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-- © GodSpeak International 2002 --
-- Do not republish without written permission from <copyright@godspeak.org> --
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND CONTRIBUTING RESOURCES
Author: Teresa Seputis <ts@godspeak.net> http://www.godspeak.net
Editor: Bob Hawley

Faith And Healing

by Teresa Seputis

Lesson 5
Building Faith in Those We Minister To

I would like to start by sharing a true story where two people came to the same meeting and both received prayer from the same person, a well- known healing evangelist. One came forward expecting to be healed. The other came up expecting that "not much would happen," but willing to give it a try just in case. Both got precisely what they expected. The first person was healed and the second was not. The first came full of faith and the second came with very little, if any, faith.

This illustrates how important a person's expectations can be when they receive healing prayer. And that may be why many who move strongly in the healing ministry feel it is important to help build the person's faith before you pray for them, so that they are in a frame of mind to receive what God desires to do for them.

Charles N'Diffon said that he prefers to engage and build the person's faith before he prays for them. If he perceives the person does not have faith to be healed, he will talk to them for awhile to engage their faith. His message is simple, it is the basic gospel message. Jesus loves you and He died for your sins. In His death and resurrection, He also bore your infirmities and He wants to heal you right now. If they are not convinced, He develops it from Scripture, such as the passage from Is. 53:4-5 where we are healed by Jesus' stripes. Charles may also share some testimonies with them of others who were healed. Why does he do that? He does it to help build their faith, to get them to the place where they will be ready to receive healing from the Lord.

I fell into that by accident one time when I was doing street evangelism in Alabama and found that it really makes a difference. I was visiting an evangelist friend of mine. One evening she took a small group from her church to go "street witnessing" in a department store parking lot. I went along with them. I am not really a street evangelism type; my specialty is more along the lines of striking up a conversation with someone I'm sitting next to on the BART or at an airport waiting for a plane and getting words of knowledge for them. That usually leads to opportunities to pray with them for a need or share the gospel. So I was not sure precisely how to proceed in street evangelism.

I walked up to a family, a mother who was accompanied by her five children, ranging in age from about 10 to 17. I started with the opening line they'd given us, "Hi. I am out here today sharing the Good News of how you can enter into a personal relationship with God. Would you like to hear more?" The woman looked very tired and as through she'd had a very bad day. She said, "No thank you." I said, "OK, have a nice day," and started to leave.

She was surprised that I wasn't going to badger her (the group I was with was rather aggressive in witnessing). She said, "You're not from around here, are you?" I said that I was from California. She wanted to know what I was doing all the way in Mobile, Alabama. She said, "Surely you did not come all this way just to talk to people in the parking lot about God." So we struck up a brief conversation. She asked me if I traveled a lot, so I told her about some of the places I'd been, like Moscow, Kazakhstan, England, India, the Yukon Territory, etc. She asked why I went all those places, and was particularly interested in why I would go to Moscow. So I told her about how Randy Clark took a team there and how God did some really neat physical healings when we were there. Her eyes widened. The kids stopped fidgeting and also started to pay attention.

The woman asked me if I'd every actually had anyone I prayed for get healed. I said yes, and began to tell her some of the healings I'd seen. My favorite story was when this teen-ager came to me with kneecaps that had been burned off in a fire, and God grew them back. I shared how I would never forget the expression on the girl's face when she was able to bend her knees again, and how she began jumping up and down, laughing and screaming, "I can walk without pain!" She was screaming it in Russian, so I asked my interpreter what she was saying. Interpreters are trained to imitate the actions of the person they are interpreting for. So the interpreter began jumping up and down as she translated. The girl's mom got so excited that she started jumping up and down as well. It was a very joyful experience for all of us.

Then the unsaved woman in the parking lot asked me to pray for her 17-year-old daughter, who had a serious health problem. When I originally approached the woman, she did not want to hear anything about God. And now she was requesting that I pray for her daughter. So I asked the 17-year-old daughter if she'd like me to pray for her. She said, "I am supposed to go into the hospital for surgery next week, and not everyone survives that operation. Of course I want prayer."

So I prayed for her. The mom said that they had a doctor appointment the next afternoon, and if the daughter were healed, she would receive Christ. I flew home that morning, so I never did get to hear what happened at the doctor's office. But I suspect that God probably healed her. He loves to back up the proclamation of the gospel with His power by doing things like healing the sick.

The point of the story was that it evokes faith in people when they hear true accounts of how Jesus healed someone. That parking lot encounter made me realize that. The next time I prayed for someone who did not seem to have much faith, I stopped and talked to him for a while. I shared some healing stories and his faith began to perk up. Then I shared a few verses about God wanting to heal him. This led to a very short debate. He had problems believing that God wanted to heal him. He seemed to feel that God would heal anyone else, but not him. So we had a brief "truth encounter" where it became real to him that God really loved Him as much as He loved others. Once that issue was dealt with, it because easy for him to receive his healing. In fact I could barely finish my healing prayer sentence before he was healed. If we had not had this conversation and dealt with his underlying assumption that God did not want to heal him, I could have prayed all day and probably would not have seen any results.

There are times when it is very helpful to engage the person's faith before praying for them.

Please do not confuse building faith with "emotional hype." Faith does not have to come from emotions; it is not a feeling. Faith is the realization that God can (and probably will) heal them. Some people are emotionally wired and they get excited when their faith is engaged. That is OK, there is nothing wrong with that. If they want to get excited, let them get excited. But don't try to make them get excited and don't try to manipulate their feelings. Not everyone will respond to faith emotionally. Some people are even keeled and emotional hype would have an adverse effect on them. Hype might be distracting, or even worse, it might cause them to disengage their faith.

We must be careful to direct people to place their faith in God and not in us. If they look to us for healing, we will not be able to deliver. God is the healer. Get them to focus their faith on Him and on His faithfulness.

Also, we must not mix faith with fantasy. It is good to help a person engage their faith. But we must not try to get them to speak lies in the name of "faith." I have seen people get prayed for and obviously they did not get healed. Yet they proclaim, "in faith," that they are healed. That does not help anyone. If you pray for someone who has a broken arm and their arm remains broken after you pray for them, acknowledge that the healing has not come yet (thought it may come later). Don't tell the person that they are already healed and their healing will manifest later. Be honest. God is truth, so if we want to move as His representatives, we must be truthful.

Remember, our goal is to direct the person's attention and expectations to God, to make them mindful of God's faithfulness, His power and His willingness to heal the sick. We want to help them get to the place where they are willing to receive the healing God has for them. We want to focus their expectations on God and facilitate their coming to God that He might touch them.


-- © GodSpeak International 2002 --
-- Do not republish without written permission from <godspeak@godspeak.org> --

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