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We have been talking about the reality of spiritual warfare, and how the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world are in conflict with each other. We learned that when we do things to build God's kingdom (like healing the sick), those same actions tear down the devil's kingdom. In other words, the devil feels attacked by our kingdom activity, so he is likely to fight back by counter-attacking us. God knows those battles will come and He doesn't want us to be taken out by the enemy's attacks. So He has given us spiritual weapons that we can use to defend ourselves. That includes the spiritual armor of Ephesians 6. It also includes things we can do to prepare ourselves for battle, so that we will prevail when the enemy attacks us.
Lesson 10 shares 9 things we can do to prepare ourselves. They are:
We already looked at the eight in previous lessons. So lets look at the final one.
UNDERSTAND YOUR SPIRITUAL ATMOSPHERE
Don't be disappointed by having unrealistic expectations of what you hope God might do. We need to be aware of the spiritual atmosphere that we are moving in. Some atmospheres are conducive to faith and healing, and other make it much harder.
Even Jesus had problems healing the sick and performing miracles when He was in His hometown of Nazareth, because of the people's strong disbelief. Mark 6:5-6a shares His experience there. "Now He could do no mighty work there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. And He marveled because of their unbelief." Matthew 13:57-58 puts it this way: "So they were offended at Him. But Jesus said to them, 'A prophet is not without honor except in his own country and in his own house.' Now He did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief."
That means that other people's disbelief can effect our ability to heal the sick. We need to be aware of this, and not allow ourselves to feel discouraged or condemned when we pray for someone and they are not healed. We must be careful not to blame ourselves when someone who we pray for remains sick. (And, of course, we must not blame the sick person either.)
The truth is that, at times, spiritual forces are at work that interfere with our ability to minister healing. Sometimes the "fault" does not lay with the person who is praying, and it does not lie with the person who is being prayed for--it lays with enemy activity. We need to be aware that there are demonic strongholds over an area that impede us when we pray for the sick.
Even Jesus was effected them.
Do you remember when Jesus healed the blind man in Bethesaida (Mark 8:22-25)? At first, the man only received a partial healing, and he saw people so blurry that they looked like trees walking around. Then Jesus touched his eyes a second time and he saw clearly. Obviously, there was some level of unbelief that had to be overcome so the healing could complete, which is why Jesus had to pray the second time. But there is another factor here...one that people often miss. Notice verse 23 where Jesus "took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the town..." before He prayed for him.
Why do you think Jesus did that (took him out of the city)? Jesus was aware of a stronghold of unbelief in that city, and He moved the man away from it before He tried to minister to him. The blind man wanted to be healed and Jesus wanted to heal him. But the enemy's stronghold that made it extremely difficult for Jesus to heal there, so He physically moved the man away from that stronghold (out of it's grasp) before He prayed.
Unfortunately, most of us don't have the same level of discernment that Jesus had; we are not as attuned to specific hindrances in our spiritual atmosphere as He was. So we might not discern some of the things that hinder healing, and we can sometimes fail because of environmental factors that we are not even aware of. When this happens, many of us have a tendency to blame ourselves. We think it is our fault that the person who we prayed for was not healed.
We must not do that (blame ourselves), because the enemy will use that as an inroad against us. He will attack our faith. Or he will attack us with guilt and condemnation. The devil loves to do what he can to try and set us up for failure. So he will try to get us in situations where he has strongholds that make it harder for us to minister healing. Then, when we fail, he will play mind games against us to make us feel bad, to defeat our faith and to try to get us to disqualify ourselves.
Another thing we have to be careful of is that we don't allow the devil to get us to take "ownership" (personal responsibility) for a healing that God has not assigned to us. If the devil can't talk us out of praying for the sick, then he will get try to get us to minister in ways that God has not called us to minister. For example, he may try to give us the idea that it is our personal responsibility to get a certain person healed. Then, if that person is not healed, we take it as a personal failure.
We must be careful to be Spirit-led, so we don't end up putting a lot of time/energy into praying for people who God is not asking us to pray for. Don't get me wrong...I am not saying we should not pray for someone if we don't get a specific directive from God to do so. If they come to us for prayer, we should never refuse to pray for them. Or if our heart is touched with compassion for that person, there is no harm in asking them if we might pray for them.
But we should NOT make a big (or prolonged) project of praying for someone when God has not assigned us to pray for them. Sometimes we can get away with doing that without causing any harm. But other times this type of project can cause problems. It can damage our faith (or the faith of the person who is not healed). At times we may find ourselves working directly against what the Holy Spirit is doing in a person's life. Do you remember Aimee Semple McPherson and how God caused her to become terminally ill so she would stop resisting His call on her life?
