Healing Tidbits
or
Miscellaneous Teachings On Healing

We talked about offense in our last lesson, sharing a real life scenario of how one lady became offended when someone prayed for her healing. The man who ministered the healing prayer used an interactive prayer model (interview, pray, check for feedback, and then pray some more based on what is happening). The lady initially thought that she had faith for the healing, but she did not understand the prayer model. The first time that he paused for feedback, she assumed the prayer session was over and that God had not healed her. Her faith for healing at that moment "died." The man praying tried to build her faith back up to a level where he could continue praying for her, but his attempt to do so offended her. Since this happened in a GodSpeak sponsored chat room, she brought her "concern" over this incident to my attention.

I started by trying to explain the interactive prayer model to her, as well as explaining why faith is important in healing. As we interacted, I discovered that this lady had "faith in Jesus" for salvation and provision, but she did not really have faith for her own healing. She was not aware that there were different types of faith; she did not understand that faith in Jesus for salvation is not the same as the mountain-moving faith for miracles that Jesus spoke about in Matthew 17:20. She did not realize that believing in Jesus as her savior is not necessarily the same thing as believing in Him as her healer. She thought she had "faith" for healing at the start of the prayer because did not distinguish between different types of faith.

Let me clarify this a bit. Just believing in Jesus (salvation-wise) is not enough for most physical healings. If it were, then when a person received Jesus as their Lord, they would instantly receive physical healing and deliverance at the same time. All new believers would be instantly healed of whatever sickness or infirmity they had, and it would happen at the instant they believed in Jesus.

Likewise, if the "believing in Jesus" necessary for salvation is not the same type of "believing in Jesus" required to do the miracles that Jesus did (as per John 14). If it were, then His disciples would not have had a problem healing the demonized boy in Matthew 17.

The disciples believed in Jesus when they tried to heal the epileptic (and demonized) boy, but they could not heal him. Jesus was up on the Mount of Transfiguration with Peter and James and John when this happened. When He got back, the first thing He did was to rebuke their faith and call it "little." He wasn't talking about salvation faith in Himself, but about faith for that type of healing. The disciples already believed in Him enough to abandon their jobs, families, possessions to follow/serve Him.

Then Jesus healed the boy. The disciples came to Him afterwards and asked why they couldn't heal him, and Jesus said it was because they did not have enough faith. You can read the account in Matthew 17:14-20.

Now back to this lady and her faith. She did have "faith" in that she believed He was God of all creation who did heal the sick while He walked the earth, and Who purchased her salvation and forgave her sin. She had faith (of sorts) in healing, in that she believed that God still healed the sick today--sometimes. But she did not have faith for her own healing. In short, she did not believe that Jesus wanted to heal her personally.

(I think that the man praying for her had sensed that, and he tried to build up her faith.)

I tried to explain why we sometimes pause in healing prayer to build faith as we pray for healing. Here is an excerpt from my email to her:

When we pray for someone for healing, we like to encourage them and help build their faith to receive the healing. That isn't to say you don't have faith, it is to say that the way he ministered is considered a standard and correct way to minister healing.

In some cases there is warfare that prevents a healing. If so, the healing ministry/prayer won't work, and it is a job for the intercessors and prayer warriors. But in other cases, it is a matter of a person having a wrong expectation (because the enemy has lied to them, and they believed the lies). Some of those lies include thinks like: God will heal others but not me, God wants me to be sick so I can learn something, God is mad (or upset or disappointed) with me for some reason and that is why I am sick, etc.

I am not saying that you have bought into any of those lies--I don't know you in the natural and God hasn't given me revelation in the spirit about your situation.

But there have been many times when I have prayed for someone with no results, and asked God what happened and He said it is an issue about their faith or beliefs. Then I addressed some of those lies and explained why they were not true, and suddenly something snapped in the spirit as the power of the enemy's lies were broken, and the healing came without me needing to pray again.

