Breaking Expectation Barriers In Healing

Some of us get so used to expecting someone with the gift of healing to pray for the sick that we forget God heals in other ways. When a friend or relative gets sick, we look for a healing meeting in our area to bring the person to. We expect the healing minister to pray and lay hands on them, and then God will heal them. It is true that God heals that way--sometimes. But it is not the only way God heals.

We must not discount the role of prayer and intercession in physical healing.

I remember back about 15 years ago, when a popular foursquare minister in my area was diagnosed with cancer. His church scheduled an intercession meeting for their pastor. They invited pastors and leaders from many different churches in the city to participate, and pastors from about a dozen different churches came to the prayer meeting, as did most of the people form the sick pastor's congregation. The prayer meeting lasted about two hours, as pastors from many different denominations prayed together with his congregation. Someone read James 5:14, which said, "14 Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord." Then they had the elders from his church come up and anoint the pastor with oil, while everyone at the meeting prayed in agreement for his healing.

No one at that meeting was known to have the "gift of healing." No one laid hands on him (except the one person who touched him lightly on the forehead to anoint him with oil). It was basically your good old-fashioned prayer meeting, where people interceded for this sick foursquare pastor.

At the end of the meeting, the pastor reported that he felt strength "pour into" him as people prayed and interceded. He saw his doctor a few days later and was almost completely symptom free. That prompted his doctor to run a batch of tests, and they only found small traces of the cancer. Excited with the positive feedback, the people continued to pray and intercede for this pastor in their prayer closets over the next month. Then the doctor ran more tests, and they could not detect any trace of cancer! God healed this man through prayer and intercession.

That concept is actually quite biblical. We have a lot of examples of this in God's word. Let's look at a few of them.

Genesis 20:17 tells the story of Abraham interceding for Abimelech. I am sure you already know the story, but you may not have paid much attention to the intercession part of it. Abraham was in Gerar and he was afraid they'd kill him so the king could take Sarah for his wife. So he told them Sarah was his sister, and the king took her into his harem. But before he could have physical relationship with him, God struck him and his household with genital disease and barrenness. Then God appeared to Abimelech in a dream and told him all about Sarah being Abraham's wife. In verse 7, God said, "Now therefore, restore the man's wife; for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you shall live. But if you do not restore her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours."

Abimelech did what God commanded, then he asked Abraham to intercede for him. Look at verses 17 and 18: "17 So Abraham prayed to God; and God healed Abimelech, his wife, and his female servants. Then they bore children; 18 for the Lord had closed up all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham's wife." This is a case where physical healing came through prayer and intercession.

Let's look at another example, from Numbers 12. This is where Aaron and Marian challenged Moses' leadership authority. God choose to back up Moses, and He struck Marian with leprosy. Aaron repented and went to Moses to ask Moses to pray and ask God to heal his sister. Look at verses 13-14: "So Moses cried out to the Lord, saying, 'Please heal her, O God, I pray!' 14 Then the Lord said to Moses, 'If her father had but spit in her face, would she not be shamed seven days? Let her be shut out of the camp seven days, and afterward she may be received again.'" In other words, God answered Moses' prayer, but not instantly. Marian had to live as a leper and outcast for a week before God healed her. But the fact remains, Moses prayed and in response, God healed her.

Another example comes from the life of Hezekiah in 2 Chronicles 30:13-20. Hezekiah was king in Judah. The people had fallen into idolatry and sin for generations, and most of Hezekiah's reign was about turning them back to their God and teaching them how to worship Him. One of his first acts as king was to repair the temple and reinstate worship in it. Among other things, he got the people to start observing the Passover again--something they hadn't done for years. The first Passover observation went pretty roughly...they did it the wrong time of year because they had to delay it long enough for the priests to consecrate themselves. A lot of the people were unclean when they ate it, and many of them did not follow the prescribed way that God laid down in His law. But their hearts were after God and they were trying turn to Him again after many years of not honoring Him.

Hezekiah prayed this prayer in 2 Chronicles 30:18b-20, "But Hezekiah prayed for them, saying, 'May the good Lord provide atonement for everyone 19 who prepares his heart to seek God, the Lord God of his fathers, though he is not cleansed according to the purification of the sanctuary.' 20 And the Lord listened to Hezekiah and healed the people."

Did you see that? Hezekiah prayed for forgiveness and sanctification for the backsliders who were returning to God. God responded by healing their physical sicknesses.

You might have noticed that in many of these examples, sin (or rebellion against God) seemed to be what opened the door for the sickness to come in. A godly person interceded, then God responded by forgiving and healing the sick. That part about sin really jumped out at me as I was writing this lesson. There is a verse in James that is along these same lines, James 5:14-15:

14 Is anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord 15and the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him.

That drives home the fact that one of the side effects of sin is the curse of the law, physical sickness. When we rebel against God, that opens the door for the curse to operate in our lives. One of the things we do in intercession is to step into the "priestly role" and petition God to forgive people's sins. Apparently that plays an important role in healing.

However, not all sickness is caused by sin. Remember the bind man in John 1:1-3. The disciples wanted to know who's sin caused his blindness and Jesus replied that his blindness was not caused by any sin at all.

We know from Scripture that intercession brings both forgiveness and healing. I personally believe that intercession is just as effective for problems that are not sin related as it is for the sin-caused sicknesses. Remember the Foursquare pastor who was healed of cancer? As far as I know, there were not any sin issues that caused his cancer. Intercession still worked in his case--people prayed for him and God healed him.

There are many awesome testimonies of God healing the sick through prayer and intercession. Some of those healings come quickly, within a few days of the prayer. Others required sustained prayer and intercession for long periods of time (months). I can't possibly share all of these great testimonies in this teaching, but I'd like to include a few from the life of Rees Howells. The testimonies I am about to share come from the book "Rees Howells Intercessor." It was written by Norman Grubb and published by Christian Literature Crusade in 1983. If you haven't already read this book, I recommend that you do so.

The Lord began to impress Rees to pray for the sick. The first person he prayed for was a woman with consumption. He prayed and contended for her healing fervently for months. Here was more than one time when he stayed up all night praying for her and then missed work the next day so he could continue praying. In the end, the woman died. But Rees somehow gained an authority to pray for the sick through that experience.

Shortly afterwards, the Lord sent him to pray for this man in the village who was on his deathbed. "His wife was sobbing her heart out, for there were ten children, and he was the only bread winner" (P. 92). Rees was moved with compassion for the entire family. "He know the only way to help her was to bring her husband back to her, but the man was beyond human aid" (P. 91). Rees prayed for the man for hours, then God told him that the man would live and not die. He went back and told the wife, who wasn't convinced. After all, the last person Rees had said would be healed recently died.

He went home and went to bed. The Lord began to convict him that he had not been convincing enough when he told the woman that her husband would not die. So God sent him back the next morning to try it again. "I don't blame you for not taking what I told you yesterday. I didn't say it to you with the certainty with which I tell things I know, but I have come over this morning to tell you now that your husband will not die; and as proof of what I say, if he should die, I will support you and your children" (Pp. 93-94). The woman "brightened visibly" and began to believe what Rees said to her. Two days later, her husband's fever broke and the doctor pronounced him out of danger.