[Lesson Index] [Healing-School Mini-Series Index] [Prev Lesson] [Next Lesson]
In our last lesson, we started talking about whether or not we have to be perfectly well ourselves before we can pray for others to be healed. We identified a type of wrong thinking many people hold about healing-- the belief that you have master healing before you can begin to pray for others. The corollary to that is the wrong belief that if you have any sort of sickness or physical problem of your own, you have somehow disqualified yourself from praying for others. We even gave this type of thinking a name--we called it "Physical heal thyself" thinking.
We looked at five reasons why this "Physician heal thyself" thinking is faulty, and then we started examining some some underlying concepts that challenge this wrong thinking. They were:
We discussed the first two in lesson 4, so let's pick up where we left off...
3. The Enemy Counter-Attacks Those Who Tear Down His Kingdom
I talked about this a lot in lessons 2 and 3, so I am just mentioning it here. You can refer back to lessons 2 and 3 for more details and Scripture references.
The bottom line is that when we build God's kingdom, that tears down the devil's kingdom, and he wants to defend his territory. When the devil oppresses someone by bringing sickness to their body, he is building a stronghold in them. When we heal that person, we take away that stronghold, and the devil doesn't like it. He fights back to protect his territory in the form of enemy counter-attacks. Sometimes those counter-attacks come in the form of attacks on our own health.
Let me give you a brief example from my own life. I have done multiple mission trips where I have moved in God's power/authority and seen many sick people get healed. Many of these trips have been to third world countries. I usually manage to stay healthy during my time in country, but when I get home, I frequently get sick for 2 or 3 months after that. Sometimes it is something major that puts me in the hospital, but most of the time, it is a whole bunch of little things that come one right after the other and keeps me incapacitated for months. For instance, when I got from India in late November of 2008, I came home healthy. But my husband caught a really nasty cold-type of flu three days after I got home. I caught it from him, and we ended up passing it back/forth for over two months before we could finally kick it. This was much worse than a normal cold, and leaves you unable to function--chills, shakes, sweats, violent sneezing that taking an antihistamine didn't control, coughing/sneezing up blood, etc. The doctor said it wasn't serious even though it was making me miserable and it would eventually pass. They did not have a medicine to make it go away.
Just as that ended, I caught a violent intestinal flu that left me incapacitated with bad diarrhea and bad muscle aches for another ten days. Again, the flu was nothing serious, but it sure made me feel miserable, and made it hard for me to function. When I asked the Lord about it, He told me that it was spiritual warfare and that it had to be dealt with via warfare prayer and intercession, it was not something that required a straight-forward physical healing. Fortunately, the GodSpeak Intercessors stood in the gap for me and after a long warring, the attack appears to be broken. I am feeling much better now and I have been able to function like normal this past week.
Sometimes sickness rises out of spiritual warfare and enemy counter attack. When that happens, traditional healing prayer is not all that effective against it--what is needed is warfare-style intercession and authority prayer.
4. There Are Different Types Of Faith
Faith is very important in healing. There are many times when Jesus either asked the person if they had faith or told them "according to your faith let it be done unto you." Here are just a few examples:
Matthew 9:22
But Jesus turned around, and when He saw her He said, "Be of good cheer, daughter; your faith has made you well." And the woman was made well from that hour.Matthew 9:29
Then He touched their eyes, saying, "According to your faith let it be to you."Matthew 15:28
Then Jesus answered and said to her, "O woman, great is your faith! Let it be to you as you desire." And her daughter was healed from that very hour.Matthew 17:19-20a
Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, "Why could we not cast it out?" So Jesus said to them, "Because of your unbelief..."Mark 5:34
And He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your affliction."Mark 10:52
Then Jesus said to him, "Go your way; your faith has made you well." And immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus on the road.
I could go on as there are many more verses like this. But this is enough to give you the idea that the faith plays an important role in healing. This faith can come from more than one source. There is the faith of the person being prayed for, and there is the faith of the person doing the praying.
We saw an example of the latter in Matthew 17:19-20, the disciples came to Jesus to ask why they could not heal the epileptic boy (by casting out the demon who caused the epilepsy). Jesus told them that the reason they couldn't do this healing was because they did not have enough faith for it. These same disciples obviously had faith for healing, as they healed many different sick people before they came across this boy who they could not heal. This shows us that there are different types of faith for healing. The disciples had faith to heal many types of infirmities, but they did not have faith for this one.
The faith of the person receiving prayer is also important. We saw many example of this, including Matthew 9:22, Matthew 9:29, Matthew 15:28, Mark 5:34 and Mark 10:52. There are many real-life stories of faith producing healing. I would like to share a true story that Rusty Russell (one of the leaders of this online healing school) shared with me from his own personal life.
