Healing Tidbits
or
Miscellaneous Teachings On Healing

Intro

This "impromptu" teaching series had grown to 11 lessons, and for some reason that number bugged me. I wanted to round it up to twelve (a nice round number). I did not have a topic for a twelfth lesson, so I had asked the Lord if He had anything else He'd like to add to this series to bring it up to 12 lessons. And for a almost a week, God did not seem to respond to my question. Then one day I got an email that God used to formulate the 12th lesson.

I am on a revival discussion list, and I got an email from the list posing an interesting question. Actually, there was a bobble in the system, and I got some replies to the question before I received the email with the actual question, so I tried to piece together what the original question had been. It seemed like someone (who was a regular supporter of a healing ministry) had received a fund-raising letter from them that used strong coercion techniques. So the question seemed to be: Could a legitimate God-ordained ministry do that type of thing, and still remain "of God?"

The replies I read seemed to condemn the ministry; and at first, I was somewhat inclined to agree with them. But the Lord spoke to me about it and showed me a few things I had not originally considered. I finally found and read the original email, and I started to reply to it with what the Lord had showed me. I was about to send my reply to the revival list when the Lord stopped me and asked, "Are you sure you want to send your reply to the list? Wouldn't you rather use it as the twelfth lesson that you asked Me for?"

Obviously, I did not sent that email to the list. Instead, I am sharing what He showed me with you as lesson 12 of this series.

The Original Question

This email came in to a revival discussion list from one of the members:

I have received a number of emails recently from one large international healing/evangelism ministry who I support, saying that unless they receive urgent cash, they will be forced to cancel upcoming crusades.

What is the feeling out there about these types of emails?

I, for one, feel its borders on coercion. I guess it prompts believers to assess their giving, but I'm uncomfortable about the way its gets communicated. Is it fair to say the Holy Spirit should lay a burden on your heart to give? Or am I being a bit harsh!!

What The Lord Showed Me In Response

I want to preface what I share by saying that I do not know which ministry this is, and I do not know whether or not it is a legitimate healing ministry. I believe the Lord wants me to discuss this topic generically, and I am not rising up to defend any specific ministry. What God showed me is important because it helps us understand how a legitimate ministry can take a little bobble in their techniques, yet still remain "of God" and anointed by Him. It can also be applied on a personal level, as you rise up in faith to fulfill your own personal calling and destiny.

Sometimes the leadership of a legitimate ministry that really serves and trusts God can get their eyes off of the Lord for a season. They may end up focusing on how God usually provides for them, instead of focusing on the One Who provides. If that happens, then God might intentionally dry up the "usual way" He that provides for them, so they are forced to go back to Him for fresh revelation and/or an infusion of faith.

Let me give an example from Scripture. Elijah was a man of God and highly anointed by Him. But the Elijah we see at the start of his ministry is not the same Elijah who God used to confront the prophets of Baal in the dramatic showdown where he called down fire from Heaven. When Elijah prophesied that it would not rain, he was newer in ministry, maturity and faith. He was already "in ministry," because God used him to deliver that message to Ahab. But God placed him into a steep learning and growth curve that caused his faith and personal maturity level to grow, so that he would be ready for the next big assignment that God had for him.

King Ahab became angry and upset at Elijah's famine prophesy after it began to come to pass. Instead of repenting to God, Ahab blamed Elijah for all of the problems related to the famine. He hoped to capture Elijah, then force him to take back the word and end the famine, probably through torture and/or other unpleasant forms of coercion. Ahab put out an "all points bulletin" for Elijah and put a "price on his head," so to speak. Elijah had to go into hiding just to stay alive, and he had to depend on God for his support while he was in hiding.

God used different methods to protect and provide for Elijah during this time. His first method was to have Elijah hide in a valley and have him drink from a stream. There was a supernatural element to this as method, because God had the birds of the air bring him food. But when Elijah got used to that and comfortable with that, God suddenly let the stream dry up and "changed the rules" of how Elijah had to "get support". The bible does not tell us the specific details, such as how Elijah first reacted to the steam drying up, before he got clear-cut instructions from God about what to do next.

