Healing -- Dare To Believe

There will be times when you pray in faith for healing, and nothing happens.

So now, here is the question: How do you handle it when nothing happens? One thing I do is look at the level. I ask myself if I am praying outside of the scope of my faith? If I am, I say, okay this is something I am shooting towards, this one of those "one out of ten type of things."

I have probably prayed for about 120 crippled or paralyzed people, and I have probably seen about 12 of them walk. I still get really excited when I see a crippled person walk! I am not a person that you should bring every crippled person to me for prayer, because only about ten percent will walk. There are other people who live at a level of faith where they can see about 50% of the crippled people they pray for get healed. I am not there yet, but I am still growing and I am going be there someday. And you can get there too, if you want. You just have to go, step-by-step.

Are you willing to believe Jesus really meant what He said? He wouldn't say it unless He meant it, right? He said we are to do the same miracles and healings (and other works) that He did (John 14:12).

So, how do you get from the level of faith that you have to where Jesus was talking about? You do it step-by-step-by-step approaching the target. You do not just say, well I am here and then you magically find yourself there. No, what you do, you struggle with it like I struggle. You keep pressing in and practicing and praying when only one out of ten are getting healed. You don't settle for whatever level of limitation you currently have in healing the sick. You keep on pressing in to do all the healings that Jesus did.

Do it step by step. Step one is to start praying for people with things that you have enough faith to pray for. Step two: as you see some things get healed all the time, then try praying for something harder.

We go with an expectation that God is going to take us to the goal, but we go there with the understanding that it is a process but we have to build our faith. So, how do you get there? Start small, use the mustard seed principle and work it out. Is it okay to start praying for small things, but let me warn you of one thing. As I started praying for people's colds and flu, I got colds and flu.

Have you heard of John Wimber? He is with the Lord now, but he was one of the first people who figured out that healing is supposed to be normal for all Christians, instead of being something that just a special few do.

He gathered a small team and they started praying for the sick. He called it "doing the stuff. He would pray for people and his healing team would pray for sick people, and guess what happened for a whole year? They all got sick and the person they prayed for stayed sick. It was frustrating, but they did not give up.

Then one day someone telephoned him and said, "My wife is really sick. She has a high fever and we think we may need to take her to the hospital. Will you come pray for her?" So, he came to the house and prayed for her. She sat up, got out of bed and started making breakfast. He said, "You guys were faking right? This was a set up?" At first, he did not believe she had really been sick. But she was, and God healed her. Note that John did not see that first healing until he had seen a huge number of failures.

So, John came up with a saying that I believe is very true, and I will put it to you as a challenge. If you are praying in faith, you can not pray for 100 people and not see at least one of them supernaturally healed.

(I am not talking about the prayers that say "Oh dear God, if it is Your will--I know You do not always want to heal. but if it is Your will..." That is not a prayer of faith, is it? That kind of prayer won't yield a lot of healings. Pray like you expect God to heal this sick person. You don't need to be worried about offending God. If you are praying outside of His will for a given individual, He is capable of not healing that person. Don't get hung up in worrying about that, but pray a real prayer of faith.

I dare you to pray that way for a hundred people and not see a healing; you cannot do it, it will not happen.

Most of you will not be able to go twenty. Several of you will not be able to go ten. It is just not possible to keep praying for the sick and not see healings. I challenged some people, who literally took me up on the challenge. They got a little notepad and carried it with them where they got a count. One guy got up to forty-seven healing prayers without seeing a healing. But person forty-eight got healed. Another person in that same group saw his first supernatural healing on the tenth person he prayed for. I do not believe it is possible to pray in faith for one hundred sick people and not see a healing. I double-dare you to pray in faith for that many people and not get a result.

There is one caveat to this challenge, pray for people with infirmities at your level of faith. If you have never seen a healing in your life and you take the challenge by going to the cancer wing at the hospital and praying in faith for 100 people--you might be starting with a challenge too high for your level of faith. (Although God is a God Who rewards faith-risks and He just might heal some of those cancer patients anyhow.) If you start out with all cancer patients and blind people and those in wheel chairs and stuff like that, then you are not operating in the spirit of the challenge. It might be possible to pray for 100 people that way not see results, because you are intentionally setting too high of a goal for a beginner.

With that caveat aside, you can't pray for 100 people for healing and not see a healing. If you do not believe me, try it. Would you please try? I would love it if you would try because; you will find out, I am right. You will be happy to be proven wrong because of the thrill of knowing that God just healed someone through you. It is fun to heal the sick. It is exciting! Jesus meant what He said--we are to heal the sick. Not every single person we pray for will be healed, but we will see healings.