I have found that it is always easier to pray for the sick overseas, or even out in a ministry trip somewhere in the States than in my home town and in my own church. I knew that there had been some sort of impartation on me and the other six team members from my Church, but I was not sure what it would "look like" at home. I was eager to find out.

The trip home was literally "grueling". And it took over 37 hours from when we left the hotel until I arrived home. We left for the airport at 4:30 AM, which meant we had to meet in the hotel lobby to load our suitcases into the bus at 4:15 AM. This was harder than it sounded since we did not get back from ministry until about 1:00 AM. I wondered if it would be better to simply stay up the three hours, or if it would be better to get a few hours sleep. My roommate wanted to sleep, so that is what we did. Three hours is not very long! The wakeup call came at 4:00 AM and I did not want to wake up. I had slept in my clothes and my suitcase was already packed, so all I had to do was brush my teeth, use the facilities and put on my shoes. It took me 10 minutes to accomplish that because I was so sleepy.

Everyone on the team was tired, but there were fond good-byes and some exchanging of addresses, business cards, etc., as we loaded on the bus. The flight from Belem to Sao Paulo was about 5 1/2 hours. (There was a stopover in Rio de Janeiro). When we got to Sao Paulo, we had a 9 hour layover. The flight from Sao Paulo to Chicago was about 10.5 hours. Then we had a 5 hour layover in Chicago before starting a 4 hour flight to Oakland. That last 5 hour layover was the real "killer" for me ... all I wanted to do was to "go home." I did not feel spiritual, I did not feel victorious, all I felt was tired.

However, God had plans to work in my heart, even on this grueling trip home. He spoke to me about several things. I was not in the best place to hear Him because I was travel-weary and exhausted, but He managed to get through to me nonetheless. I will share some of these things with you shortly ... but let me finish the story first...

We hit our final destination airport about 12:30 PM and it took almost an hour to get our luggage and get out of the airport. Some folks from my church came to greet us. To tell you the truth, I was so tired that I don't even know who was at the airport -- it was sort of a blur.

Friday morning the Lord woke me early and told me to write a trip report. That turned out to be a bit of a struggle for me. Rodney (our senior pastor) had given us a sort of solemn warning to be careful about our motives in sharing what God did; that we be careful we are giving the glory to God and not trying to take any for ourselves. For some reason that hit me really hard. It is my usual habit to give fairly detailed reports of ministry trips to my email lists, covering both the pluses and the minuses of the trip.

I had always felt that a part of my ministry anointing was the "testimony" side, of sharing what God had done and encouraging people's faith so that perhaps God could do the same things through them as well. But now I began to struggle -- were my motives pure? Was God really asking me to write the trip report, or were my own motives/issues driving me to write it. I did not want to report from wrong motives or try and steal any of God's glory. So I decided I would not do a trip report this time.

When I woke up Friday morning, I felt the Spirit prompting me to write the trip report. I was still afraid of "impure motives" so I resisted this. It sounds stupid, but I really wrestled with this for over three hours before the Holy Spirit settled in my heart that I was to write the trip report and give Him glory for some of what He had done on this trip.

Once I started writing, I sensed the Holy Spirit's presence and the anointing for writing that I have come to be familiar with. A peace settled over me and I began writing. The more I wrote, and the more I remembered the events of this trip, the stronger the sense of the Lord's presence was. I wrote until it was almost time to leave for a monthly women's group meeting, where Debbie and I were to share about the trip. The anointing seemed so strong when I finished writing that I expected an extremely powerful evening.

As I spent that last half hour before I left, preparing what I wanted to share (a tad of teaching to go along with the testimonies), God began to remind me about something Bill Johnson had taught on in Brazil -- about the difference between ministering from our authority and from the anointing. Anointing was when the Holy Spirit was present and tangible in a meeting for healings. It is easy and a lot of fun to minister healing when the anointing for healing is present. However, Jesus gave each of us authority to heal. The thing about authority is that you have to be convinced that you have the authority before you can really move in it. And you get "convinced" of the authority by exercising it when the anointing is not present over the meeting. It is "harder" to pray for the sick from your authority (at least in the early stages of learning to move in your authority) than it is to pray from the anointing.

