Breaking Expectation Barriers In Healing

Just the other day, God orchestrated an interesting situation to get my attention. Our church was hosting a prophetic evangelism conference, but another church was having a healing conference with Todd Bentley at the same time. The schedule conflict forced me to choose between the two. While I love the prophetic, I don't really feel much of a need for additional training in it. So I choose to go to the healing conference, which was an hour drive from my house. I justified my decision by telling myself that I needed a fresh imparting of healing anointing for an upcoming missions trip.

The first session with Todd Bentley was on Friday morning. I came to it eagerly expecting to receive an impartation. I did not need Todd to lay hands on me...if there was impartation in the room, I'd get some just by being there. I was all geared for a healing meeting, so the anointing could flow and I could receive my impartation.

To my surprise, Todd did not speak on healing and he did not do any healing ministry. Instead, he taught on the prophetic and prophesied to two or three people. I felt like God had "set me up" since I could have gone to a prophetic conference that was much closer to my house. I was not a happy camper.

It turns out that God did this because He wanted to make me aware that I had some wrong expectations about healing. I think I am the main reason that God did not let Todd Bentley speak about healing or do any healing ministry at that first meeting. I am not sure precisely what my thinking was, but it was something along the lines that my anointing "leaks" and from time to time a needed a refill. I also thought that the refill (e.g., fresh impartation) needed to come from someone who moved strongly in healing ministry, like Mr. Bentley. That is why I went to his meeting, I wanted to get a "refill" on healing anointing from him.

This was wrong thinking because I was looking to a person (to Mr. Bentley) for the anointing instead of looking to God.

Don't get me wrong, I believe it impartation through the laying on of hands. But I had already received that type of impartation from Todd Bentley back in July of 2003 at one of his Schools Of Supernatural Healing. (He laid hands on all the student there and released a healing impartation.) So I did not need another impartation from him--but I thought that I did and that was why I went to the meeting. God wanted to call my attention to my wrong expectation so He could correct it.

At first I was disappointed that I did not get what I had come for. (It was still a good meeting and I enjoyed Todd's teaching, but there did not appear to be any healing impartation going on in that meeting.) That drove me to pray and ask God where He wanted me for the rest of the weekend. God sent me to the prophetic evangelism conference at my own church instead of the healing conference. He told me not to worry about getting impartation, that He would give me all that I need when He sent me out, including my soon coming trip to Asia. He did not want me to look to anointed ministers for impartation, but to Him.

I have just shared how God adjusted one of my wrong expectations about healing. But here is the "gottya"--He might want to adjust yours as well. Almost everyone of us has some type of wrong expectation or faulty mindset about divine healing. Many of us get an idea that God heals in a certain way, so we tend to look for Him to move in the way we expect Him to heal. That can make us less receptive when God chooses to heal in some other way.

The me share a real life example to illustrate. I had a friend named Keith who moves strongly in physical healing. One time I was sick and each time I prayed and asked to heal me, He kept bringing Keith's name to my mind. I finally got the impression that maybe God wanted me to ask Keith to pray for me. So I picked up the phone and got a hold of him. To my surprise, he refused to pray for me. "Teresa," he explained, "I only pray for healing if God has given me a word of knowledge about that specific healing. Since God did not give me a word of knowledge for you, I can't pray for you to be healed."

I thanked him for sharing his reason and we had a friendly conversation for about 15 minutes. When we hung up, I figured that maybe I'd heard God wrong. Then God spoke to me and said, "No, you did not. I wanted to grow Keith to the next level in healing, where he is able to successfully pray for anyone who I put in his path, regardless of whether or not I gave him prophetic revelation of that person's condition before he encountered them. So I sent you (a friend of his) to him to ask for prayer."

"But God," I replied, "He refused to pray for me. So where does that leave me?" The truth was that I wanted to be healed a lot more than I wanted Keith to grow in his own healing ministry. (That may sound selfish. But I think that down deep, most of us get pretty selfish when we are in pain and we need a healing from God.)

