Precision is key to long-term effective healing ministry

Precision is essential to the healing ministry.  Without it, we often flail about, turn up the volume, and hope for results that seldom materialize. What do I mean by ‘precision’ and why is it so important?  Precision is accuracy in hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit during ministry. Every ministry situation provides you with many alternative ways that you can minister, but not every way will bring success.

When the Shunammite woman came to Elisha after her son died, notice what Elisha did.  He took a specific set of actions. Gehazi was to take the Prophet’s staff and lay it on the boy’s face.  He was not to speak to anyone on the way.

It is interesting that the boy did not immediately recover and Gehazi returned, unsuccessful.  Didn’t Elisha hear God, you may ask?  I’m inclined to say he did.  Why didn’t the child come back to life then?  I don’t think the Bible spells it out explicitly, but I would lay the blame on Gehazi’s doorstep,  as being an unsuitable vessel of grace.  He later proved this in the case of Naaman the Syrian.

In any case, when Elisha finally arrived, he didn’t anoint with oil or lay hands on the boy, but instead, did something that would be strange in any age.  He lay on the boy nose-to-nose (2 Kings 4:32) and eventually the boy came back to life.  Again, he didn’t walk around the bed seven times in the manner of Jericho or smash arrows on the ground as in the case of King Jehoash (2 Kings 13:18).  He was specific in what he did and got results.

Jesus put his spit on a man’s tongue (Mark 7:33), spat in another man’s eyes (Mark 8:23), and asked Lazarus to come forth (John 11:43).  He asked the 10 lepers to go and show themselves to the priests in one instance (Luke 17:12), but laid hands on the one leper who sought healing (Luke 5:13).  Jesus was precise, He didn’t try everything, He did one thing.

If you are in healing ministry, realize you can minister in hundreds of ways to any healing candidate.  Will every approach work?  No, but the one the Holy Spirit illuminates in your heart will in most cases.  I say most cases, because it is not that simple working through the vessels of clay that we are. Unforgiveness on the candidate’s part, tiredness on our part, or disorganization may just a few obstacles to healing.

Yes, we must know all the Biblical approaches to healing, many of which are listed on this blog.  But we must always strive to hear the Holy Spirit in every situation.  We must also be flexible and open to his direction during the healing encounter.  I have seen dual errors of treating every situation like a nail when you only have a hammer (e.g., laying on of hands on everyone you meet), and being so inflexible during ministry, you don’t receive a change in direction from the Holy Spirit.  We would do well to avoid both.

May you hear the voice of the Holy Spirit as you minister, may you be flexible enough to deal with changing circumstances in healing ministry.  Amen.

John 5:14 Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.

From this, we saw that sin can lead to sickness. Worry or drugs or sexual sin, among other sins, can lead to sickness of the body and mind. In case you were wondering, worry is a sin, as in Philippians 4:6;

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

Note that this is not a suggestion, it is a command—primarily for our own good. Physiologically, worry and stress raise cortisol levels in the body and can affect blood pressure, sleep patterns and so on. Anxiety and worry cannot coexist with faith.  Once they arrive, trust and faith in God departs.

So then, is all sickness the result of sin? Thank God, it is not, or some would be sick every day or week. In Jesus’ day, many believed that sickness was the result of a person’s sin or that of his parents, but Jesus debunked that very quickly:

John 9:1-3 As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.

So this sickness was not the result of sin by either the man or his parents. Some sickness comes from our being in a fallen world, others from our unwise choices and lifestyles, and yet others by demonic attack. Also, the actions of sinful or malicious people can cause sickness in others, such as parents who smoke.

Note that I didn’t mention God here. He is not the source of sickness. I find it strange that the obituaries of worldly people state that “after a yearlong fight against cancer….”, whereas Christians point to God or “God’s will” for their sickness. Many non-Christians recognize sickness as an enemy of all that is good, an evil that must be fought, while many Christians go on about God’s supposed will ‘permitting’ or causing them to be sick.

If you think this way, tell me this: If it was God’s will for you to be sick, why do you visit the doctor to escape “God’s will”? If it was His desire that your character be perfected in sickness, why do you ask for your name to be placed on the prayer chain to avoid this perfecting? If God wanted you ravaged by illness, why not ask the brethren to pray for you to become more sick, so as to enter His will more deeply? The faith-sapping myths we propagate in the church today are a tragedy.

