A Beginner's Guide To Healing

We have spent the last 12 lessons looking at different aspects of healing prayer, learning how to pray for the sick. This lesson will look at what to do when we are done praying, or how to conclude the ministry time. Our goal is to minister in love, and to treat the person we are ministering to with dignity and respect. We want to manifest the love of Christ in every aspect of our ministry. This is why we don't just want to say "amen" and walk away from the person as if we did not care about them. We do some post-prayer follow-up.

Getting Feedback

The first thing we should do is to establish whether or not some healing took place, and how much healing occurred. We must determine if it was a complete healing, a partial healing, or if there was no noticeable change in the condition. With some conditions, healing is obvious: such as if a crippled person gets out of their wheelchair and walks, we know a healing has taken place. Or if the person was in pain and the pain went away, we know God has done something. But other conditions are not as obvious. For instance, a person with kidney failure requiring dialysis but not be in any observable pain or discomfort at the time you pray for them, so it is tricky to determine if there has been any change. They usually have to go to their their doctor for a some blood test to verify that type of healing. And we should never advise a person to stop taking their medication or medical treatments after we have prayed for them.. instead we should send them back to their doctor and let the doctor be the one to take them off of the medicine. (More than one doctor has been converted by seeing their patients come back to them with miraculous healings.)

In most cases, we can "test" the condition to see if there was some sort of improvement. We can ask the person to test it out, to try and make it hurt. If it used to hurt and now they can't make it hurt, we know God has healed it. Or we can ask the person to do something they could not do before, such as asking a person with a bad shoulder to stretch their arm over their head, or asking a person with a whiplash to turn their head strongly from side to side.

There are times when God does a partial healing instead of a complete one. Because of this, I like to run a baseline before I pray to get an idea of the condition. For instance, if someone has a vision problem, I have they try to read various posters or banners in the room to see just how well they see before we pray. Of if they have a back problem, how far can they bend down before it hurts. Then after we pray, I rerun the test to determine if there has been some improvement. Maybe before we prayed the person could only bend down a little and afterwards they could almost touch their toes. That lets us know the Lord has done something. It is important to get honest feedback from the person.. feedback is our friend not our enemy. It encourages us as we hear about what has done. Also, in those cases where God has done something, but not a complete healing, feedback can alert us to the need for more prayer. We might want to stop and bless what God is doing and ask Him to complete the healing.

Once we have established how much healing has occurred, we need to offer a few words of follow-on advice to the person. We call this advice "post-prayer follow-up" or "post-prayer counseling." The type of post-prayer follow-up we do varies, depending on the cause of the problem and on how much of a healing the Lord has done.

When The Person Is Mostly or Completely Healed

Sometimes when a person is dramatically healed, you might not get a chance to do any sort of follow-up at all. Sometimes the person gets so excited that they just can't wait to tell their family and friends; and they run off before you are done with them. This has happened to me on more than one occasion. So if you get an excited person that runs off, don't chase after them trying to do the post prayer follow-up. Instead just let them go, the Lord is clearly blessing them and He will take care of them.

But in most cases, the healed person is more than happy to stay and talk to you. In this case, you want to share some hints with them on how to keep their healing. Let them know that sometimes the enemy will try to trick them into thinking they weren't really healed by bringing back some of the symptoms. If this happens, they are to use their authority in Christ to rebuke the symptoms and to stand in faith. Usually the symptoms will leave shortly after they rebuke them. They may have to go through this cycle three or four times before the enemy stops trying to bring back the symptoms. Let them know that this sometimes happens, so that they will know what to do if it happens to them.

There are also certain behaviors a person can do to keep their healing and to walk in health. The first two apply to pretty much everyone. The last two may or may not apply to the person you ministered to, depending on their situation. (Only share either of the last two if they apply to the person):

• Draw close to God and fill yourself with things of God. Invite His Lordship in every area of your life and ask Him to fill you with His indwelling Holy Spirit. The more you give yourself to God, the more you give control to the Holy Spirit and that leaves less room for the enemy to come in with health problems.
• Begin to pray for healing for others with a similar condition to the one you were healed of. In the process of being ill and then being healed, you have gained a certain amount of spiritual authority over that sickness. When you pray for others, you exercise that authority on their behalf. It's sort of like working out.. the more you exercise, the stronger your muscles become. Likewise, as you learn to exercise your healing authority for others, then you become stronger in this authority for your own health as well. And your faith is increased as you see God heal others when you pray... which in turn increases your faith in regard to your own healing.
• Stay away from hurtful situations that can pull you back into the infirmity or bondage. For instance, if the person was healed from addictions (drugs, alcohol, certain medications), they must be careful not to go back to using the addictive substance. They will have to consciously fight habits and behavior patterns to walk in health. Likewise, if a person is healed from lung cancer, they may have to give up smoking cigarettes to remain well. Or if a person is healed from dangerously high blood pressure, they may have to make some changes to their lifestyle to remove themselves from constant high-stress situations, or the stressful lifestyle will eventually bring the high blood pressure.
• Don't allow yourself to fall into unforgiveness, bitterness, or willful rebellion. Those type of things open the door for sickness and infirmity. So don't do things to invite the sickness or infirmity back by putting yourself into rebellion with God or into a place where God once again delivers you to the tormentors.

