Are They All Healed?
Are They All Healed When You Pray?
Everyone in the healing ministry experiences failure when
praying with others for healing. "Failure" in this connection is
simply not seeing the healing happen that you prayed for.
"Failure" in prayer is never absolute because God always
recognises our genuine efforts.
But we can reduce the percentage of failures by giving attention
to the possible causes. This article briefly discusses some of
the causes and suggests some solutions.
1. Faith The disciples once asked Jesus to increase their faith
(Luke 17. 5). His reply may seem somewhat obtuse. He certainly
did not respond to them as they expected, telling them what they
could do if they had even the tiniest amount of faith.
Is there a lesson for us here? Most certainly! It is, perhaps,
twofold. Firstly, we use what faith we have got at the time. An
obvious implication since Jesus did not do what they asked.
Secondly, we need to improve the quality of the faith we have.
Another clear, perhaps even clearer implication of Jesus'
response.
How? Not easy to give a short answer. But look at the life of
someone like Smith Wigglesworth. (Never heard of him? You really
do need to get down to your nearest Christian book shop!).
Reading the biographies about create considerable enthusiasm in
oneself - at first. Then you might begin to get frustrated after
the first four or five. Why? Because none of the writers (can?)
tell you how he came to have such great faith. He certainly did
not start with it!
In conversation recently a lady pointed to the real reason: "I
felt disgusted with myself," she said, "because of the great
love he had for the Lord". That is the ultimate key.
2. Time We do not, however, love God in isolation from his
people. In his first letter, at 4. 20 John tells us that a
person is a liar who says he loves God while hating his brother.
Indeed, he says that anyone who does not love his brother, whom
he has seen, cannot claim to love God, whom he has never seen.
We need to love those we pray with enough to spend whatever
amount of time is necessary to get to the root of their problem
and so pray effectively for them. Failure here is an important
cause of nonhealing.Yet Jesus has commanded us that: anyone who
loves God must also love his brother.
3. Unfocussed Prayer In fact, this follows from the last point.
We need to spend time making an adequate assessment of what is
wrong with the person only so that we can pray specifically into
that situation. This is something my wife and I lay considerable
stress on in our book "The Keys To Praying For Healing". Is
importance cannot be overlooked.
One can spend considerable time teaching individuals how to pray
with other for healing, laying stress on how specific the prayer
should be. But so many people, when it comes to actually
praying, fall back into something like "Oh Lord, please heal
him/her in all the ways he/she needs healing".
Somehow, God is so good that no prayer is a waste of time, but
this kind of prayer probably comes very close! Certainly,
praying like that will not result in many healings.
Focus your prayer exactly on the problem. If they have cancer,
or a damaged vertebrae, or Aids, or a cold, pray exactly into
that!
Letting God Be God Anyone can pray with another for healing. And
anyone can see that healing take place - because God's love for
us is so great. However, his knowledge and wisdom are also very
great and he sees things differently to us. So we shall not
always know why a particular healing does not happen. Sometimes
it is down to the factors we are discussing here. Sometimes it
is due to similar ones we do not have space to included here.
But sometimes nonhealing is due to something which we shall
never know about. We need to do all we can, certainly. But when
that has been done, there will always be cases which defy
explanation. On the other hand, there will also be cases where
God works in such a sovereign way that we are left speechless at
the "how" and the "why" of it.
Sometimes, in either of these instances, we just have to let God
be God"
5.Gifting Anyone can pray with another for healing. But if we
feel called into the healing ministry, we really ought to get
ourselves prayed with for a gift of healing.
Just as God can heal without us, so he can empower us without
any assistance from anyone else! But unless we know ourselves to
have been specifically blessed in this way, we really ought to
seek the prayers of others.
What others? Well, any Christian who know what he/she is about.
But there does seem to be a definite advantage in being prayed
with by someone known to have a gift of healing themselves. Many
healers will themselves testify to this. God can give when
anyone asks, but...