Attacks in the natural may mirror things in thea Seputis
<ts@godspeak.org>

A while ago I noticed that often physical "attacks" that come against someone seem to mirror the spiritual gifts God has given them or be an indicator of what He is doing in the spirit. Of course, this is just a guideline, and CERTAINLY NOT ALWAYS the case. But it is often the case.

Let me give you a few examples. A while ago a woman came and asked me to pray for her feet. Out of a clear blue sky about three years prior, she started having all sorts of physical pain. The doctors were not sure of what was causing it and of how to treat it, but felt it was some type of bone deteriation in her feet. She shared how this started right after she'd done a footwashing of an inmate in a prison. She felt it was a spiritual attack -- that she'd somehow picked up a demon during the foot- washing and needed a deliverance. As I listened to her story, I kept hearing the verse "How beautiful on the mountians are the feet of them who bring good news." I asked her if she felt she had an evangelistic gifting/calling and she said most definately. So, instead of using a deliverance type of prayer strategy, I simply blessed her feet and blessed/released the gift of evangelism that the Lord had put in her. I was not in a renewal setting and I was not doing renewal prayer, but the Lord fell on her in a similar way to what I'd been seeing at renewal meetings. She shook and her feet kicked for a while. As this was happening, the passion she had for lost souls began to resurface in her. Her focus changed from her physical problem (constant chornic pain in her feet) to things of God's heart, particularly God's passion to reach the lost. The Holy Spirit was on her for about 1/2 hour. When He lifted, the pain was gone and she had recommited to the Lord to walk out her evangelistic calling. I was primarily a spectator on this ministry time, with God doing the majority of the "work".

Another time someone who was hard of hearing in one ear came to me for prayer. As I prayed for their physical healing, I kept hearing God say that the problem was not physical but spiritual. The man had been given a prophetic gifting and Satan was attacking him in the area of his physical ears to mirror God's wanting to open his spiritual ears. I stopped praying and asked him if God had been stirring him in the prophetic. The man replied yes, but that it was "tricky" for him to discern God's voice from his immagination. So he often did not deliver words when he got them, for fear that he might be wrong. Often times God would show him something about a person and shortly afterwards, that thing would become public knowledge. I stopped praying for physical healing and started blessing/calling forth the prophetic gift that the Lord had given him. As I prayed, the ringing in his bad ear stopped and he could hear better than before we started praying. It was not a total healing, but a noticable physical improvement.

I have noticed that alot of intercessors have various types of back problems. If someone who is an intercessor comes to me with a back problem, I spend more time blessing their intercessory gift than pryaing for the back. God usualy heals their back when then happens.

About two years ago, I had a rash of painful ear infections -- no sooner would one be "treated" than another would occur. My poor doctor could not figure it out and ran some tests that did not tell him much. I did not think about it at the time, but an interesting thing was going on in my life at that time. This was when the Lord was beginning to do a prophetic impartation in me, and was starting to establish me in it. The ear infections mysterrously stopped after about 3 monthes. Looking back, it was that 3 month peroid where I was really being established in this gifting and just starting to move out in using it. (Coincidently, I was interceeding for a prophetic conference in BC just over a week ago. What what the counter- attack that came on me? You guessed it -- an ear infection out of the blue for no apparent reason.)

I believe there is a principle that the enemy will sometimes attack in the natural what God is doing in the spirit. This is NOT to say that every time there is a physical problem the emeny is attacking something in the spirit. But sometimes he is. So, I sometimes find it helpful in the preprayer interview to see what a person's gifting/calling are and then to (silently) ask the Lord if this attack is the enemy's resistance in the natural of what He is doing in the spirit with the person. If God seems to be saying "yes" to that question, then my prayer strategy is usually to spend more time/energy blessing what God is doing in the spirit with this person than physical healing prayer -- through I throw that in briefly too, just to make sure the person I'm praying for feels I'm addressing their prayer concern. (This is NOT to say that I pray for all physical healings this way -- just that it is a strategy the Lord has added to my "arsonel". In any given prayer situation, we need to ask God which strategy to use for the ministry situation at hand.) But, I do tend to see a high percentage of physcial healings when the Lord tells me to go ahead and use this strategy.

So when you are praying for someone for a physical healing, consider asking the Lord if this is an attack in the natural against what He is doing in the spirit. If God says "yes," try blessing the gifting that the enemy is attacking.

Blessings.

- teresa