When Their Is Little Or No Change In Their Condition

Just because we don't see results yet does not mean that God has not done a healing. There were times when Jesus healed someone and it took a period of time for that healing to complete. Matthew has three different references where a person was healed "from that very hour," implying the healing began when Jesus pronounced it, but took some period of time to complete. These are Matthew 9:22, Matthew 15:28 and Matthew 17:18:

Matthew 9:22
But Jesus turned around, and when He saw her He said, "Be of good cheer, daughter; your faith has made you well." And the woman was made well from that hour.

Matthew 15:28
Then Jesus answered and said to her, "O woman, great is your faith! Let it be to you as you desire." And her daughter was healed from that very hour.

Matthew 17:18
And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him; and the child was cured from that very hour.

There have been times where I have seen God do instant and dramatic healings. But the majority of the time, the Lord starts the healing when I pray and it can take up to a day or two to complete. One time I asked the Lord why He does it that way so often. And He replied, "That way I get all the glory."

There are other times when God wants to minister to the person through soaking, or repeated, prayer. God may want them to seek Him on an ongoing basis for their healing. Matt 7:7 talks about about seeking using a verb tense that means "keep on seeking". There are times when God desires to be sought after by the person, before He heals them. Sometimes a person may have to come for prayer 3 or 4 or 10 times before they are healed. (Sometimes God does a work in their heart each time they come for prayer, and ministers to something in their inner being before He grants the physical healing.) Other times God is simply testing their faith. We know from Luke 11:5-9 that He values persistence in prayer.

Because of this, we must never bawl someone out if they are not healed or accuse them of not having enough faith. We must not accuse them of having a demon, either. Technically the person receiving prayer does not have to be the one to have "faith".. the faith can be on the part of the one who is praying -- e.g., us! And if they had a demon when they came to us for prayer, then we should have gotten rid of it. So never try to put any "blame" on a person who is not healed. (There are some theologies that do this, but it is wrong and clearly unbiblical to do so, and it harms the person. I recently talked to a lady who had been exposed to a serious toxin several years ago and had severe weakness since then. She was on staff at her church before this accident. After the accident they kicked her off staff for not having enough faith to be healed. She remained in the congregation as a member. Recently they began accusing her of having a demon because she has not yet been healed. They are making her feel unwelcome to come to church to worship God, and she is afraid to go for healing prayer for fear of being ridiculed yet again. This type of treatment pushes a person away from God rather than bringing His love to them. It is inexcusable and I believe it grieves the Holy Spirit.) Instead of tearing someone down, work to build their faith for next time they receive healing prayer.

There is one special case we need to talk about. If a person is sick because they have been delivered to the tormentors for unforgiveness, they might not be able to forgive right away. Of if the corrective hand of God is on someone because of sin or disobedience, it may take them a little while to come into submission to what God is asking of them. In either case, these conditions will probably prevent the healing from happening. That does not mean that everyone who is not healed is in sin or full of bitterness and unforgiveness. But if the person is struggling with either of these, encourage them to get rid of the sin, unforgiveness or bitterness that is causing their condition. Don't come across in a condemning or superior way, but more like a doctor who says, "OK, we have to work on this because it is the root of the problem." Our goal is not to judge or criticize the person, but to help them deal with whatever they need to deal with so that then can be whole and well.

Finally, we must strive to be totally honest in all of our dealings with physical healing. We must never pretend a healing has occurred when it has not.. that is lying and deceit. Jesus is Truth (John 14:6), so truth and honesty are very important in healing ministry. We must never encourage someone to pretend they are healed when they are not. Likewise we don't want to deny healing when God is doing something. We want to be sincere and honest in all of our dealings.

The Value of Persistence in Prayer

I would like to close by sharing a story I recently heard on TV. I don't normally watch Benny Hinn's show, but I was flicking the channels on the TV and paused at his show. He was interviewing the mother of an 11 year old girl who had just gotten out of her wheelchair and walked. The girl was crying and excited about her healing. The mother shared how she had taken her daughter to one of his crusades about 5 years before. She expected her daughter to be healed there, but she was not. The mother was devastated and could not understand why God did not heal her little girl. It was a struggle for the mother to bring her daughter back to this crusade, because her friends had accused her of not having enough faith for her daughter's healing. She decided to come anyhow, and she also fasted and prayed, and this time her little girl was healed.

The point of this story is that we must not assume God does not want to heal us if we get prayed for one time and nothing happened. Look at this little crippled girl. She was prayed for by someone known for miraculous healings and nothing happened. Years later she was prayed for again by this same man and God healed her. We don't always understand why God says "wait," but we must not interpret His "wait" as a no. If the mother had not brought her daughter back to the healing crusade a second time years later, the little girl would still be in a wheelchair. Like this mother, we must be persistent in seeking God for healing.