The Cost Of Healing

We have been talking about how the kingdom of Heaven and the devil's kingdom are at war with each other. We have been sharing how the devil feels like his territory is being attacked any time that we do something to advance God's kingdom, such as healing the sick. Even though we don't usually think of healing in terms of fighting spiritual warfare battles, the devil views our activity that way. It is not unusual for him to feel attacked by our activity, and to attack us back. We call that type of attack "enemy counter-attack."

We have looked at a lot of examples of this from the bible, but I would like to share some real-life examples as well. The truth is that there is often a cost to moving in physical healing, because of spiritual warfare counter attacks. So we should not enter into healing unaware of that, but we should learn how to defend ourselves from the enemy's counter-attacks against us.

I think I've always known this (in theory) in the back of my mind. But recently the Lord pointed it out to me by reminding me of things that happened to me in my own life, and explaining them to me in terms of spiritual warfare.

I'd been struggling health-wise for the past many years. It seemed that when I'd go on a mission trip, I would be ok health-wise while I was on that trip. But I would get very sick when I came home, to the point where I couldn't function for four to six weeks after the trip. A couple of times, I ended up in the hospital shortly after returning from a mission trip, with things like serious kidney infections that required intravenous antibiotics, etc.

This sickness seemed to be a fact of my life and I started to think of it as "normal." I assumed that it was the result of some type of "spiritual warfare" related to doing foreign mission trips. I got used to being sick a lot, barely able to function on an ongoing day-to-day basis. This was frustrating for me because in the midst of my own physical problems, I would pray for sick people and they'd get healed. But I seemed to be sick much of the time.

Then this past year, the Lord put me in what He called a "season of rest." I did not do ministry related travel (mission trips, speaking at churches/conferences, etc). In fact, I seldom did any sort of ministry at home (teaching classes, serving on ministry teams, etc), except to do the day-to-day routine stuff of running GodSpeak.

The first two months, I needed the rest so bad that I did not even miss ministry. I was sick (and fatigued) most of those first two months, but then I started getting healthy again. And once I started to feel healthy most of the time, the Lord took me through a season of character development and personal growth and maturity, and He still did not release me to do much ministry. I began to miss it, and I began to feel like I wasn't "doing enough" to earn God's approval. He took me through a process of learning that He loved me whether or not I was actively doing things to advance His kingdom--and that lesson was harder for me to grasp than you might imagine. I had to stop deriving my sense of value from what I did for the kingdom, and start defining it in terms of my personal relationship with God.

I got to the point where I was so healthy that I could start working out, building endurance and doing fitness conditioning. I began doing a lot more physical activity, such as nightly hikes with my husband on a steep mountainous trail. It did not take long to forget how sick I'd been and to get used to feeling healthy and fit.

One day I was praying and thanking the Lord for returning me to good health. I told him that I'd not felt this good in a long time. And that is when He told me that I hadn't been doing much by way of healing ministry in a long time either. Then He said something interesting. He said, "Teresa, you did not always get sick on mission trips. In fact you usually came home from them healthy UNTIL..." then He mentioned the first trip I did where the main emphasis of the trip was on praying for the sick. Before that, it had been more about renewal and blessing and less about physical healing. But once the emphasis of the trips started including regular healing of the sick, that was when I started getting sick when I came home from the trips.

The God began to remind me about others in healing ministry who'd either gotten seriously sick or who had died of something like cancer. And that was my "ah-ha moment" when it clicked for me that there was a spiritual battle over healing the sick, complete with enemy counter attacks.

Not all counter-attacks are in the area of a person's own physical health. Some are in the area of family remembers getting seriously sick. Some are in the area of finances. Some are in the area of "sickness" entering into important relationships, etc. But the vast majority of the attacks I am aware of have to do with heath-attacks; either against you personally or against a loved one who is important in your life. But regardless of the form of the attack, you should be aware that more attacks will come. Rodney Hogue put it this way: "As you move into higher levels of healing ministry, you will experience A LOT more warfare."

The Lord has also been speaking to me, that I need to learn how to close the doors in my own life that allow the enemy to more easily attack me in the area of my own health. Open doors are any areas that the devil could use against to get a foothold in our life for harm. They can be emotional woundedness, sin, generational access, or any type of demonic attachment where the enemy can move in to attack us.

I am currently working on learning how to close the doors in my own life, so that when I get back to actively praying for the sick, the enemy won't be able to take me out health-wise.

As it turns out, I ended up I got a phone call while I was in the middle of writing this lesson. It was from a friend who is closely tied with John and Carol Arnott of the widely acclaimed Toronto Christian Fellowship Church. I told him about the teaching series I was writing. He told me that the Lord has been speaking similar things to John and Carol Arnott of the Toronto movement as well. They want their people to be aware that as they step up in ministry/anointing, there will be a step up of enemy attack against them. They have begun placing an emphasis on having people prepare for potential attack, by actively working to close the "open doors" in their lives.

They don't want their people to be "afraid" of the attack to the point where they back down from moving in their calling/anointing. They just ask them to be aware that the attacks will increase as the anointing increases; and they ask their people to prepare themselves for it. They do this by pulling away for a week of ministry to prayerfully discover and close any "open doors" for counter attack, by getting inner healing for past hurts, but examining themselves for any areas of unrepented sin in their lives, etc. The more squeaky clean a person is spiritually, the harder it is for the enemy to find areas to counter-attach them in when they start moving in higher levels of God's anointing.

The reason that they ask their pastors, leaders and ministry team to do this type of preparation is because they understand that it is a war, and that the more a person moves in God's power and anointing, the more the enemy will want to counter-attack them.

The same is true in each of our lives as well.