Working With God
To 'Keep Your Healing'

As I said in the first lesson, there is a lot of good teaching material available on this topic. So I will only touch briefly on it.

There are two types of spiritual factors to consider. One is standing in faith for our healing and the other is basic principles of spiritual warfare.

Faith And Keeping Your Healing

Everyone agrees that faith is important in healing, but not everyone agrees on what faith looks like. People tend to error on both sides of having faith. Some don't exercise any faith at all. Other exercise faith when it is not merited -- sort of deciding they want something that God has not necessarily given to them and then trying to claim it in faith. I have seen that in many areas of the Christian walk, not just in the area of healing. Someone decides that God has to give them the desires of their heart (from a misunderstanding of Ps 37:4). And they want an expensive sports car, so they claim it in faith. But God does not supply the money for the car since He never intended to give that person an expensive sports car. We can only exercise faith when our faith lines up with God's will and with His plans.

Some people teach that it is never God's will for anyone to be sick, that all sickness and disease is the devil's will, not God's. In one way, I sort of agree with that. But I don't believe that we can use that principle as a carte blanche to naming-claiming healing for each and every person who is sick. I would like to point out that God does not want people to die unsaved and go to Hell (2 Peter 3:9). And yet people die without Christ every day and end up in Hell. Even though it is not God's will for people to perish (e.g, die unsaved), people do perish every day. An unsaved person needs to make a choice to receive Christ, he can't just count on God not sending him to Hell because 2 Peter 3:9 says that it is not God's will for anyone to perish. Likewise, you can't assume that God will heal each/every sick person because of the general principle that it is not God's will for people to be sick.

If God gives a clear indication or a Rhema word that He wants to heal a specific individual, you can stand on that word. Once God has revealed His will in a specific situation, you can stand in faith for His will in that situation. But you should not apply "blind faith" to situations where God has not explicitly revealed his will. Some people take faith to what I consider an extreme. They are sick so they say "I am healed" whether or not there is a change in their condition. They ignore reality, claiming that faith is the substance of things yet unseen. They say that their healing is "unseen but it will manifest soon." There are people who "claim" their healing without a Rhema word from the Lord to do so. Most of them do not end up seeing the "manifestation" of their healing. That is because they are trying to earn it by merit of their great faith when healing is a gift of grace given from God, not something you "earn."

There are times when a person does claim an unseen healing at God's direction. Once God has given the person a Rhema revelation that He will heal them, they can claim their healing and proceed like it already happened -- and they will often be healed. I think of Heidi Baker, who came down with multiple sclerosis. The doctors told Heidi that she must not return to the missions field or she would most likely die. But Heidi had a promise from God that He would give her the nation of Mozambique and that she would see great revival and supernatural healings break out there. So she choose to believe God's promise and went back against the doctor's recommendation. And God healed her of the multiple sclerosis in Mozambique!

Once God has given an indication of His will for a given person or situation, then it is very appropriate to stand in faith in agreement with His will. The circumstances surrounding you are not your reality -- God's will and God's promise become your reality. That is what you hold on to and you will see it come to pass, because God is not a liar and He will always keep His word.

If God heals a person when you pray for them, you can take that as a clear indication that God wants that person healed. If there is a significant change in their physical condition, then we have seen a clear evidence that God has indeed healed them. It is not wishful thinking -- it really happened. So, if the symptoms come back, we know that those symptoms are in direct violation of God's will for this individual. And we can stand in faith against the sickness returning. However, if the sickness was caused by sin or environmental/diet issues that have not yet been corrected, we need to deal practically with those issues before we stand in faith.

But there is no reason to accept symptoms coming back after a person has been healed when we are sure that sin and environmental/diet factors are not causing the condition. The returning symptoms are a lie of the enemy designed to put them back into bondage. Faith is standing on God's reality that He healed you when the symptoms originally went away. I encourage that type of faith. Usually those who make a stand of faith will end up keeping their healing. If the symptoms try to return, they will not be able to stay.

One last thought on faith and healing. It is sometimes a fine line between acting in faith and acting in presumption. One of those is in the area of discontinuing medication. If the medication is critical to your survival or mental balance, you should never take yourself off of it when you think you have been healed. You should go back to the doctor and be retested and have the doctor take you off of the medication.

If the medication is just something for your own comfort, such as a pain killer, then you have more leeway in choosing to discontinue it. If you believe God has told you to go off of your pain pills, you are free to obey Him. But I recommend that you carry them with you at first, just in case you were mistaken in your hearing. If God tells you to go off of allergy medication the same thing applies.

However, if God tells you to go off of medication to lower your blood pressure or regulate your heartbeat, or to keep you from being depressed or psychotic, then do this by going to see your doctor. Have your doctor examine and test you and let the doctor be the one to take you off of the medication. You are still obeying God and going off of the medication (assuming the doctor finds physical evidence that you don't need it any more). But you are doing this in a safe and practical way that will help you to steer clear of the area of presumption. Going through your doctor to discontinue life-sustaining medicine helps protect against those cases where you heard wrong. It allows you to be a good steward of your body, which is the temple of the Holy Spirit.

Spiritual Warfare In Keeping Your Healing

There is also a dimension of spiritual warfare when a sickness is from the devil. It can land on you because of strategic high level warfare against you. E.g. the enemy may try to resist God's plans for your life by bringing sickness or disease. If that happens, mobilize your friends and some intercessors to pray for you to cancel the enemy's assignment against your health and to cut off the enemy's access to you.

Sickness can also come from "illegal" demonic activity. A spirit of infirmity may attach itself to a person even if it has no "legal right" to do so. The spirit of infirmity will bring chronic health problems and maybe even fatal ones. If a healing occurred because a spirit of infirmity was cast out of a person, then there is a very high likelihood that the symptoms will try to come back. Jesus explained this in Matt 12:43-45. He said that when a demon is cast out, it will wander around looking for a new home. If it can't find one, it will grab some reinforcements and try to gain access back to the person who was healed. It will try to get the person to accept it back by trying to convince them that the problem has returned, that God never healed them. It will bring some of the symptoms back. The way to deal with this is to rise up in the authority of Christ and command the demon and the symptoms to leave. If a spirit of infirmity comes back, it needs to be kicked out again. It must not be permitted to take up residence in the person again.

If you minister healing to a person and it involves casting out a spirit of infirmity, you need to teach the person how to take authority when the spirit tries to come back. If they are not saved, you need to get them saved or they won't have any authority in Christ to exercise. Once they are saved, you need to teach them how to rebuke this demon and to warn them that it will probably try to come back. But with a few minutes of training, the person can handle any returning spirits of infirmity and not allow them back in.

Sickness can come from a curse, spoken against the person or even a curse the person speaks on themselves. The bible tells us that a curse undeserved cannot land (Prov 26:2). If a curse against a person's health has landed, there was something in there somewhere to give it a "legal right" to effect the person. That is usually some sort of emotional wounding and thought sins (bitterness, hate, resentment, unforgiveness, etc). If the person is healed and the legal right is not dealt with, that curse is still in effect and will try to land again. So if the symptoms try to return, the curse may need to be explicitly broken. You may need to break any curses of man against the person's health or well being. Once the curse is explicitly broken, it usually can't land again.