Healing "Preliminaries"

We are going to change gears from risk, and discuss how it is God's will for everybody to be healed. I have had to admit I have had to work through this particular issue; this has not been an easy one for me. I find that I had some convictions based upon the will of God, but most of my convictions were based upon experience instead of being out of God's Word. My experience told me that everybody isn't healed. My experience told me that many people that I pray for don't get healed -- in fact, some of the people I prayed for died. There are some people I looked at and thought, "If someone ought to be healed, that person ought to be healed." And they were not. That led me to conclude that it couldn't be the will of God for everyone to be healed.

I have been relentlessly pursuing the advancement of the kingdom of God and this made me take a look at certain things. It made me look at some of the things God uses to get people's attention -- to let them know that the kingdom of God has claims on their lives. I began examining this because I am all about populating Heaven and depopulating Hell. I want to see the kingdom of God manifest on this earth. So, I looked at the Bible to see how Jesus did evangelism and I discovered that He had this model that he modeled before His disciples:

1. He declared the kingdom of God
2. He demonstrated the kingdom of God
3. He told His disciples to do that
4. and He told the disciples to tell those who they discipled to do the very same thing.

In other words, there is supposed to be this perpetual discipling to do two things: declaring the kingdom of God and demonstrating the kingdom of God.

I realized that if I am going to do this, that I need to make this an important part of my own life. Even though I have been walking in this, I have been walking in praying for the sick and ministering deliverance to people, and taking people out of their bondage -- even though I have walked in that, I have never really made it that high of a priority. This means I have to make a little bit of a lifestyle change here, a little adjustment. I have to get out of my comfort zone a little bit.

Let me share an example: I was standing in line in Cosco, a local discount store. There was a black man in front of me who was around 40 years of age. He had a stroke about four years before, so could not walk very well. He could walk with a cane, but at that moment he was in one of those little riding things as he waited in line with his father.

Then I remembered how Jesus prayed for the sick. I was not there to pray for the sick, I was there to purchase some items and take them home. I thought to myself, "Oh, Lord, why did I get into this line?" I didn't even think about it and I got into this line. I'm in line with somebody who needs a healing. And I realized, "Oh, no, I bet You want me to pray for this person." I kept debating this as we waited in line. It was not a fast line -- you know how lines are. So we began talking and I was getting ready to ask him if I could pray for him. But by then, he was at the front of the line and ready to be "rung up." Saved by the cashier.

Then I got my stuff but I felt like I was supposed to pray. So I said, "OK Lord, if he is out there as soon as I go out the checkout stand, I will pray for him." But he had a good head start on me. I figured that if I kind of delayed a little bit here, I would probably pass that opportunity -- which was fine with me. Sure enough I got out of the store and there he was in the parking lot. So I prayed for him. I didn't see a healing take place, but the man was encouraged. His father was encouraged. They were blessed. God touched their lives by showing them that He heard them, and that He sent somebody there to talk to them and to pray for them. They were encouraged. I felt pretty good about it.

Let me share a similar story from our prophetic ministry teams. We have four teams. People sign up for prophetic ministry and the teams give them an encouraging word from the Lord to bless them. They minister on a couple of Monday nights each month, and there was one time when one team had nobody show up. One person signed up but they didn't show up. There were four people on the prophecy team that day. they said, "Since nobody's here I guess we should go someplace. Let's all go to Starbucks." And they ministered to people over at Starbucks, the local coffee shop, to encourage them and bless them. And God showed up and real ministry transpired.

God does not want ministry done solely within the confines of the church. He wants this stuff to be done outside of the four walls of the church, we just get to practice it in here.

When I began to pursue the anointing of healing on my life, I began to look around at the ministries and the places and such and began to read a lot about what people did. I began to realize that those who were successful in healing had as a very basic conviction that God wanted everybody to be healed. I realized that I did not share that conviction, but they all seemed to have that kind of conviction. It is a foundation, that when they pray for someone to be healed, they believed they were praying the will of God. I realized that if that was the case, then I probably wouldn't see too many people healed because I did not have faith to believe that.

I have been asking God just to show me His mind on this for about a year. If I knew that it was the will of God for people to be healed, and I knew deep in my heart, then I could pray with confidence. In fact, if I knew that, then I could pray with great confidence and pray boldly, knowing that God heard my prayers. I knew that because of 1 John 5:14-15. It says: "This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us -- whatever we ask -- we know that we have what we asked of Him."

I have always known this passage of scripture and I believe that if I know the will of God and I pray for the will of God, I know God will answer that, God will come through. My faith is always there. There is also a confidence level for this. And I didn't have this confidence because I had a bunch of, "Yeah, but what about this? ... Yeah but what about that? ... Yeah but what about this?" Perhaps you share some of those same questions.

So I am going to talk about two things. First of all I am going to talk about the confidence builders, confidence building points that help us understand the will of God for us to pray for the sick. And I am going to address the "Yeah, but what about ____?" questions.