted according to the King James Version (KJV), and are suitable for daily reading, memorization, or devotional use.
