Breaking Expectation Barriers In Healing

Our last two lessons talked about how God heals through medicine and how we should not deny someone their medicine, or suggest that they stop taking it to demonstrate faith for healing. That is especially true if that medication is keeping them alive, preventing severe pain, preventing depression or preventing mental instability.

But there are times when people need to wean off of their medication. This can happen because God has healed them, and the medication becomes unnecessary. In fact, some medication can make people sick or have harmful side effects, and it is important to get off of that medication as soon as possible after it is no longer needed.

There are also times when God personally challenges a person to trust Him instead of trusting in their medication. He sometimes asks people to take a step of faith by discontinuing a medication they trust in, telling them to look to Him for the healing instead of looking to medical science.

The tricky question becomes, how do we balance these two things? How do we know when God is healing through medicine and when He is requiring a step of faith to discontinue that medicine?

The best way to find out is to ask the Lord to clearly show His will to the sick person--then trust that He will do so. I firmly believe that God does not usually speak to the healing minister to direct them to tell the sick person to go off of their medicine before they are completely healed. It happens occasionally when the healing minister moves strongly in the prophetic, but it is the exception and not the general rule.

Most of the time, the Lord speaks this directly to the sick person, and He gives them a gift of faith to accompany that direction. An example comes to my mind as I write this. I have a friend named Rusty Russell who moves strongly in God's healing anointing. There was a time when Rusty had really bad allergies--hay fever and the like. Now allergies are usually life-threatening, but they can leave you disabled and feeling very miserable. Rusty was able to control them most of the time with medication so he could function well to minister to others.

The Lord began to impress on Rusty's heart that if he wanted to minister divine healing to others, then he should personally walk in divine health as a demonstration of God's ability to heal the sick. The allergy symptoms were mostly controlled by medicine, but they seemed to be directly opposed to what God was showing him about divine health. So Rusty began asking God to heal those allergies. I am not sure how long this went on, but at some point God told Rusty to step out in faith and stop depending on his medicine and to trust God for healing.

God's direction came at a bad time for Rusty, as he had a full ministry schedule. But Rusty choose to obey God and step out on faith. At first it looked like God was not rewarding his faith at all. His symptoms got really bad for a while, making it hard for him to minister. I remember talking to him on the phone one time and he commented on it in his typical down to earth way. "For a while, I was a mess! Snot was coming out of my nose like crazy and running all over the place."

Trust me, that is not the image you want when you are standing in front of a congregation ministering God's healing to others! But Rusty stood in faith even when his symptoms got worse. He refused to take his allergy medication to get comfort. I think he was even having trouble sleeping at night. Circumstances seemed to shout that he was crazy, that God did not really ask Him to take this stand. But God had deposited a gift of faith in Rusty. I can't remember the exact time frame...I think it was around a week. Suddenly the allergy symptoms stopped and Rusty has never had a need for his allergy medicine since then. He stood in faith and God rewarded him for that faith.

There are two things I want to point out from Rusty's story. The first is that Rusty did not make a random decision to step out in faith--he heard from God and obeyed Him. The second is that Rusty's medication was not life sustaining--it merely made him comfortable and able to function better.

If God tells someone to go off of a medicine that they need to keep them alive (or to keep them mentally balanced), then I encourage them to spend some time carefully double-checking their hearing with God before they step out to obey. If God asked them to take that stand of faith, He will confirm it to them. It is important that we know we have heard clearly from God before we put our life into jeopardy.

We know that the desires of our own heart can sometimes imitate God's voice to us and lead us astray. Jeremiah 17:9 tells us, "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" Sometimes people want to be healed so badly that they can think God said to take a stand of faith when He really did not. A stand of faith is not going to be effective unless they are in the center of God's will when they take it. Remember when the devil tempted Jesus. He wanted our Lord to take a stand of faith by doing something to purposely endanger Himself. The devil even quoted Scripture to try and convince Jesus to do that, but Jesus refused to endanger Himself when God was not leading him to do so. Look at the account of this incident in Matthew 4:5-7: 5Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6"If you are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down. For it is written: " 'He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.'" 7Jesus answered him, "It is also written: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'"

I would like to share another testimony with you. This testimony comes from a lady named Dawn Okpisz and she originally shared it on an email list called New-Wine. I am using excerpts from it in this teaching with her permission.

