A Hockey Model Of Healing

By way of quick review, I had been praying for the sick for a while, and some questions came up for me in the process of doing this; questions that I did not know the answers to. At first I sort of ignored them, figuring that I did not need to know everything, all I needed to do was to be obedient to the Lord and to obey His great commission to speak His words and demonstrate His power and advance His kingdom. But over time, the same issue would come up over and over again, leaving me frustrated and with the same type of questions over and over again. Some of these questions began to really perplex me, so I began to really ask God about the--maybe "nag God" would be more accurate than "ask God."

The basic problem I had was that my way of thinking about praying for the sick (e.g., my model of healing) did not adequately address these issues. I knew I was not the first person to ask those types of questions, but I had yet to anyone give me a better way of thinking about healing. So as I began to press into God for a better understanding, He gave me a new way to think about healing (e.g., a new model). My old model saw healing as an event that you worked towards. You might have to do some preparation towards the event, and you might have a few loose ends to tie up after the event, but once the even happened, it was basically a "done deal."

The Lord gave me a new model that is more like a sporting event. I.e., it is not a single "event" but a series of two teams pitted against each other, each team trying to score more than their opponents. When I pray for healing, I am on God's team. Each time I prayed for someone and they saw a healing, God's team scored some points. But the other team is also in the game and they are also trying to score points. Our points looked like healings and their points looked like preventions-to-healings or like making someone sick again. All of the sudden healing became a dynamic thing where you have to keep your eye on the game and be aware of what is going on. You don't just score once and quit, you have to keep playing the game.

My husband grew up in Canada, so naturally His favorite sport is ice hockey. When we first got married, I did not like hockey at all. But because he loved it so much, I also learned to understand and love the game. Now, after years of marriage, I am a true hockey fan. Since hockey is the sport we watch and the sport I know the rules and strategies of the game, hockey is the sport God used to speak to me about this new healing model.

Now that we have a new model, a new way of thinking about healing, lets go back and review the original five questions I mentioned in lesson one, looking at them from the ice hockey model of healing. Those five questions were:

1. Why wasn't my friend with lung cancer healed? We prayed for her and she got better for a while, then she got much worse.
2. Why did God heal my friend's husband's leg and then allow there to be serious related complications on his stomach?
3. Why is it that sometimes when I minister almost everyone is healed and other times almost no one is healed?
4. How come I frequently get sick after I minister healing to others?
5. Why did God's healing of my own vision only last a couple of months and then revert back to the original problem and keep getting worse?

The first two questions are really variations on the same theme. In both cases there was a healing event that I took as an indication of God's desire for the person to be well. The first was a substantial improvement in the friend with cancer's health. It was not a complete healing but since it was such a significant improvement, I took that as an indication that God wanted to heal her completely. The other case was where a person was healed of one serious thing but developed very serious related complications in another area.

In both cases, I thought that one goal would win the game; but in both cases, the game went on. The enemy kept shooting at my goal by trying to make the person sick again. But it was like the defense and offense on God's team considered the game "already won" and stopped playing with full force.

Let's look at my friend with cancer. She lives across the country from me. I had prayed for her on the phone. In fact, I had brought my cell phone to a meeting at my church where a very anointed healing minister was the guest speaker. He had a word of knowledge that precisely described her condition. So I stood up and held up my cell phone. We telephoned her and he prayed for her over the phone. She had some improvement. As the service continued, I went in the back room and prayed for her some more, still over the cell phone. She had an even greater level of healing. I called her again on the cell phone the next day and she told me about how she slept peacefully for the first time in ages, how the pain had almost left, how she was breathing easier. I told her that this partial healing was an indication of God's will to heal her. I believed it was just a matter of time until she was completely well.

Yes, I continued to hold her in my private intercession type of prayers, but I stopped ministering healing to her over the phone. I expected her to just keep getting better and better. (Do you see how had basically stopped playing the game because we scored our goal?)

I was shocked when she suddenly got much worse a few days later and ended in the hospital. I mobilized my whole church to pray for her again. I guess you might say the defense jumped back on the ice after the other team scored a goal or two. The doctors said that they found an infection and that the problem was the infection and not the cancer. So they treated her and she slowly got better.

We told ourselves that was just a coincidence and God had it all under control. We did not realize that the enemy was still shooting at our goal. She had a series of ups and downs and they were very puzzling to me. Why? Because in my mind we had the event (the significant partial healing when she was prayed for over the cell phone at the service.) I don't think it would have been nearly as confusing for me if I viewed it as a game with both teams still trying to "score goals" towards her recovery/relapses.

