Partial healings frequently occur

Continued from Part 1 –>

We earlier looked at the account of Jesus’ healing in Mark 8;

22 They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. 23 He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?”
24 He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.”
25 Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 26 Jesus sent him home, saying, “Don’t even go into the village.”

What we learn here is that partial healings can occur. Why? Perhaps because we are complex and fragile beings who cannot handle the whole healing at once. Perhaps we must deal with some heart issues like forgiveness that get in the way of receiving.

The “why” is not important, What is important is that it shows us partial healing can and does occur. When it does, what should our approach be? Keep getting after it.

Again I say, be encouraged and continue to get after it. Some have been healed after many sessions of prayer. In Hebrews 6:12, we read;

We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.

In today’s church, we often have faith but lack patience. If we don’t receive right away, we say God has stopped healing for all time.  We inherit the promises through faith and patience (some translations say ‘perseverance’). We should have faith, but also persevere.

In Luke 11 and Luke 18, Jesus conveyed to us the importance of steadfastness, urging us to “pray and never give up“. We can be too quick to give up, too quick to surrender. He wouldn’t tell us not to give up if everything was going to be easy.

I have prayed up to a year for healing. Nothing happening was followed by nothing happening. But healing finally came. Why so long? Brothers, I honestly don’t know. I have no clue other than we are opposed by the enemy of our souls.

I just knew to be dogged and to persevere. Do the same and the same God who, under no duress, filled His Book, the Bible, with promises of healing, will be there to heal.

Get after it.

Partial healings frequently occur

Partial healing can be a stumbling block for many in the healing ministry. It is a complex subject for many reasons. Some ask, “If God is healing and He has all power, why doesn’t He do it completely?”

Others get discouraged when they see those they pray for receive only partial relief, and in some cases, lose even that which they received.

Now, as usual there are many facets to this. Let’s be clear though, when I talk about partial healing, I mean that which is verifiable in the cold light of day.

There are preachers who ride in for the weekend, pray for the masses and ask for a show of hands for those who have received their healing. They then ask for a show of hands for those who have received partial healing.

Much of the second category and some of the first are just exercises in emotion, exercises in adrenalin. Jesus did not go about with microphone and speakers whipping his flock into a frenzy – His healings were verifiable when the dust has settled and the preacher has left town.

Pity the hopefuls who come expecting healing and don’t want to disappoint the preacher who asks them if they have “partial relief” from their symptoms. Especially when a microphone is poked in their faces.

Ninety nine percent of the time, the answer is; “Yes, the pain is less” or “Yes, I feel a little better”. While in some cases this is true, in most cases, they just want to save the pastor embarassment or avoid “negative confession”.

How do I know? Over two decades spent in healing ministry, many being a follow-up minister after the “big guns” left town.

Here’s the classic account in Mark 8;

22 They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. 23 He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?”
24 He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.”
25 Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 26 Jesus sent him home, saying, “Don’t even go into the village.”

Jesus ministered to the blind man in verse 22 and asked him whether he saw anything. He said he saw people, but they looked like trees. In other words, there was an improvement, but he still did not have normal eyesight.

In our day, the one ministered too might have declared “I’m healed, in Jesus Name!!”. Well, obviously, he would not be. Ministry would then be over and you might see moving trees for the rest of your life. We can become so overspiritual, we stop making sense.

After praying for a person, I ask them to tell me exactly what they experienced. If nothing, I tell them to recheck after awhile and if healing still doesn’t show up in a reasonable amount of time, we can have another ministry session.

I tell them to tell me exactly how and what they feel and experience, not what they think I want to hear.

This is one of the reasons I am such a fan of smaller healing settings like Healing Rooms, where you can come back and receive continuing ministry.

continued–>

I watched this yesterday. While I haven’t researched it completely, it appears very compelling. Very compelling indeed.

While this account is consistent with many I have heard and seen of visiting heaven and/or hell after death (and subsequent resuscitation), I’m not in 100% agreement with everything on the Mickey’s website.