Now, I should have known that if God was talking to me about that, and if He was reminding me of what Bill Johnson said, that He had a reason for this. He also reminded me that there were times in Brazil when I prayed under the anointing and I saw many great healings. There were also times in Brazil when I prayed "from authority" (e.g., the anointing did not seem to be there on the meeting) and I only saw a few healings instead of a bunch of them. But I did see healings both ways in Brazil.

The Friday night women's group started great. Worship (which Debbie led) was great. The sharing of the teaching (authority verses anointing and how we can minister from either of them) went pretty well. Then both Debbie and I shared some testimonies and the ladies were captivated by what God had done. Then the ministry time started. And I discovered that it was a night were God wanted me to minister from my authority in Christ instead of from "the anointing." This was a tad confusing to me as I'd felt such a strong anointing on me all day a I wrote out the trip report. To make matters "feel" worse, there seemed to be a really strong anointing on Debbie.

I was glad that there was an anointing on the meeting through Debbie, but I was a bit puzzled as to why it wasn't on me as well. (I later shared this with one of the ladies who had been there and she told me that she felt a lot of power and anointing when I prayed for her, so she thought maybe it was just a perception thing on my part.) But it went along with the lesson God was teaching me on ministering from authority instead of ministering from anointing.

In Brazil, God never let me struggle through the "ministering from authority instead of anointing" thing two meetings in a row. So I expected that there would be a great deal of anointing available to me on the Sunday morning service. The plan was for all seven of us from the Brazil team were to share our testimony of what we'd seen God do on the trip, then we were to pray for the sick in the church and for those who wanted an impartation of what we received in Brazil.

The Lord met me strongly during worship. It felt like He was tangibly in the room standing next to me. I could sense His holiness, His nearness and His great love. I ended up on my face in response to His presence. I could sense the Lord's power wash over me. For a while I was not really aware of anything besides the Lord. Then I became aware that I was shaking under the power. I remember throwing out a silent prayer that God would "make me invisible," i.e., keep folks from noticing that I was on the floor shaking under the power. (We don't do things like that in our Southern Baptist church very often, even though it is a Spirit-filled church. I was a bit concerned that my "activity" might offend someone.)

But I was not able to stay self-conscious for very long, because the Lord commanded my attention and began speaking to me. Well, it was more like He dumped some knowledge into my spirit rather than using words to communicate with me. I was suddenly reminded of the authority I knew I'd gained over demons when that demon manifest the first night of the big outreach crusade. There was no question in my mind that the thing had to submit to me because I had experienced exercising the authority that Jesus gave to me and I knew the demon had to obey even though it did not like it. Suddenly the Lord brought Luke 9:1 to my memory. It said, "When Jesus had called the Twelve together, He gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases."

Suddenly something clicked in my spirit and I realized that diseases had to submit to the authority that Jesus gave me, just like the demons had to submit. The disease had no choice. If I exercised the authority that Jesus gave me, it had to submit. It was the same authority whether it was applied to a demon or to a disease! (This was a revolutionary concept for me. Disease is inanimate -- it does not have a will or emotions and it does not make any decisions. It had never occurred to me that an inanimate thing had to submit to Christ's authority.)

Now, the tricky thing about authority is that the less certain you are when you exercise it, the less quickly the thing you are exercising it over submits. In my early days of doing deliverance, it used to take six or seven hours to get the demons out because I did not understand the authority that Jesus has delegated to me as His servant. As my understanding of my authority grew, I found that I could get the same caliber of demons out of a person much faster. Part of it was being "smarter" in how I operated (not spending a bunch of time on procedural things that did not have to be done). But part of it was simply an inner assuredness of the authority that had been delegated to me. The demons obeyed faster when they saw that I was confident of the authority that Christ had given to me. Now I began to see that the same thing applies to sickness and disease that applies to demons.