Why is it that wise Christians cannot tell God’s will until after the event? The person died of sickness, ergo, it was God’s will that they died. The person recovered from sickness, thus it was God’s will that they recover. This is a “que sera, sera” Christianity, a lazy spirituality that tries to infer God’s will after the fact. It has more in common with fatalistic Mid-Eastern and Eastern religions than Christianity. If you know God’s will, tell me before we pray, so if it is not His will, we won’t bother. However, not one of these wise ones ever knows until afterwards—going by sight and not by faith.

I can tell you God’s will for the very sick young man with a heartbroken wife and three young children all crying out to Him. It is for him to be healed, period. That is His will before I pray and that is His will after I pray, whether he gets up or stays down. God’s will for that sick child? The same, of course. Why? Because healing is in His Word and His Word is His will.

Why do tragedies occur then, you ask? There are many reasons, but why on earth wouldn’t they occur when we continue teaching unbelief throughout our churches….because we, as a church do not believe all of the Atonement. As a pastor, you doth protest too much that you believe. It doesn’t matter what you profess in conversation. Do you preach healing? Do you regularly pray for the sick? No? Why not? Because you don’t believe it. I learned a long time ago that people do what they believe and avoid what they don’t believe. Most pastor/teachers don’t believe in the full Atonement. If they want to argue about healing being in the Atonement, fine, we don’t have to bring that up.  They just don’t believe in the many healing promises in the Word or in doing the works Jesus said we would do.

Finally, some will argue “why the undue focus on healing?  There are other things to preach about, aren’t there?” Yes there are.  But let’s look at Jesus, in Matthew 4:23:

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.

Jesus focused on healing quite a bit, didn’t He?  He didn’t have other things to preach about?  Somehow though, our gospel has been transformed into a shadow of that which Jesus and the Apostles preached.  It has changed from the Full Gospel to the “Part-Gospel”.

If you are one of few who preach and minister healing regularly, God bless you. May He strengthen you, embolden you, impart spiritual gifts to you, infuse you with the power of the Holy Spirit and may signs and wonders accompany your ministry. Amen.

…to be concluded…

The first question is whether there is a connection between sin and sickness. The answer is “yes” to the general question. By the general question, I mean that there was no sickness before Adam’s fall. The entrance of sin brought sickness in tow. Notice also that in the Atonement, God introduced the solution to sin and sickness, i.e.,

Isaiah 53:5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

Psalm 103:2-3 Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits- who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases

So that shows the link between sin and sickness in the general causative sense. The fallen state of humanity is the background to all sickness. However, we see that healing and the forgiveness of sins became available through the second Adam—Jesus Christ. I say “became available”, because they are not automatic. The new currency of exchange with God has become faith, and forgiveness and healing are available through faith.

Now, let’s look at the individual level. Can sin bring about sickness? Yes it can. The sin of worry can bring about many stress-related diseases. Fornication can lead to sexual diseases. Anger and violence can lead to physical harm. Illegal drugs destroy the whole person. Thus, many types of sin can lead to sickness and harm to the mind and body. The best authority here is Jesus, who, after healing the disabled man at the Pool of Bethesda, found him and said;

John 5:14  Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.

Jesus warns the man that further sin can lead to sickness.  Some may then conclude that all sin leads to sickness or that all sickness is the result of the sick person’s sin. However, these would be erroneous assumptions. I’ll explain why in the next post…stay tuned…

2 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda[a] and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 3 Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed and they waited for the moving of the waters. 4 From time to time an angel of the Lord would come down and stir up the waters. The first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever disease he had

Some manuscripts do not have the underlined portion, but it is not needed if you read on—the meaning is clear. From time to time, God would stir the waters and heal the first person who entered. How does this relate to the way God heals? Well, this may sound strange, but He often heals just because He wants to. Not because anyone prayed or because anyone fasted – He is a healer and on occasion, He will heal—a God-initiated healing. I listened to a pastor once who quoted Psalm 115:3,

3 Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him.