However, insofar as he believes in God, the Trinity, man’s sin, the need for repentance, the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus, and salvation through his blood shed for us – God bless him and thank God for His mercy.

God’s mercy is always astounding. There are accounts of the unsaved who die and then have an encounter with Jesus, repent, and are able to come back saved. Why does that happen? God only knows. Most unsaved folks don’t receive that opportunity and shouldn’t bet on it.

Well, I hope you enjoy the account as much as I did.

Emotional sickness can hurt as bad as physical

When the Holy Spirit was poured out at Pentecost, Peter quoted Joel in Acts 2:17-21. Verse 17 went as follows:

17 “‘In the last days, God says,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.

Young men see visions because they have the energy and strength to fulfill them. Old men dream dreams about things that will come and things pertaining to glory, but they don’t always have the strength to fulfill them.

Now, I’m not yet an old man, but I’ll share with you that I don’t think I could do some ministry I did as a young man with the inner-city homeless. That was a vision and God gave me strength to fulfil it. Yes, there is still strength today, but for other types of ministry.

When I was a young man, I approached healing energetically, looking for those with pain, cancers, diabetes, and the dying. I was young and strong and had vision. I’m still looking for them now, but I’m also more sensitive to those with emotional hurts.

At that time, I didn’t see emotional or even spiritual hurts, just the physical. That’s young and energetic for you. I have since learned that emotional hurts and sickness can be every bit as terrible as physical sickness.

We go to crusades and look for wheelchairs and are excited when cancers are gone and the crippled walk, but we should also attend to the emotionally sick.

There are those who are demonically oppressed, those who are simply emotionally hurt and sick, all of whom need deliverance and/or healing. We need to be sensitive to them though their healings are not always spectacular, because Jesus died for their emotional hurts and sicknesses, just as He died for their physical sickness.

There are those who are so emotionally devastated they can no longer function. There are those tormented by distressing thoughts and memories, and there are those filled with debilitating regret and pain from wrong decisions taken in the past.

Can the Lord heal them instantly? Yes. Will He? It is a little bit complicated, but I remember the Lord telling a pastor who was ministering to an emotionally sick person the following (and I’ll paraphrase):

“The layers of emotional issues this person has are so many and so intertwined that if I undid all the issues at once, it will kill them.” And so the pastor had to go slow, layer by layer of spiritual and emotional baggage.

Over the years, I realized that while we all look for instant healing (and should expect it), certain people – not all, but some – got in their situations through years and years of sin and bad decision making. It can often take time to unravel them and get them healed.

I have prayed for people with cancer, seen the cancer gone and them, see the person light up a cigarette on leaving the church. Were all the issues dealt with? No.

I have seen drug addicts gloriously met by the Spirit of God, but leave church and go and use. Human beings are complex, fearfully and wonderfully made. It’s not always about laying hands on their heads and running off to the next meeting in another town.

Some people need continuous ministry for a period of time in order to be completely healed. This is so whether we are a fast food society or not. It is also that way, because their will, their souls, and their decision making mechanisms are involved.

So, as ministers, be more aware of emotional hurts and sickness and remember that you will need time and dedication to see the work of healing perfected in many of these believers.

Here is Part 2 as promised…. The same woman who first walked with halting steps after being helped out of a wheelchair a few days before. Not an “unknown” (although we are all known by God), but someone who is well known.

Funny how people fight to disbelieve. It is a tough system – the world system. Unbelief and doubt are easier to settle into than faith for most. After we grow in the Word though, faith becomes easier than unbelief. In sticky situations, I always end up looking for God’s move and fully expecting it to come. It is just easier for me to believe for supernatural intervention than to drop down.

I’m sure the naysayers will step up soon. But who cares. Think about this. Jesus did numerous and spectacular miracles, none of which could be contended with. The response? They killed him.

He couldn’t (not wouldn’t, but couldn’t) do any powerful miracles in his own hometown because of their unbelief. Perhaps its like a pastor once said, grimly: “healing is not for everyone, just those who believe…” Sometimes I want to lean into that tree, but I know it is just bad widespread poor teaching that leaves the church so far short of the miracles Jesus said we would do in his Name.