God has given us His authority over sickness and disease, the authority that Jesus earned on the cross and when He arose from the dead. This authority is mine (because I am His), but I don't yet have the experiential knowledge and certainty of exercising it. The "anointing for healing" does not have to be present, because Jesus gave me (and each of us) authority over sickness. But I realized that I would have a "learning curve" as I learned to move in that authority -- I once was slow and clumsy on deliverances but I IMPROVED over time as I experienced successes in operating in His authority. I realized that it was going to be like that in healing as well.

It was a powerful revelation, but the practical impact of this revelation did not strike me immediately. I did not realize that God was about to give me another opportunity to practice ministering from my authority in Christ instead of ministering from anointing.

When it came my turn to share in the service, I talked about what the Lord had just showed me during the worship. I also gave a few testimonies of neat things that God did in Brazil, including how He had taught me not to use an interpreter when confronting a manifesting demon, and how the noisy demon that manifest at the "big" meeting was shut down so quickly when I exercised the authority that Jesus has given to His disciples. When ministry time came, most of those who came up to me wanted prayer for deliverance or for freedom from an enemy stronghold instead of physical healing. Several also came up to me for impartation.

If there was an anointing on me, I could not feel it and the people I prayed for did not exhibit much by way of manifestations of God's presence on them. I glanced at the other Brazil trip team members; most of them had a slew of bodies on the ground near them. (It is not "normal" for people to fall down during prayer at our church so we don't have any regular catchers. It happens occasionally, but it is rare. And it is definitely not normal to have so many falling down.) The other team members clearly had a powerful anointing on them. I began to feel frustrated that they all had this anointing and apparently I was the only one who did not. (God did not explain the "why" to me until later -- that He was teaching me to minister from authority, and I could not learn that if I was ministering from anointing. So I left the meeting feeling disappointed and wondering why I was the only one on the team who did not have any anointing.)

If I haven't forgotten someone, I think I only had one person come to me for prayer for physical healings, a neck that was "out of place" and causing her pain. She had a chiropractor appointment scheduled for the next day, but she wanted God to fix her "now" because it was so uncomfortable. I went through the 5 step model and prayed for her. After I'd prayed for a while, the person with the sore neck reported that the pain was gone. She contacted me later in the week to let me know that she'd gone to her chiropractor appointment the next day and he sent her away untouched because everything was in perfect alignment and there was nothing to adjust. The chiropractor was puzzled and could not figure out why things had not slipped and why she did not need an adjustment. I did not feel the anointing when I prayed for her, but God had indeed healed her.

Praying from authority instead of anointing is not as much fun, but it does yield results. I have to confess that I really prefer praying under the anointing ... it is more fun to pray when God is moving quickly and powerfully than when it is the slower going. But I am glad to see healing released, even when it is slower going and "more work" praying the healing through.

(Just for the record, the following Sunday at church there was much more anointing when I prayed. I was so glad that the Lord was giving me some time with anointing instead of making everything I do here at home be the "harder" and slower type of prayer that builds confidence in the authority that Christ has given me.)

The reason that I shared this in such detail is because God desires for each of us to come to know the Luke 9:1 authority that has been given to us because we are His disciples. We have authority over demons and we also have authority over sicknesses. This authority is not dependent on there being an "anointing for healing" present over a meeting. Of course, it is always more fun to pray for the sick when a strong anointing is present. But God wants each of us to understand and be able to use the healing authority that Jesus won on the Cross.

In other words, God wants us to know that we have Christ's authority to heal the sick, so that He can lead us to pray for the sick even when we are not in a church meeting with a strong anointing for healing. God wants John 14:12-14 to be real in our lives. That is why He wants to teach each of us how to use the authority that Jesus won on the Cross and in the Resurrection and then delegated to His church.