Rusty had really bad hay fever and allergies. That wasn't a huge issue for him because he could use medicine to control the allergies. But the Lord spoke to Rusty and told him to trust God to heal his allergies So Rusty obeyed God and stopped taking his allergy medicine. He expected God to simply make the allergies go away, but it did not happen that way. He was sneezing all over the place, his eyes watering, and he felt generally miserable. He had to lead a healing meeting in an area where he was having all sorts of allergy problems. Rusty was tempted to take allergy medicine so he would be "well" to conduct the meeting, but he sensed that he was to obey God and take a stand in faith. So he went to the meeting and he sneezed and had a running nose through it. His allergy symptoms were so severe that everyone could see he was sick. That did not stop God from healing through him, and others were healed despite Rusty's physical weakness. Rusty continued to stand in faith for his healing, and a few days later all of his allergy symptoms went away. He has not been bothered with them since. Rusty stood firm in faith, despite difficult circumstances, and he received his healing.
There is an interesting thing about faith...many people find it easy to believe for certain things, but find it difficult to believe for other things. For instance, many people find it easier to have faith for certain types of healing (migraines, back pain, structural issues, etc) than other things (cancer, AIDS, etc). Others have some rejection or condemnation issues and find it easy to believe that God wants heal others, but hard to believe that He wants to heal them personally.
There are, in fact, different types of gifts of healing. Paul mentions the "gifts of healings" (plural) three times in 1 Corinthians 12: verses 9, 28 and 30. The logical conclusion that many bible scholars draw from this is that a person can have a gift to heal certain types of things and a different person and have a gift to heal a completely different set of infirmities. Some people get all of the different types of gifts of healings, and others only get a subset. The bible doesn't explain why there are differences in gifts of healings, but I am guessing that part of the reason has to do with a person's faith.
You may have great faith for God to heal certain types of infirmities, and you may see a lot of healings in that area. If you happen to get attacked with the same infirmity, you would most likely be able to rebuke it and see healing come. But if you get an infirmity in a different area, then you may not see healing for that, because it is in an area that you don't happen to have faith for.
Or perhaps you are one of the people who has great faith for God to heal others, but you don't have nearly as much faith for Him to heal you personally.
5. Secular and Everyday Life Examples Of "Mentoring" And Support
Here is the neat thing about praying for the sick to be healed--you don't have to be an "expert" to start doing this. It doesn't require advanced training or some type of advanced credentials to start doing what Jesus commanded every believer to do. All it requires is what ever measure of faith and obedience you can muster up. The more you obey His great commission command to pray for the sick, the more healing you will see, and the more your faith will grow.
Jesus did not send His disciples away to bible college and seminary. Instead He mentored them...He let them follow Him around and learn from Him as they practiced what He showed them to do. They did not have to have perfect faith to heal the sick before they started. In fact, they did not have perfect faith even after they'd been doing it for some time, and that is why they could not heal the epileptic boy in Matthew 17. God doesn't expect us to be perfect, He merely expects us to Trust Him And Obey.
Jesus was not off in left-field when He set up His mentoring system. He taught the disciples personally, and then the disciples taught their converts and so on. In short, this is a concept of "mentoring," where you are only a few steps ahead of the one you are mentoring, but you help them negotiate the steps you just mastered.
Mentoring is actually a great system that many secular groups have used very successfully. Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is a great example of this. After people in the program get to a certain point, they start sponsoring and helping others who are newer to the program than they are. The theory is that you don't have to master the problem completely to help others, you simply have to be a little bit further along in the process than the one you are helping. In fact, there are advantages to still being "in process" as you help others, because you can still relate to the struggles they are going through because it wasn't that long ago that you struggled through the same thing.
AA isn't the only "help group" to use "in process" mentoring. There are dieting groups that do this, and there are support groups for overcoming just about every malady you can think of who encourage their members to sponsor or mentor others who are a bit behind them in the program. And every one of these secular programs seems to have great success. No one expects the mentor to have already completely overcome their own problems--they are just expected to stick to the program and keep working on them.
Let me give one last examples--colleges and universities use student tutors to help other students master a subject they are struggling with. In fact, this was one of the ways I earned my living while I was in college. After I successfully completed a course (with a "B" or better) then the school considered me "qualified" to help others with that same course. I remember that one time I was struggling through advanced Anatomy and Physiology (and at times wondered if I was going to pass the course). At the same time, I was tutoring someone in Basic Anatomy and Physiology. I did not feel like an expert in the subject because it was a tough course for me. But the person I was mentoring saw me as an expert, because I'd already "mastered" the level they were currently struggling with. It actually helped me to tutor them, because it motivated me more. When the semester was over, both of us earned "A's" in our respective classes. But the point is that I was no where close to being an expert in human anatomy and physiology when I mentored the person in the beginning course. I was just a bit further along the learning curve that the student I was helping--and it turned out that I was able to be a huge help to them.
The same principle carries into the area of praying for the sick. Your faith doesn't have to be prefect to see results. Along the same lines, you don't have to be able to keep yourself perfectly healthy before you start praying for others to be healed.