Enjoy the second video..and no, it is not CGI (computer generated imagery)either.

The most interesting thing about this video is that the normal naysayers and skeptics have had to shut their mouths about Delia Knox.  I have searched the Internet for skeptics and found none.. or perhaps none .. yet.

Here’s the deal.  Delia Knox is a well-known gospel singer who was rendered a paraplegic after a car accident 20 years ago.  Well-known is the key, so that no one can doubt the authenticity of her condition.  She is healed in this video.

Sad that you can almost hear the doubt of video-watchers (Christian, not even unbelievers)…  But wait until you see the second video…  Glory to God, it is something else!! Watch Part 1 to the end and then watch part 2!!

That's Why We Praise God

Actually, why would I praise God for my sickness?  He obviously didn’t do it, so why praise Him for it?  John 10:10 tells me that: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.“  If you believe sickness is anything other than destruction, sorry, but we are not called to be masochists.

Listen to what Leah praised the Lord for in Genesis 29:35: She conceived again, and when she gave birth to a son she said, “This time I will praise the LORD.”

David praised the Lord also: David sang to the LORD the words of this song when the LORD delivered him from the hand of all his enemies.

We also glorify God, being:  a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

In Matthew 15:31, hear what happened:  The people were amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled made well, the lame walking and the blind seeing. And they praised the God of Israel.

People praise God for deliverance, for creating the heavens and earth, creating man (not sick!), for healing, for giving us an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.  I don’t see where we are told to praise God for sickness.

We need to understand these things better.  If a strange man came your house and demanded your kids, you would fight him with all of your might, even if he had a knife or gun.  But for many church folk, when sickness appears, some of us start praising and thanking God for it.  Why is that?!!

One dear lady told me she praised God for being sick, so she could rest.  Another told me that she praised God for her sickness because it gave her time to be with her family.  Can you see how twisted this thinking is?  Do you have to be sick to rest?  Do you have to be sick to spend time with your family?  Of course not!  Just do it!

To be continued…

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

The idea is to make people self-reliant, so we don’t have to give them aid over and over again. It is a good principle, often used in the context of aid to poor countries – teaching them to farm, to provide for themselves, so they don’t become dependent on aid.

There can even be a spiritual analogy, where we teach people how to pray for themselves or minister to others independently, so they can do so without their teacher or instructor.  Again, this is a great idea that makes us self-reliant and productive.

There is a danger though, in stretching the spiritual analogy too far.  God taught Israel in the desert, not so they could become independent, but so they would learn to depend on Him.  When He told them to go and possess the land, they balked, but later decided to go on in their own strength.  The results were predictable—defeat.

Time after time, after God gave both victories and peace, Israel would begin to believe in themselves and trust in their own strength.  Then they would face defeat again and have to repent and restore fellowship with God.  God gave Israel manna and quail not to teach them how to grow manna and trap quail, but to teach them to depend on Him for everything.

Remember the 120 in the Upper Room?  They had to wait until the Holy Spirit came on them in power and then rely on Him everyday in preaching to the ends of the earth.  Their strength was not a requirement; in fact it was an obstacle.  Paul himself says, in speaking to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 2:4),

4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.

It is always better to go in God’s power.  That’s why He tells us in Ephesians 6:10,

“Be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power”

Paul also states in 2 Corinthians 1:7-9:

8We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. 9Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.

Since even the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength, why would I want to go in my own strength anyway? There is no area of greater reliance on God than in the ministry of healing. In so many areas of ministry, you can ‘wing it’ without it being evident that you lack a reliance of God. Powerful prayers, great-exhortation, erudite preaching can all take place in man’s strength.

However, in healing ministry, it is immediately apparent if we have reached a place of dependence on God or not. When we do, there are healings, when we don’t, a lot of nothing will be happening.

Does this mean that dependence on God always brings healing? Sadly, no. what I mean is that, dependence on Him in he ministry of healing is necessary, but not sufficient. While simple, healing is also quite multifaceted, leading us to remember the scripture in 2 Timothy 2:15 that says:

“study to show yourselves approved of God, a work man who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of truth”

What this means is that the Word and the Spirit are essential for healing.  The Holy Spirit will always break yokes and heal, but without the Word, we cannot understand fully what He says.  We need to know the Word on Healing.