I love this scripture. In other words, God does what He wants, he neither needs our permission nor our activity to show mercy. This makes sense, for “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us..” No one interceded for God to send His son to save us, yet He did so all the same. Many of us were trained in the Word of Faith school where we unconsciously believe that there must be a whirlwind of prayer before God acts. This is not always the case.

‘Well,” someone from the Faith school might say, “thanks for the non-actionable piece of information”. I know it sounds that way…if there’s nothing I can do, and it’s all up to God, it’s just another interesting fact. That’s not totally true however. Although this was God healing spontaneously, notice that there was something that the sick people did—they hung out at the pool.

What am I saying? I’m saying, if you are sick, do the same thing as they did. Attend healing meetings where the power of God is active. Also attend meetings where there is intense praise and worship, and where healing is preached. There are many accounts of people are healed at meetings where no one laid a hand on them. The secret is that where God’s Name is glorified, He is often active in mercy.

This then, is another method by which our Lord heals—God-initiated healing, in other words. May we see and hear of more God-initiated healings in our day as we lift up the Name of Jesus. Amen.

The complaint against raising peoples’ hopes falsely is one I’ve heard again and again. Actually, Jesus heard it too when he went to raise Jairus’ daughter in Mark 5,

38 When they came to the home of the synagogue ruler, Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. 39 He went in and said to them, “Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.” 40 But they laughed at him. After he put them all out, he took the child’s father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was.

It says, “they laughed at him”. This is not mirth as in watching a comedy show. It is more a bitter, sardonic laughter. They were probably thinking, “what nonsense… what a cruel thing to do to Jairus, raising his hopes in this way”. Jesus then did what you have to do sometimes when praying for a sick person, namely He put them out. If folks bring unbelief to a specific battle, just put them out. It’s better that way.

It is good to know what lies ahead. For some churches, it is not a great stretch if they believed along such lines initially, but for most North American and Western European churches, such a renewed focus in a church would be disruptive. This renewed focus must therefore be preceded by prayer and fasting. As I wrote in an earlier post, healing is hard, not easy. It is easy for God of course, but challenging for jars of clay to see through. Mindsets and training must change, and you will surely initiate a spiritual battle in seeking the release of captives from sickness and oppression. In Acts 10 we see,

38 how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.

Threaten the enemy’s work and you’ll get some pushback. You will win because Jesus already defeated him, but there will be a battle. Ok then, the first step is the choice to go down this road, the second is to invest time in prayer as you begin the journey. In my next post, I’ll share my thoughts on the role of intercession, teaching and training in creating a Healing Church.

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.

If the blind man had been a modern-day charismatic, his response to the question, “do you see anything?” would have been, “I’m healed, Hallelujah!”, and he would have left only partially healed. The reason is that some believers think that any discussion of your actual condition – if it’s not restored – is a lack of faith.

Clearly, this is not sustained by this and other scriptures. I have interviewed many in healing ministry, who you have to painfully extract the actual condition from. “What is the issue?” you ask. “I’m fine and blessed,” they say. Well, you are blessed, but if you were fine, you’d be at home with your feet up instead of here, seeking healing.

As a prayer minister, I was careful to ask individuals how they felt during ministry – exactly how they felt- not using “modern-day faith-speak”. Paul writes in Romans 4:17:

As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.” He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.

Notice that he did not say “calls things that are as though they were not”. This scripture relates to Abraham, who in verse 19, faced the facts, but still believed God’s intention to fulfill His promise,

19 Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. 20 Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, 21 being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.

If you feel pain, you feel pain, and you can tell Jesus, the minister, or the doctor about it. If you tell me that the pain is gone and it’s not, I’ll smile and say goodbye even though the ministry and God’s work in you may not be completed. Do you see this?

However, you can and must also speak the reality of God’s Word into and over your situation. You can add: “I believe that this pain is dealt with and overcome by the Word of God and by Jesus’ wounds”. The pain is not yet gone, but you can speak a pain-free reality into your life by the Word and expect to see it happen.

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.

This is notable in being the only account in the gospels where Jesus took two efforts at healing an individual. He was and is the Son of God, but again I’ll say that He ministered as a man anointed by the Holy Spirit. That’s why He did no miracles until the Holy Spirit descended on Him at the Jordan. This is important because if we view His miracles as performed in His capacity as the Son of God, we cannot ever imagine ourselves doing his works or the “greater works” He said we would do.