My guess is that Elijah probably did everything he could to get water from that dry riverbed. He might have tried digging for water. He might have tried following the dry riverbed upstream, looking for a pool of water or something. We don't know what his first reaction was--but if he was anything like most of the rest of us, he probably tried to use his own abilities/resources to try and solve the problem until he got a clear direction from God.

Once Elijah heard clearly from God, he had to leave his nice safe (and isolated) valley to wander out among others. This was dangerous and scary for him, because the "bounty hunters" were still actively looking for him. They would have a better chance of finding him when he traveled on an open road than when he was hiding, so it took a greater level of faith to obey God. (If it were me in Elijah's situation, I am not sure I would have left the safety of that valley until God forced me to. As long as that stream was there, I might have been tempted to just stay put and keep drinking from it. Maybe Elijah had a similar reaction, and maybe that is what motivated God to dry up the steam?)

When Elijah finally arrived at the widow's house, God used a totally different miracle (a bigger one) to provide support for him. God provided by sending him to someone who had no resources to support Elijah, then multiplying what little resources that person did have. In this case, He multiplied the last remaining bit of the widow's oil and flour, so that it never ran out and fed everyone in the house until the famine was over.

I believe that God used that method of support to grow Elijah's faith and dependency on God. I think He did this so that Elijah would be ready to face king Ahab and the 450 prophets of Baal. By the time Elijah had to face them, his faith had suitably grown to point where he was able to call down fire from Heaven.

I also believe that God intentionally dried the stream because it was His usual method of providing for Elijah. He wanted to push Elijah, to force him to press into God and grow in faith.

God sometimes does similar things with His ministers/ministries today. He "dries up" the stream they are used to drawing from, so that He can push them into the next step of growth/faith/obedience. Of course, this "transition" may a bit traumatic for those in the ministry that God is growing/stretching. They probably do not understand His strategy at first, and they probably don't have a full revelation on what He is doing, or why. They might respond to the situation like most of the rest of us would--by seeing it as a "problem" (instead of a transition of God), and then doing their best to "fix" that problem.

They may have a bit of a flesh mixed into their response before they rise up in faith...Like I said earlier, the bible doesn't tell us Elijah's initial response when he discovered that this stream was drying up. It wouldn't surprise me if he used human/fleshly responses to keep trying to draw from that steam before he moved on with God in faith.

Elijah's initial response was not the important thing--the important thing was that he did follow God and move on to the new source, even though He had to take bigger "risks" to do so. (E.g., he had to leave his safe, secluded valley and be on the road where one of Ahab's bounty hunters might find him.) He may have resisted for a short season (we don't know because the bible doesn't say), but he did end up obeying, and that is what God considered important.

Now back to the ministry in this email and their coercion-style fund raising techniques. It is indeed possible that they have fallen out of God's agenda into a carnal one, where they are choosing to do things to promote their own agenda that dishonor God. If that is the case, then they are setting themselves for a strong correction and if they don't return to God's agenda, they may loose His anointing and empowerment.

But it is also possible that they are godly people who are in the same type of faith/growth curve that God put Elijah in. If so, then they may be in the phase where they are still "digging in the dirt to look for water." Perhaps their usual stream of God's provision is drying out, but God hasn't yet given them the new revelation of how He intends to support them. Maybe they will get that revelation soon, pick themselves up, and move on to God's next plan for them.

If that is the case, the coercive fund raising technique might be their version of trying to find more water in that dried out stream. It is not what I would consider desirable Christian behavior, but it is not necessarily and indication that they have "gone bad." They might just be struggling to stay at that "dried out stream" before they realize that it is time to move on with God. E.g., it might be that they are about to get new revelation and/or directions from God, and that they are about to rise up to the next level of faith and obedience.

My advice would be to ignore this coercive fund raising letter and go into a watch-and-see mode. Give them some time so you can see if they are just having a short-term fleshly response before moving into their next level of faith/revelation. It may take them several weeks (or months) to realize that they have to move on to a new stream (a different method of funding their ministry work). So give them a bit of space for a learning curve before you make a final evaluation.

But whatever you do, don't feed into their coercion letter. If they have become carnal and are looking for fleshly ways to finance their agenda, you don't want to sow into it, because we only want to fund ministries who are doing what the Father is doing. If they are in an Elijah-style growth curve, then responding to their coercive fund raising techniques will keep them digging at the dry stream-bed even longer.