So, in closing, God teaches us, not become self-sufficient, but to depend on Him even more – on His Word and His Spirit.  No matter how mature we are and how much we know, we must rely on Him more and more in the ministry of miracles.  May we learn to do this.

A careful reading of the Gospels and the Book of Acts provides electrifying ideals of what healing should be. I mentioned in an earlier post that Jesus healed as a man anointed by the Holy Spirit. We know this because His healing ministry only began after the Holy Spirit descended on Him when baptized in the Jordan. We can also assume this because Jesus Himself said in John 14:12:

“I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”

I’m not sure how you read that but I read greater as meaning greater. This is the challenge that should motivate pastors and laypeople alike to strive towards the goal that Jesus set. I’ve met believers who will focus on the ‘greater’ part and say “..yes, but Jesus meant salvation, not healing, because we would lead people to salvation, which could only happen after his death and resurrection”. Then they proffer a wan smile, saying, “this is what He meant by ‘greater’”.

Fine, I think that is silly, but fine anyway. If you believe that, then strike out the second sentence and look carefully at the first. Jesus said you would do the same things as Him if you believed in Him. If you don’t accept greater miracles, at least do the same miracles that He did. However, you would really have to distort the scripture to read the first sentence as salvation, not healing.

Thus my thought is that healing ministry should be more powerful and more effective than medical science. It should meet the ideal set by Jesus. Let’s think it through. If we could do more through funding medical missions (which I love!) than through miraculous means, then we as a church are corporately not close to God’s ideal. Our inclination when sick should be to get in the car and go to church, but very few believers would. In fact, many tend to come to healing rooms and crusades only after the doctors have admitted defeat and there are no human options left.

I’m not blaming congregants, mind you. Many never heard a sermon on healing, so where would their faith come from anyway? Faith still comes …”from hearing the Word”. My prayer is that a new generation of pastors, preachers and workers of miracles would rise up to the ideals of Jesus. Do you feel the same way?

“Do you believe that God wants to heal you now?” I ask. Again, he answers in the affirmative.  Great, I think, a man who is squared away on his theology, primed and ready to be prayed for.  So I begin to pray.  Nothing happens.  I mean, not a thing.  Nothing, like in “the heavens were like brass”.  So I do what law-abiding prayer ministers all across the world do when “nothings” happen-I pray louder…  There’s still not much going on so, I try binding and loosing.  He’s still looking at me with expectation, so I get up and walk around, diving into diverse tongues.

Well, I begin to tire after a while, so I finally quiet down and sit.  I learned a long time ago that:

volume ?power

However, this simple equation had slipped my mind temporarily, it seems.  So I just wait.  Just as I begin to formulate the well-worn line of how healings may take time and he should keep believing, I receive a thought.  “Is there anyone you hold something against, have not forgiven?” He says no.  Well, a false alarm, I think.  Or perhaps not.  I say to him not to make up things to please me, but think over the question one more time.  I wait….and I wait.  I see a tear run down his cheek and then another.  I ask, “who is it?” He quietly answers, My sister.  I never forgave her for what she did years ago.”

He went into what the issue was, but that’s not important here.  What is important is that after a while, we managed to get him to release that unforgiveness and receive his healing.  I love Healing Rooms and will take a good Healing Room with anointed no-names over a well-known minister in a Crusade.  Why?  Because you can come back-the Healing Room ministers aren’t running off to the next town.  They can pray with you until relief comes. Hey, I love the Crusades too, don’t get me wrong.

Back to unforgiveness.  In Matthew 6: 14, Jesus said:

“For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”

This is one of the major obstacles to healing I have encountered in Healing ministry.  After a time, I made it a regular practice to ask prior to praying for healing. The funny thing is some folks don’t even know they have unforgiveness until they think about it.  Have you had the same experiences, as a minister or as one receiving ministry?  Please share.