Healing -- Dare To Believe

Have you heard of Heidi Baker? She has a phenomenal anointing. God started a revival in Africa through her and her husband. That revival has sustained for several years now, and they have planted well over 5000 churches from Muslim converts. They have seen the signs and wonders. Heidi ministers in love. She will just walk up to somebody in love and she will say, "Lord, bless this person. Touch this person, Lord God. Will You just bless her and fill her." She just loves on them and prays for them, and she has seem all sorts of amazing miracles happen.

Sometimes when Heidi prays for a sick person, God shows her that He is not going to heal that person right then. Do you know what her response is? She hugs them and holds them in her arms, and she prays the love of God over them.

There are healing ministers who reply on supernatural revelation to choose who they will pray for. My friend Keith is one of them. If God doesn't explicitly show him that a given person will be healed at that moment, then Keith won't pray for that person. He is not trying to be mean, he is trying to be obedient in faith. But he won't pray for anyone unless he is sure God will heal them. That is one way to heal in faith, and Keith has seen a lot of supernatural healings and he has an effective ministry.

Heidi, on the other hand, she will just love the person to death. She will not tell them you are not going to get healed. Her thinking is "I am so sorry you are not getting healed right now, let me love on you, let me comfort you, let me pour God's love in you."

Realize that even the big names in healing don't see everyone who they pray for get healed. That means that you are not going to get everyone healed either. But as you start moving in the level of taking baby steps, start with the smaller steps, you are going to start seeing the healings and as you take bigger steps and you are going to see more healings. Everybody will not be healed, but a lot will.

I have sort of have a reputation that a lot of the people who I pray for get healed, so a lot of people want me to pray for them. Only about one-third to half of them get healed when I pray--but the reputation does not go away. The secret to seeing more healings is to start celebrating what God is doing rather than worrying about what He isn't doing.

Also, be aware that at times a single prayer doesn't do the trick, even when God fully intends to heal that person. Sometimes it takes multiple prayers. That is not because God's weak, but because He is doing something we do not understand.

One time I heard Mahesh Chavda tell a story that I just love, because it illustrates this point so well. He was leading a healing crusade somewhere in India and there was this little old blind lady there who really wanted to see. When the preaching part of the service ended, Mahesh said "We are going to start demonstrating with healings and those who want healing come forth." The very first person to come up to the front for prayer was a little eight or nine year old girl leading her blind grandma.

Mahesh put his hands on her and he prayed and he rebuked the spirit of blindness. He asked the Lord to come with His power. He power of God hit her, and she was slain in the Spirit. She went flying backwards so strongly that she knocked the catcher down as well. Mahesh thought, "Well, something must have happened there." But when she got up and he interviewed her, she was still blind. Mahesh though to himself, "Oh man; that is a faith killer. It is too bad that happened at the start of the first meeting."

(If you are doing a healing service and you start with big obvious flop, then it is hard to pick up the people and raise their faith to get the meeting going again.)

Then the next night, guess who the first person up for prayer was? It was the same little girl leading her blind grandmother. Mahesh thought to himself, "Oh God, why, could not she at least be like in the middle or something?" So, he prayed for her and the power of God hit her again and she fell down again. When she got up, she was still blind.

It was a seven night crusade, and this lady came up first for prayer at each meting. Before the sixth meeting, Mahesh silently prayed, "Dear God, please keep this woman out of the meeting!" But she was the first one up for prayer again. By the seventh night, his prayer was, "Dear God give me at least one night. If she is going to be there, at least make her last." Guess who was the first person to come for prayer?

So Mahesh said, "Oh, alright. Fine. God heal her!" He briefly prayed for her and moved quickly on to pray for someone else as she started to fall. He tried to ignore her and everyone's focus on the next person he was praying for. But there was all this screaming commotion behind him. The little old grandmother got up, and this time she could see! This caused the faith level at the meeting to go through the roof, and God did all sorts of healing miracles on the last night of the crusade.

After the meeting was over, Mahesh tried to debrief with God about it. "What is going on God? Why six times I prayed for her and nothing happened? Seventh time she can see, what is going on here--are You giving me a hard time? Am I doing something wrong or what?"

Then God opened his eyes to see in the spirit. Mahesh saw a demon shaped like an octopus, and it had seven tentacles. Each of those tentacles had been over her eyes. Each time he prayed, he busted off one of those tentacles. The symptom did not go away until the last tentacle had been broken off. Each time he prayed, equal anointing equal power went out, but the results could not be seen until the seventh tentacle was busted off.

There are times when we have to persist in prayer; we have to contend for the healing. There are times when we have to deal with spiritual things that go on over and over again. So, if someone I pray for is not healed, I like to tell them the story about Mahesh. I also tell them "Let me pray for you next week. Just keep coming back to me every week until you are healed."

I have one lady that came to me every week for almost three years. At first I thought that each time I prayed, that might be the time she would get healed. But after about two years, I got the idea that she wasn't going to be healed. I still prayed for her because I did not want to hurt her feelings; I wanted to love on her the way Heidi Baker does. Guess what! One day when she came to me for prayer (and assumed that nothing would happen), God healed her anyhow.

Jesus really meant it when He said: you are going to heal the sick. But at the same time, that doesn't mean every sick person you pray for will be healed. In fact, Jesus did not heal every sick person that He came in contact with.

Remember when He was in Capernaum and He did not do anything except heal a couple of people. There will be times when you cannot heal everybody--even Jesus could not heal everybody. But Jesus did what the Father was doing. The Father does healing and God will release healing through you.

The question is: do you believe Jesus meant it when He said. This is what He said: "Most assuredly, I say to you, He who believes in Me, the works that I do, He will do also. And greater works than these will he do because I go to My Father. And whatsoever you ask in My name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in My name, I will do it." That is John 14: 12-14.

If Jesus meant what He said, then we get to heal the sick. That is good news!

That means we need to start to upwardly adjust our expectations to match what God says in His Word. We need to move towards the goal, step-by-step, until we are moving in His supernatural healing on a regular basis.

If we are willing to go step-by-step and use the mustard seed principle, we can plant our seed of faith and it will grow. Be reasonable and don't start with the "hard stuff" like blind eyes or raising the dead. Look for the backaches, the colds and flues, the little stuff. Then take that challenge. Try to pray for 100 people. It will not be possible to pray for a hundred people and not see a healing. In fact, you probably won't be able to pray for ten people without seeing a healing, because God really is eager to heal.

I used to think His healing anointing was something we had to compete for. I thought God was looking for special people to anoint, and only a few would be selected. I thought it was like the Marines or Navy Seals where only "the best of the best" get to do this stuff. Then God showed me a vision of what it is really like.

He showed me those roped-off lines like that have at the post office or at airports, or at the the entrances to sporting arenas ore amusement park rides. They are meant to hold a lot of people with the ropes and control big crowds. Line after line had been roped off in this huge arena-like building, and there were about twenty-five counters set up on the far end, ready to service people. But there were a few people at a few of those counters, and about seventeen of the roped off lines were completely empty.

Then God said, "It is not like I have too many people, and I am trying to choose who to give My power to. It is like I do not have enough people to do what I want to do. I am looking for more volunteers."

That means that if you are willing to volunteer, God will say "Good, another volunteer, okay! You are in." Do you understand what I mean? Praying for the sick and seeing them get healed is reserved for the cream of the crop or the select few. It is quite the opposite. We do not have enough people who make themsselves avaible to God to do what Jesus is doing.

Would you want to be one of them? Good, because you will be if you make yourself available to God.