Divine Healing Made Simple: Simplifying the supernatural to make healing & miracles a part of your everyday life (The Kingdom of God Made Simple Book 1) (8 page)

I decided to kick it into high gear for a while and started looking for people to heal literally everywhere I went. My wife began to get a little irritated. She could no longer have a normal conversation with me at a restaurant because I was always looking for someone who needed healing. It became a kind of obsession. I was turning into a healing machine with no “off” switch.

I had a talk with Jessie Campbell one night about my situation. Jessie operates powerfully in healing and teaches others as well. She lives in Australia, so we talked over Skype. I shared my concerns about having a guilty conscience over not healing people, then becoming compulsive about it. She told me she’d been through the same struggles. We talked for a long time about healing and the motives we have for doing it. I came away from that discussion with a clearer perspective. I’d like to share a few observations about our motives for healing.

Some of us are “doers” by nature. We love to keep busy, doing things to help others out. (I’m one of those types.) Healing lends itself well to this type of personality. But healing, like any form of ministry is supposed to be done out of compassion, not compulsion. The gospels often note that Jesus healed the multitudes because He saw them and had compassion on them, not because He had to heal 50 people a day to earn favor with His Father.

Jesus was a man who lived a balanced life. He was passionate about the things He did, but He operated in a great diversity of gifts. He was just as adept at healing and casting out demons as He was at teaching children. He preached in the synagogue one day and the next day He couldn’t be found, having retired to the solitude of the mountains. He was just as comfortable in a fishing boat as He was with the nobles or the prostitutes. He shared the mysteries of the kingdom with thousands if they’d listen, but He was equally delighted in sharing with His three closest friends; Peter, James and John. He was and is a man for all occasions who meets the needs of everyone. Healing is neither the exclusive, nor the primary need of most people. The needs of the world are many and healing is only one of them.

I love healing. It gives me a thrill to see the power of God fix what the enemy has broken. The Church has been locked up in her tower long enough. I’m glad to see us hitting the streets and doing the things Jesus did. We ought to be healing the sick. But doing healing every day, all day long will eventually put you in a straight-jacket. There is more to life than healing. You don’t need to look very far to find people whose lives have been ruined by the cruel taskmaster of compulsive healing.

I have healed some people out of a guilty conscience – thinking it was wrong to ignore anyone who needed healing. Please don’t misunderstand me; healing is a good thing. Jesus told us to do it and everyone I’ve seen healed was grateful that I took the time to pray with them. But every good thing, if wrongly prioritized, can become an idol. It may even be bad for your mental health.

There is an explosion of healing taking place today in the body of Christ. Training is readily available for free. There are hundreds of YouTube videos available to teach you about healing. Many people will offer to train and lead you on the path to a successful healing ministry. You may be invited to join groups for study and practice. You’ll make new friends in the healing community. You’ll hear amazing testimonies about the power of God. But you’ll also see great division over how healing is supposed to be done. And you’ll eventually find those who will place enormous pressure on you to heal people every waking hour and accuse you of being lazy and disobedient if you don’t. Their Jesus has a yoke that’s hard and a burden that’s heavy.

Anyone can heal the sick because they want to see the power of God at work. Brush aside the rhetoric and all you have is sorcery. Anyone can heal from a compulsion to obey the commands of Jesus; this person is no more than a legalist trying to be justified by his works. Anyone can heal so that they can tell their friends how God is using them. Such a man will be destroyed by his own pride.

Be cautious in developing relationships in the healing community and seek God’s wisdom at all times. Don’t be swayed by clever arguments or impressive testimonies from those who may recruit you to their group. Examine the fruit of their lives. Don’t be taken by those who would place a yoke of bondage on you.

Go out and heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out demons and preach the kingdom. But do it for only one reason. Your motive should be an overwhelming love and compassion for those in need. There is no other legitimate motive for healing.

H
EALING IS SOMETHING WE DO
by faith. In contrast to traditional medicine, which is a function of what you know and how skilled you are, divine healing is a result of who you know and what you believe. Simply put, if you know Jesus and you believe He is still healing people today, He will heal the sick through you. Once your relationship with Him is established through the operation of the Holy Spirit, growing your faith in God’s ability and desire to heal is the next step.

How do we develop the kind of faith that heals? Let’s look at some of the reasons why people are not healed when we pray. The disciples of Jesus were not able to heal the boy with epilepsy and when they failed, they asked Jesus why:

And when they had come to the multitude, a man came to Him, kneeling down to Him and saying, “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and suffers severely; for he often falls into the fire and often into the water. So I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him. ”

Then Jesus answered and said, “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him here to me.” And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him; and the child was cured from that very hour.

Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?”

So Jesus said to them, “Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there, ’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.”
MT. 17:14-20

We will discuss the connection between sickness and demons in the chapter on deliverance. In this chapter we will focus only on faith.

Jesus said the disciples could not heal the boy because they lacked faith. It appears as though they had adequate faith for healing some diseases, but not the faith required to accomplish this particular task.

Jesus said if they had faith as a mustard seed, they could move mountains. Some have taught that Jesus spoke of
size
when comparing faith to a mustard seed. They teach that just a small amount of faith can move mountains – if it is pure. I believe this teaching misses the point. Jesus didn’t use
size
in this comparison. He didn’t say they needed faith as
small
as a mustard seed, but rather they needed faith that
acts
as a mustard seed acts. It was the action, not the size, Jesus referred to. Small faith was never commended by Jesus. He often rebuked people for having little or small faith. He commended the Roman Centurion who had great or “large” faith (see Mt. 8:9-10).