Note also that this was not the first time Jesus asked or verified whether a person was fully healed. In other words, he didn’t do the “line them up, knock them down, and off to the next meeting” ministry approach that we have largely adopted in Pentecostal and Charismatic circles. Jesus cared deeply about the people He ministered to and whether their healing was complete. You cannot know if you do not ask. Sometimes, the truth is that ministers are afraid to ask.

Let me say that I have seen some healings in these types of settings in my many years as a prayer counselor and a “picker-upper” after some popular healing ministers. However, they have been very few and far between, truth be told. That is why I’m a big fan of Healing Rooms (link here) and local healing teams. First, you have time to speak with and pray with a team of Healing Room ministers. Deep issues that are obstacles to your healing can frequently be surfaced and dealt with. They can also address your theology on healing, and most important, follow-up on improvements that you are experiencing.

I’ll share more on Healing Rooms in my next post, but have you been ministered to in a Healing Room? Are you a Healing Room worker? If so, please share your perspectives on Healing Rooms.

25 And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years… 27 When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” 29 Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. 30 At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”

We see here that she was not prayed for, nor did anyone anoint her with oil. Rather, she made her way against the crowd and against convention and impetuously touched Jesus cloak.

What makes this all the more interesting is that Jesus did not know who the power had flowed out to. This reinforces the point I have made more that once, namely, He ministered as an anointed man, not as the Son of God.

Can this apply to us? Yes, absolutely. I once strategically headed off a UK pastor with a strong gift of healing after he had finished teaching and was headed for the door. I asked him to lay hands on my stomach as I had been having persistent stomach troubles. I must confess I literally grabbed his hand and laid it on my stomach and never had those troubles again. I was impetuous, a bit like the woman with the issue of blood or the folks in Acts 5,

15 As a result, people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by.

They just caught his shadow and were healed as a result. Find pastors who have powerful healing anointings and be impetuous if you have to. Have you had a similar experience?

14 When they came to the crowd, a man approached Jesus and knelt before him. 15 “Lord, have mercy on my son,” he said. “He has seizures and is suffering greatly. He often falls into the fire or into the water. 16 I brought him to your disciples, but they could not heal him.” 17 “O unbelieving and perverse generation,” Jesus replied, “how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy here to me.” 18 Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of the boy, and he was healed from that moment.

I believe this topic is not well understood by believers in general and by healing ministers in particular. Some diseases-not all, but some, are the result of the presence and activity of one or more demons or evil spirits. Cast out the demons and healing results.

Certainly, sickness and disease in general do not come from God-they come from the devil. Unfortunately, for every Christian I have heard attribute disease to the devil, I must have heard five attribute it to God. The Bible says in James 1:17,

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

Non-believers routinely run telethons to “fight our enemy, cancer” or “fight the enemy, cystic fibrosis”, but Christians say ‘lt came from God’. How tragic! God is good and doesn’t give disease to His kids as presents.

Therefore, in this avenue of healing, healing is obtained through deliverance. This of course, requires knowing if such demons are present, or discernment-the topic of the next post. Please share your own experiences of healings obtained in this way.

1 Now about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant. 2 You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols. 3 Therefore I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit. 4 There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. 5 There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. 6 There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men.

One of my least popular conversation starters in every cell group I’ve attended is,“so what gifts of the Spirit does everyone here operate in?” Typically, I have received looks of befuddlement or worse for my pains. The fact is though, that as a church, we have become largely ignorant of spiritual gifts. Even Charismatic and Pentecostal churches rarely teach about gifts in a systematic way. Nor do they develop them, which is a different subject altogether.

Well, if the Bible says we should not be ignorant about spiritual gifts, I believe we ought to teach about and develop the gifts, don’t you? One of these is “gifts of healings.” It is expressed in the plural- ‘gifts’ and ‘healings’ in the Greek.

7 Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. 8 To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit

You and I can pray successfully for healing without the gifts of healing. A person walking in gifts of healing would have more success with less time and effort spent. Sounds unfair? Get over it – that’s just the way it is-not everyone has the same gifts. You may walk in another, equally effective gift. Do you walk in gifts of healings? (To be continued…)