"Don't worry, daughter," God replied. "I will take care of you. The healing would have come a bit faster for you if Keith had stepped out and risked praying for you. I would have healed you instantly to show him that I can indeed work that way. But don't fret. I will heal you by the end of the week."

"Ok God," I said, "Who do you want me to go to for prayer next?"

"No one."

Now it was my turn for God to challenge my expectations about healing. I assumed that if I wanted to be healed, I had to get someone to pray for me for healing. The doctors were not optimistic about my condition, and it was certainly nothing that would go away on its own, and definitely not in a week. If I went the medical treatment route, I would be looking at months, and treatment would involve surgery and medication.

I truly believed in divine healing. In fact, I considered myself very progressive in my viewpoint of healing. I did not require what I called the "faith props"--anointing with oil, laying on of hands or even physical proximity. I thought I had faith like the Roman Centurion who asked Jesus to heal is servant by just commanding it. Despite that, I still had my own strong opinions about healing, and they were wrong. I believed that someone with a healing anointing had to pray for me. It really stretched my faith when God said that I should not go to anyone for prayer. God's direction did not fit my model of divine healing. But God meant what He said--one week later, I woke up to discover all of my symptoms were gone. I was completely well!

God has a lot of different ways that He heals. He doesn't always do it the same way, and He doesn't want us to get in a rut where we always expect God to heal in a certain way. When we look at the Bible, we see a that there is a great diversity in how God healed sick people.

The same can be said of Jesus. He healed people in a great variety of ways. Sometimes He laid hands on the person, and other times He did not touch them. Sometimes He commanded the healing by just speaking a word or two, but other times He prayed for the person more than once. Sometimes He simply commanded demons to leave, sometimes He commanded sickness to leave and other times He simply commanded the body part to start working correctly. Sometimes Jesus went to the person and other times He healed from a distance. Sometimes He wouldn't even pray for the person, He would just command them to go do something (like the time He told the 10 lepers to go wash in the pool and they were healed as they went).

It is important for us to understand that God heals in a lot of different ways and He does not want us to limit Him by our expectations. In fact, there are times when our expectations can seriously get in the way of divine healing. Let's look briefly at two examples of this. 2 Kings 5:1-14 tells the story of Naaman. He was an important commander in the Syrian army, but he had leprosy. Naaman came to Elijah so God could heal him of the leprosy. But it did not go at all the way he expected. Look at verses 9-12:

9 Then Naaman went with his horses and chariot, and he stood at the door of Elisha's house. 10 And Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, "Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored to you, and you shall be clean." 11 But Naaman became furious, and went away and said, "Indeed, I said to myself, 'He will surely come out to me, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the place, and heal the leprosy.' 12 Are not the Abanah and the Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?' So he turned and went away in a rage.

Naaman expected God to heal him in a certain way and he was upset when God choose to do it a different way instead. He had no intention of doing it God's way, and he almost missed his healing. Fortunately, one of his servants talked him into giving God's way a try--and the was healed!

Let's look at a New Testament example. God had a certain way of healing people in Jerusalem. According to John 5:2-4, God sent an angel to stir the water at a certain pool near the sheep gate. Then the first person into the water after it was stirred was healed. There was a man who had been sick for 38 years and he constantly went to the pool because he wanted to be healed. But he never made it into the pool first, someone else always beat him to it. Then one day, Jesus showed up and stood before him. Jesus already had a reputation for healing the sick, but this man was stuck on his own model of healing. It went like this: If you want to be healed, then you must be the first person into the pool after the angel stirs the water.

Jesus offered to heal the person, and he almost missed his healing because he was so caught up on needing to get in the pool. It never occurred to him that God might want to heal Him some other way. God was very interested in healing him. God the Father explicitly sent Jesus to this man because He wanted to make him well. But the man's expectations got in he way and He almost missed his healing. Maybe he was thinking that Jesus would sit with him until the next time that the water was stirred, then He would carry him into the pool. But Jesus did not need the pool, He had other plans. We see them in verses 8 and 9. "8 Jesus said to him, 'Rise, take up your bed and walk.' 9 And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked."