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There are a lot of ways to build our own personal faith. This lesson will touch briefly on five of them:
Reading God's Word
Romans 10:17 says, "So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." Reading God's word is an excellent way to build your personal faith.
If you have any question about God's desire to heal the sick, go read the Gospels. Pay attention to how much of them is devoted to physical healing and deliverance. Look at how often Jesus healed the sick and how willing He was to do so. Then look at the book of Acts and see what an important role healing played in spreading the gospel and how often the apostles and early believers saw God heal the sick.
Then go check out healing in the Old Testament. Read how Abraham prayed for Abimelech to be healed and he was (Genesis 20:17-18). Read how God identified Himself to the Israelites as "the LORD who heals you" in Exodus 15:26. Read how God healed Miriam of leprosy in Numbers 12. Read how God raised the Shunammite woman's son from the dead in 2 Kings 4. Read how God healed Naaman, a commander in the Syrian army, of leprosy (in 2 Kings 5). Read how the Lord healed Hezekiah of a fatal disease in 2 Kings 20 and in Isaiah 38. Read how God expressed His desire to heal His people in Hosea 6:1, Hosea 7:1 and Hosea 14:4.
You will see that healing is not new to the New Testament; it has been a part of God's character and nature since day one. Our God is a healing God. Just reading about His healing nature in His Word is bound to build your faith for healing.
Remembering Past Successes
Someone once said, "We are held captive in prison by our emotions." This is amazingly true. We frequently allow our perceptions of reality to be based on our feelings instead of on reality. That is sort of what happened to Elijah. He had this amazing power encounter with the prophets of Baal where God moved through him in amazing ways (1 Kings 18). Then Jezebel threatened Elijah and he fled for his life and settled into a major bout of depression and wanted to die (1 Kings 19). In 1 Kings 19:4, "He came to a broom tree, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. 'I have had enough, Lord,' he said. 'Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.' " In short, he got caught up in his emotions and totally forgot about the glorious thing God had just done through him just days before.
It can be like that for us too. Our faith can plummet when we feel bad. I know that there have occasionally been days where I have felt really under it. When this happens, the enemy comes along and tells me that I am useless to God's plans and totally worthless, and sometimes I tend to believe him for a little while. I seem to forget all of the things that God has done through me. It is amazing how short my memory can be sometimes, just like Elijah's was.
Once I was in the third or fourth day of a spiritual "dry period." I had been feeling down all day and the enemy had been playing mind games with me. I knew I had to go minister at a healing meeting that night, and I did not see how I could possibly do that. I was not sure I had enough faith to pray for anyone. So I called out to God for help. Suddenly I felt impressed to go read my web page, where I keep my testimonies. It began to perk me up as I read the testimonies written there. I was reminded of the healings God did through me. By the time I went to the meeting, I was full of faith and able to pray effectively for the sick.
It builds our faith when we remind ourselves of things God has already done through us. That is why I recommend that you keep a journal of your healing "successes." You can go back to it when your faith is feeling low to remind yourself of things God has done through you. It will boost your faith.
Remembering God's Faithfulness In Other Areas
If God has come through for you in some big way, it will increase your faith in general. That spills over to having faith for healing. Perhaps there was a time when God supernaturally protected you in a very dangerous situation. Or perhaps He came through for you in a financial crisis. Or maybe He warned you about a bad relationship or business deal and you "got out" just in time. Or perhaps He restored something that was lost or stolen. Think back on the times when God has come through for you in a big way.
When God meets you in some powerful way, you have just experienced His faithfulness. This experience will give you confidence that God can (and will) come through for you. It builds your faith in general and that spills over into healing.
Hearing The Testimonies Of Others
Have you ever wondered why they always have people who are healed give their testimonies in healing meetings? They do that to build the faith of others who have not been healed yet. The "sick" person begins to realize, as they listen to the testimonies, that God really is present to heal. They begin to engage their faith for healing, to reach out to God and ask Him to touch them too. And as a result, more people are healed.
In a similar manner, if you want to pray for the sick, it builds your faith to hear true stories from those God has already used in this manner. Let me share one with you that came to me as an email while I was writing this lesson. This email is from a lady named Rhonda:
I received a wonderful report this morning a lady I have been praying for that had cancer and was given 3 weeks to live last month. Yesterday she was told she has no cancer Hallelujah!
Doesn't that type of testimony encourage you and build faith?
(The next lesson will be a series of true healing testimonies intended to encourage your faith.)
Hang Around Those Who Move In Healing
There is a saying, "Faith is not taught, it is caught." Sometimes the best way to catch faith for healing is to be around those who move in it. If a healing evangelist comes to your town, attend his/her meetings. Don't go to be healed, go to receive an impartation or healing anointing. As you sit there in the meeting and watch God move, silently ask Him to give you the same anointing to pray for the sick and see them healed.
If you know of a church that prays for the sick on a regular basis, start hanging out there from time to time. (I am not suggesting that you change churches, just that you occasionally visit a church that already moves in healing.) After you have been there a few times and observed who is gifted in healing prayer, you might ask the minister or one of the prayer team (before service) if you can follow them around as they pray for the sick and prayerfully observe and learn. If you do that, be sure not to get in the way or interfere with the ministry in any way. It may be that after awhile they will invite you to join them in praying for a sick person. But even if they don't, your faith will grow just by watching them pray and seeing God heal people.
Also, when one of the larger healing ministries holds a crusade in your area, get involved. For instance, if Benny Hinn holds a crusade (usually in a stadium or public auditorium), they are always looking for volunteers to act as ushers. You go to a training session a week or so before the crusade and you do a few simple tasks for them during the meeting. The really neat part is that they have the ushers come down on the stadium and act as a sort of human wall to help with crowd control with the prayer lines. Ushers are not to touch the people and not to pray for them, but you will be right there in the midst of the action, able to see and observe many healings take place before your eyes and able to talk to people and hear what God did for them. And I assure you, that will be a faith-building experience.
Many of the larger healing ministries have a similar setup where they use local volunteers to help with things like ushering or singing in the choir, and that will give you an ability to get "up close" to see what God is doing as He heals people. Or perhaps you could travel with one of the ministries that allows people to travel with their teams, such as Randy Clark of Global Awakening. Spend your summer vacation going to Brazil as part of a ministry team instead of going to Hawaii.