The good news is that even though we stopped trying to score new goals with fervor, our defense never left the ice again. There was constant prayer each time she was attacked, each time she had a relapse. Things got progressively worse for her because even the best defense won't stop all of the goals all of the time. At one point the doctors only gave her a few weeks to live and sent her home. But prayer and intercession continued.

God was at work behind the scenes to gave us a breakaway and a good shot. Recent tests indicated that the cancer was decreasing in size instead of increasing. That doctor gave her a prognosis that she would be well in a year. A big improvement from "only a few weeks to live." Since then she has continued to have ups and downs. It is like both teams are fighting for the puck and my poor friend sometimes feels as battered as the puck might feel. The game is still in progress, so we have to keep shooting at the goal until we see sustained 100% recovery for her.

My friend's husband (question 2) was the same situation. We scored a goal (the leg healing). The enemy then came in and scored another goal--the unexpected infection in the leg that required another skin graft from the abdomen. Then we scored another goal (seeming recovery) and we thought of it as "over" and stopped playing. Then the enemy surprised us with a breakaway and scored another big goal--the terrible infection and complications in the abdomen. That caught us off guard because we did not realize we were still in a game and the other team was still playing. Since then we have jumped back in the game but we have been scrimmaging for the puck and we haven't really scored another goal yet.

The third question was, "Why is it that sometimes when I minister almost everyone is healed and other times almost no one is healed?" The answer to that comes with how the defense (prayer and intercessory support) is implemented and playing. If we just have an offensive line and no defense, there is no one to hold the point (keep the pick from crossing the blue line and leaving the offensive zone). All the enemy has to do to keep us from scoring is to "clear the zone" or to knock the puck to the other side of the blue line, back to center ice. In other words, if we don't have an open heaven, created primarily by prayer and intercession, it is so much harder to score goals (e.g., to see healings). Prayer covering can come from different sources. It might come from intercessors dedicated to pray for you whenever you pray for the sick. Or it might come from intercessors who pray for a given event (say a healing meeting or a healing conference or a specific appointment to pray for a sick person). Or it can come from local intercessors taking their territory and creating an open heaven over the territory.

It is always easier to see healings when the enemy resistance has been removed. I learned a lesson when God explained this model to me. I had been careless in the past about assuring that adequate prayer covering was in place before I go to minister. Sometimes it was in place and other times it was not. The enemy can still mount a spectacular defense at any one game and keep you from scoring as much as you would like to. But for the most part, when the defense (adequate intercession and prayer covering is in place, it will be much easer to score goals.) In short, you always see more anointing and more results when you minister under an open heaven than in the midst of spiritual warfare.

Question four was about why I would often get counter attacked with sickness after the Lord used me somewhere to powerfully minister healing. The lord reminded me that forwards are often hit by the opposing team when they shoot the puck at the net. The other team's defense is going to "finish their checks," they are going to hit me just after I pass or shoot the puck. Getting hit is sometimes a part of the game, it happens.

However, there are things a good forward can do to lessen the impact when he knows he is about to be hit. He can turn or angle his body a certain way to make the hit less severe. So now that I know that I am going to be hit from time to time, I an beginning to ask God for strategies on how to lessen that hit so it doesn't have the full intended impact. I already know some of the more obvious ones, like having prayer covering for four weeks when I come home from an international trip, etc. I also learned that I am less likely to get sick if I break an exceptionally long flight into segments with an overnight stopover in route. That is only a piece of the strategy. I am now at the point where I have to go sit near the coach and listen to Him for additional strategies. Each of us has to do that, we have to get strategies from God on how to avoid or lessen the impact of the hits that we will naturally take in the game.

The fifth question, about my own person vision healing could fall into either of two categories. My guess is that it is alone the same lines as questions one and two, where the team stopped playing after they scored a single goal and the enemy took another shot at my vision. That would be the same as the stuff I talked about earlier, except that I was on the receiving end instead of on the ministering end. Perhaps the ministry that I was healed under also needs to set intercessors in place to defend the healings that they earned at one of their meetings?

Or perhaps the relapse was simply a hit that the enemy threw at me to try to shake me up and make me less effective of playing my game? I don't know for sure, but I do know that the game is not over yet, and my failing reading vision is not "set in stone." I am still fighting using reading glasses and I am still praying and asking God to restore my reading vision.