If the man praying for you had experiences like mine, he might have just been covering some basics about expecting God to heal us to release faith, just in case that happened to be an issue in your case. It is just a matter of caring for the person and not wanting them to suffer physically if it is something as simple as the enemy has been whispering his lies into their ears.

I don't think he meant to offend you or to put you down or to accuse you of not having faith. I think he was just trying to share some of the "healing basics" with you in case it might help you get breakthrough. It is one of the things that people who minister healing often are taught to do.

She wrote back something very honest and insightful:

Okay...sigh. But I don't believe in believing in the thing itself. I believe that it is the faith in Jesus that is the important. Someone said to me that having faith "for" something isn't even Biblical.

I honestly wonder why God would trouble Himself with healing me. I believe for sure that God can heal me. No doubt...But does He want to?

Okay I have problems with disbelief. I would love to receive healing!

[Then she went on to detail the things she needed healing for, and how the infirmities had negatively impacted her life, preventing her from doing the things she loved to do.] Then she ended with:

So what do I need to do to receive healing? I would love to be healthy so I can do all those things I find joy in.

What is faith? I believe in Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I believe that He died on the cross for me and that He rose again! Isn't that enough?

As you can see from her response, she is a mature believer who really loves and trusts the Lord. There is no doubt or question that she believes in Jesus and is saved. She also seems to believe that God can still heal today, and she really desires to be healed. She understands that we need faith to approach God, but she doesn't understand that there are different types of faith, or that you have to apply the right type of faith to a given situation. That is why she asks her question about faith: "I believe in Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I believe that He died on the cross for me and that He rose again! Isn't that enough?"

I am going to use golf as an analogy to try and address her question. I don't know much about golf, except for the basics. So those of you who are golf experts, please be patient with my simplistic analogy. A golf course (just like real life or the Christian walk) has many different types of obstacles and challenges built into it. The object of golf is to hit a ball with a golf club to make it go into a specific target or hole, despite those obstacles. The golf club is an analogy for faith--the thing you apply to the ball to get the desired result. You cannot play golf without a golf club, just like you cannot come to God without faith.

The golf club is the "tool" you use to play golf, just like faith is the "tool" you use to approach God in a way where you can draw on His power and anointing for a given situation.

A golfer does not go to the golf course with just a single golf club--he brings a whole bag of them. Why? Because there are many different types of challenges on a golf course, and he needs a different type of golf club for each one. There is, for example, a club designed for power, used to send the ball long distances. The golfer would use that type of club when he first "Tees off." There is another type of club that the golfer uses when the ball is relatively close to the target (hole), because he wants accuracy for this shot. The golfer would not use the "accuracy club" when he first starts, because he is too far away from the hole, and that club wont move the ball close enough to the hole to be useful. Likewise, he would not use the "distance club" when the ball is just ten feet from his target. He will choose the right type of club for the given situation.

Believing in Jesus as savior is like that "distance club." You can't get started in the game without it. You cannot approach God if you don't believe in Jesus and receive Him as your personal Lord and savior. There is not any remission for your sins if you don't allow the blood of Jesus to pay the price for your sin. In short, you can't start the "game" without a salvation-type of faith.

But once you are "in the game," then Jesus expect you to become His witness and He wants you to grow and mature--both in character and in faith. You will find that a lot of different types of challenges will come up as you walk this out in your day-to-day life. And a part of that "growing" process is to learn to trust Him in many different areas of your life. Each one is an aspect of faith in God--but each one touches on a slightly different need/situation. To follow the golf analogy, God causes us to mature in different types of faith (golf clubs) so that we will have the right one for every situation that we face.

So having faith in Jesus as savior is absolutely necessary--we cannot get into the game without it--but it is not enough. We must also have faith in Him as our protector, as our provider, as our healer, and so on. When we are in a situation where we need provision, we must pull out the "faith in God's provision" golf club, and use that. When we are in a situation where we need healing, we must pull out our "faith in God as our healer" golf club and use that one.

I will develop this more in our next lesson, and also address the "Does God want to heal me?" part of the question.