Of course, cessationists have nothing in this, as they don't even believe that the Spirit can speak to us today, let alone heal. But directionalism is a charismatic understanding that makes better sense of why some healings occur and others don't.

Returning to the original four ways that Pentecostals explain a lack of healing:

1. The person praying or the person being prayed for didn't have enough faith (Matthew 8:26, 13:58, 14:31, 17:20; Hebrews 11; Romans 10:17; and more)

2. The person being prayed for has unconfessed sin (1 John 1:6-10)

3. The person praying didn't do it right (didn't fast – Mark 9:29; didn't say the right things; didn't have the right technique)

4. The devil did it (Job; Luke 13:11-16; Matthew 9:32-33; 2 Corinthians 12:7)

There are in fact Scripture passages on these and I've highlighted them (I don't think there's any backing for doing the right technique: that's just our tendency to take God out of the picture and rely on ourselves). But I want to add another two that I think are much more prominent than any of these:

5. The person praying presumed that God wanted them to pray the way they did (the power is not in the technique but in God—see Scriptural references already cited)

6. The person praying presumed that God wanted them to pray for the thing that they prayed for (it may not be God's timing yet, for many and various reasons—see Faith AND Humility for further discussion)

These are like the presumptions that the Israelites made when taking the Promised Land—"God is with us, He will give us the victory!" And why wouldn't you? It's an easy mistake to make. The promise is there, so we incorrectly think there is no presumption: "God has said we will take this land. We should pray for this breakthrough!" But just like how God wants us to pray for "God's will to be done on earth as it is in Heaven", this does not mean that God will bring full perfection on earth before Jesus comes back (see series Mission of the Church for what we should expect before Jesus' second coming).

We must expect healings, salvations, deliverances and more; but we must also expect sin, the devil, persecution, as well as God's agenda being different from ours, and our need to learn through discipline and hard times. If we are tempted to ignore these parts of Scripture, we are in dangerous territory, creating a god to suit our theology.

If you can handle it, there are others which we haven't gone into, but which many cessationists hold onto such as:

7. God uses sickness and hardship to discipline a person

8. Suffering builds character

9. Suffering draws us near to God

10. Serving others through suffering reveals Christ

There are a great many good books on this last part, so I don't see the need to cover this as well.

What we should do when healings and breakthrough don't occur

Directionalism allows for Paul's thorn, Job's experience, and situations like this without thinking like we have to minimise them or explain them away.

God wants to glorify himself so he's not going to allow you to get conceited and bring glory to yourself—hence Paul's thorn, and why God would not heal Paul unless and until that threat had gone away.

God had discipled Job up to be able to endure the testing that he went through, and so give glory to himself, and put to shame the 'best' (worst?) that the devil had.

The person who suffers long-term unwanted feelings can bring about incredible reliance on God—redeeming the situation. Perhaps God wants to take this person from a place of comfort to a place of energised and infectious faith?

The person full of faith who contracts cancer and dies young was not a secret sinner, but perhaps God allowed that to remind the rest of us that our time here is short and we should not get cosy. There's work to do, and we ought not put our hope in the things of this world.

Sometimes, we revere the person so much that we think—why her? Why him? Perhaps we were in danger of putting too much faith in the person, and not enough faith in God, and it had nothing to do with them.

Looking to God's direction reminds us of who's in control, and that we do not know everything or control everything. It reminds us where the power comes from, where healing comes from, where everything comes from, and that we are simply to be God's instrument for him to play. When we play like we're little gods, we become discordant, independent from God, and we put ourselves out of alignment with God's plans. That's why there's no single way to heal, and why even though Canaan was promised to the Israelites, they still had to continually go to God for direction to win their battles.

So to be able to promise people full healing and breakthrough without actually hearing that from God is nothing less than presumption (see 1 Samuel 15:23 for what God thinks about that). There are much better ways to understand and go about the miraculous.