Dawn went to a service at Chicago HUB on Sept 24, 2006. The Lord did a lot of signs and wonders in that meeting to increase faith, and some of them were a bit unusual. At first Dawn's attention was drawn to the wonders God was doing and they helped to build her faith. They served communion in the meeting, and God began to touch her directly and supernaturally as she took the communion.

She wrote, "After I consumed the manna" (e.g., the communion wafer), "my jaw and head and neck and then upper back all got hot and I shook and had to sit down. I could feel His presence coursing through my body--not over my body, but through my body--a very different but incredibly powerful experience."

"I looked down at my hands and there were still a few crumbs. I considered eating them too. But as I ran my finger over the crumbs several flecks of gold dust began to appear. I stared at it for a very long time. As the meeting continued this happened to other people too--you could see them staring at their palms. Harold Beyer also had gold dust appear on his trousers when he was later on the floor."

"I also had a healing. I have had a blood disorder that causes my platelets to be overactive since 2003. I suffered two mini-strokes at the age of 31 that caused double vision and weakness and partial loss of feeling in my arms. I had lots of physical therapy and have fully physically recovered from the effects of the mini strokes. But if I missed my medication for the blood disorder I had trouble the following day--I would get increased pain and fatigue and if I didn't take the next dose I would have vision problems."

"The blood disorder was healed tonight. I know because after 10pm I usually get pain in my head when I am due to take my medication. Right now it is 12:45 am and I have no pain. When the corporate prayer was being said for a blood disorder--I felt the Lord shoot healing through my body. About a year ago I asked the Lord if he could heal this one thing. I had other healings from other problems--but this one I continued to battle with--and I asked the Lord if he could heal this one so I would not have to continually take a blood thinner to deal with the disorder. And He did!!!"

Her first email was sent to the list at 1:00 AM Monday morning, just a few hours after the healing.

We received a follow-up email from her Tuesday evening. It said, "By 10:00 AM central standard time this morning I will have been off the medication the blood disorder for 36 hours. I will have missed four doses. Normally if I miss just one I have double/blurred vision and other complications. The only thing I feel is sore muscles from dancing for 2 hours in worship on Sunday!!!"

Last night I felt some fear as I approached the 24 hour mark. I am not one to go off of medication just because I think I might have been healed. My Mom was a nurse, so I am respectful of doctors and careful with medication. I went off of my medication because I felt the power of the Lord shoot through my body Sunday night when Jeff (a speaker at Chicago HUB) had a word of knowledge and called out my blood disorder. Then the pain from the disorder left and is still gone. I can't wait to tell my doctor about this!!!"

Another email came on Wednesday morning. It said, "My doctor learned of my healing from the blood disorder last night and her reply was 'Praise The Lord!' It's OK for me to be off the medication. I have been off of the medication now 72 hours (if you count the last dose I took) and have missed 6 doses. I am still doing well. Only muscle aches from activity but absolutely no symptoms of the blood disorder or complications from stopping the medication. The more days that pass the more this surprises me."

"My greatest battle right now is mental. Though my doctor and my husband are supportive, some others are not. Some are jealous that I got healed. I didn't expect that one. Some are challenging the healing. Sometimes I get fearful that if something bad happens to my health it will weaken my witness. I don't want that. I want Jesus to get all the glory and honor and praise that is due to Him."

Another email came a week later: "My blood disorder was healed seven days ago, and I am still off of meds. I am still doing very well. I got to share it with our congregation this morning, and prayed for two people too--who experienced pain relief. God is so good!!! I did communicate with one doctor on Wednesday - I saw another doctor Friday and He was very pleased. He said my muscles are stronger than they were last week and he was impressed with the healing."

I like the way that Dawn tested her healing by carefully and watchfully withholding her medicine, ready to take it again if the symptoms returned. I also like that she was planning to see her doctor about this and get tested out. I expect she will end up with a medically confirmed miraculous healing.

I feel that she used a good combination of faith and wisdom in how she responded to what God was doing in her life. God does heal supernaturally and take away our need for medication, but not every healing ministry prayer immediately results in a full healing. That is why we need to use wisdom and common sense in weaning ourselves off of our medicine, just as Dawn did.