In one of the kingdom parables Jesus likened the kingdom of God to a mustard seed, explaining that it grew into a large tree; so large that the birds of the air came to nest in it (see Mt. 13:31-32). Here is the key to how mustard seed faith acts – it grows. A seed bears no fruit until it germinates and grows into a plant; the larger the plant – the more fruit it bears. Faith that heals the sick may start out small, but it must grow before it produces fruit.

When I began praying for the sick, almost no one was healed. I became discouraged and I wanted to quit. I had almost no faith. All I had was a promise from God; “You pray and I’ll heal.” I had a seed of promise from God and nothing else. But as we’ve seen, the kingdom of God is about growth.

So I planted the seed and watered it. I watched videos featuring Todd White, Pete Cabrera and Tom Fischer as they prayed with people on the streets and I saw miracles happen. And the seed sprouted. I watered it with Scripture, reading every account of healing I could find in the Bible. And it grew roots. God gave me dreams where I saw myself praying for the sick and they were being healed. Leaves grew from a small stalk that emerged from the ground. I attended healing conferences and watched miracles happen before my eyes. I continued laying hands on anyone who would let me and eventually, I saw some of them healed. Fruit began to appear.

In the beginning, I failed to understand what it took to see people healed. I saw others operating consistently in healing and I wanted to know how they did it. Like many people, I misunderstood what faith for healing is and how it operates.

Most of you would call yourselves Christians, disciples of Jesus, or simply, “believers.” You believe certain things about Jesus; the most important is that He is your Savior. This “kind” of faith is the kind that saves us from the consequences of sin, but it’s not the kind of faith that heals the sick. Every Christian believes that Jesus is their savior, and yet that faith does not heal the sick. There must be another kind of faith that heals.

The kind of faith that heals isn’t a belief that God wants to heal the sick. Many Christians believe that God wants to heal the sick and yet the sick are not healed when they pray for them. Faith that heals is different from this.

Faith that heals consistently and predictably is the belief (confidence) that when you are presented with an opportunity to heal someone who is willing to be healed, that God will in fact heal that person of the condition they have through you. Faith that heals consistently is not general. It is specific to the person who is sick, the problem at hand and the one who is praying. Allow me to illustrate:

When the woman was healed by taking hold of the hem of Jesus’ garment, Jairus was in the crowd looking on. His daughter was sick and he came to Jesus for help. After the woman was healed, Jesus had her testify to the crowd. After she testified, a friend of Jairus appeared and informed him that his daughter had died. Jesus looked at Jairus and said, “Do not be afraid; only believe, and she will be made well” (see Lk. 8:40-50).

The woman’s testimony was needed because Jesus wanted Jairus to hear it and have faith for something specific. Although believing that He is the Messiah is important, it wasn’t the thing He was after. He didn’t want Jairus to believe that God heals some people or that He raises some people from the dead. He wanted Jairus to believe without a doubt that
his
daughter would be raised from the dead. Notice that Jesus said the girl would be made well,
if
he believed. The faith Jairus needed to see his daughter resurrected was specific to his daughter and her condition. And this is the kind of faith we need for healing the sick.

When I began praying with people for healing, I seldom expected any of them to be healed. I believed that God wanted to heal some people and some conditions but I didn’t believe He wanted to heal all of them and I thought the person I was praying with wouldn’t be healed. I had a lot of doubts. Those doubts involved either the person I was praying with or the condition I was praying for.

I doubted that God wanted to heal everyone and in fact, I believed He would heal just about anyone except the person I was praying with. Because I didn’t know that God wanted to heal everyone, my faith was generalized to
some
people, but not
specific
to the one I was praying with. So when I prayed with specific people, my doubts surfaced and I imagined them not being healed. My specific doubts destroyed my generalized faith and no one was healed.

After six months of fruitless attempts at healing, I realized I had to change some things. I noticed that Todd White commanded healing instead of asking God to heal and it worked well. Here’s an issue we need to consider. Has it ever occurred to you that when we beg God for healing, we believe that we are more compassionate than He is?

I changed my approach and started to command healing and as soon as I did, I saw people healed – often they were healed instantly. I saw lots of success with torn rotator cuffs, as well as carpal tunnel syndrome. Seeing one person after another miraculously healed, it became easier to approach these two conditions with more confidence. After only a few more months I’d seen dozens of people healed with a success rate of around 90 percent. Because of that success, I began to believe (I had confidence) that God would actually heal everyone I prayed with who had one of these two conditions. My faith, which was generalized until then, became very specific. There were certain people with certain conditions that I knew in my heart, without any doubt God was going to heal. It was at this point that before praying with people, I told them they would be healed. Something had changed in my mind that led to greater confidence and better results. I’d like to explain how those changes occurred.

I began with a
generalized
faith about healing. My general belief was that God wanted to heal
some
people of
some
conditions. This faith was weakened by
specific
doubts. I doubted that God wanted to heal a
specific
person of a
specific
condition through
my
prayers.

Eventually, a few people were healed. As I saw more people healed, my generalized faith became specific. I had confidence (faith) that
some
of the people I prayed with would be healed, though not all. I had also more faith for some conditions than others. My doubt about specific conditions was also being removed. And my faith for just about every type of condition was greater than it had been.

As I began praying for people with neurological disorders like Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, and ALS (Lou Gehrig’s) I found that I had little faith. Over time, my confidence began to grow and I began to see changes in some of those people as well. The same is true for cancer. Like many of us, my confidence for seeing cancer healed was small.