Sometimes people are "destined" to die--they have a terminal illness that God is going to allow to take their life. Many terminal illnesses can be reversed through prayer because God is all-powerful and He loves to heal the sick. We should never be afraid to pray for someone who is dying, we should expect that God is able to heal them. But at the same time, it is good to 'touch bases' with God, to see just how much He wants us to pray for this particular person's healing.
We have to be careful that we don't take on healing campaigns that God is not calling us to. It can be overwhelming to put a lot of yourself into praying continuously for someone who God already knows is going to die and hasn't assigned you to pray for. That type of experience can damage our faith and make it harder for us to pray for the people who God really has assigned us to pray for.
Let me illustrate by sharing one of these experiences from my own life. I had a friend named Diane who had cancer. She was in her early twenties and was greatly loved by the whole church. So one of our leaders put together a project to pray her to complete healing. I joined in that project with a complete expectation that God planned to heal her and I prayed for her 4 or 5 times a week. I can't tell you how many times I laid hands on her and felt the heat of Gods healing anointing flow out of my hands. I saw a lot of tumors shrink and disappear under my touch as I prayed for sustained periods of time. But when a tumor disappeared, it seemed like a new one would develop in a slightly different location. I must have spent 5 hours a week laying hands on her and seeing evidences of a healing anointing operate. And I was not the only one involved in this prayer project…there were at least a dozen of us who all saw God move as we prayed.
The prayer seemed to work and the cancer went into remission for a short season. But then it came back and she eventually died from it.
Diane's death left all of us really struggling with our faith. I remember thinking to myself, "How can God cause tumors to dissolve away as we prayed, and then allow her to die?" I wondered if they had been "teaser healings." I was very traumatized by her death, as were many others in my church. It took a long time before I was ready to debrief with God about Diane's death. And when we finally did talk about it, God told me that He had not called me (or any of us) into a campaign to pray for Diane's healing. He saw our love for her and the compassion in our hearts for this young woman, so He did not forbid us to pray. But we were pursuing a prayer course that He know would not be answered, and that is why He did not task any of us with healing her. It took a couple of months for be to build back enough faith to start praying for the sick again.
The long and the short of it is that we need to be Spirit-led in our ministry. If our compassion moves us to pray for someone who God has not assigned us to pray for, then we must not allow faith to waiver and we must not blame ourselves if they are not healed.
And even when we are on a Spirit-led assignment, we need to be mindful that the spiritual atmosphere (e.g., enemy strongholds and people's willingness/openness to receive God's healing) effects our ability to move in healing anointing. The devil will do whatever he can to make people skeptical, especially in Western cultures where people are taught to worship science and discount the supernatural. He will also do what he can to get people offended at our message and ministry, to try and close doors for us whenever possible.
And at times, the people around us may criticize or rebuke us for praying for the sick. They may even "attack" us (or try to harm us) in some manner. When they do that, it is usually because they have become unwitting tools of the enemy; the devil has stirred up with offense or anger until they are willing to harass us for our healing activity. This type of thing is never pleasant, but we must not allow ourselves to be taken out if it happens to us.
I'd like to close with an example that pastor emailed me while I was writing this series. She did not know I was writing it, she simply came to me trying to make sense out of what happened to her.
She had volunteered as a chaplin at a local hospital, and underwent a mandatory chaplin training program offered by the interfaith chaplaincy organization associated with that hospital. She graduated the training and began her volunteer work. One dying man asked her to pray for him for healing, and she was happy to comply. She prayed in Jesus' name and the man was happy with his prayer ministry. However, a hospital staff member overheard that prayer and was not so happy. The staff member reported her to the hospital's administration for "being invasive" because she, as a chaplin, used the of Jesus with a patient. So she was 'called on the carpet" for doing this, and was temporarily suspended from that program.
The pastor was completely shocked and caught off-guard. She was stunned to get in serious trouble for praying for healing as a hospital chaplin, especially since that person had requested the prayer. The spiritual atmosphere at that hospital turned out to be quite different than what she thought it was.
She was so taken back and hurt by this attack that she decided to take a break from praying for the sick. (That was exactly what the devil had hoped to accomplish.) But now she understands that there is a war going on, and she realizes that what happened to her was a spiritual attack. So instead of being taken out, she is now preparing for battle. She is going to rise up and continue to walk in her destiny and calling, and the forces of Hell will not be able to prevail against her. She is now armed and equipped for the battle, understands there will be attacks, and expects to overcome because of the power and authority that Jesus has given to her.
Just like this volunteer chaplin, we need to be aware that the battle rages around us. We need to prepare for the attack, so we won't be caught off guard (or taken out) when it occurs. And we can go forward in confidence, know that "Greater is He who in us than he who is in the world."