God heals today through things like doctors, medicine, hospitals, physical therapy, vitamins, operations and the like. It may come as a surprise to some believers, but these type of healing resources are not the enemy of faith. The two things (faith and medicine) can go hand in hand.
I used to think that if you went to a doctor, then God was not involved in healing you, and the doctor did it all on his own. There are, in fact times when this is true--there are times when God does not get involved in a medical treatment and the person either gets well or dies based solely on the treatment they get. But there are also times when God will come into the medical process. He adds His anointing to the medical professional's skill so that we can get well. At times He heals us through medicine.
I didn't always know that. There was a time when I thought that God would not work through medicine. I believed that you either went the faith route or you went the medical route, and the two were incompatible.
I remember this one lady from a church I attended. She got a type of cancer that people usually die from. She underwent chemotherapy and radiation therapy, both of which made her very sick. She got so thin that her arms literally looked like twigs covered by skin. After months of this painful treatment, her doctor pronounced her "in remission." We were all very happy for her. She began to gain some of her strength back and she began to put on a little bit of weight. After some number of months, she became healthy enough to resume her position as choir director at church. One day at choir rehearsal, she shocked me by telling us, "I used to have cancer, but God healed me."
I did not say anything out loud, but I thought, "How can you say that God healed you? God didn't heal you, the doctors did. You did not have a miracle, you had medicine." I wrongly believed that God did not heal through medicine, and I was not alone in my thinking. There are many believers who consider divine healing and medicine to be mutually exclusive.
One day a visiting preacher told me that the Bible said that God used herbal medicine to heal people. I searched the Bible for them, expecting to prove him wrong. But to my surprise, I found two references to herbal medicine, and I also found references to healing balm, using splints to set broken arms, and medicine for upset stomachs. God really is not opposed to healing through medicine. Let's look at some of these passages that I found.
Let's start with herbal medicine, since that was the subject that sent me on My Bible search. Both the Old and New Testaments have passages about the leaves on the tree of life being used for healing. (That is the basic definition of herbal medicine by the way--using leaves and herbs to help heal the body). Ezekiel 47:12 says, "Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river. Their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail. Every month they will bear, because the water from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing." Revelation 22:2 says, "In the middle of its street on either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations." Both of those are pretty strong arguments that God heals through herbal medicine.
The Bible also mentions healing balm in 2 Chronicles 28:15 (where the Israelites used it to treat prisoners of war) and in Jeremiah 51:8. Let's look briefly at the Jeremiah verse, because it is interesting. It says, "Babylon will suddenly fall and be broken. Wail over her! Get balm for her pain; perhaps she can be healed" (Jeremiah 51:8) God is being a bit sarcastic in this prophecy. He was really saying that His judgment was going to come and no amount of natural medicine could make them well because they were under His judgment. But notice that God does acknowledge the healing properties of the balm.
There is even a verse where God refers to medical procedures (setting a broken arm in a splint so it can heal properly). That is found in Ezekiel 30:21.
The three verses about healing balm and medical procedures are not a particularly strong argument that God healing through medicine. God merely acknowledges the natural healing process (doctors and medicine) in these verses; He does not say that He is the one doing the healing through them. The are still relevant because He does not object in any way to the practice of medicine and He does not condemn it. Instead, the Bible says that medicine works.
Have you ever wondered why medicine works? It works because God, the creator of all things, created it to work that way.
We see aspects of God's nature in all of creation. That is why the psalmist said "the Heavens declare the glory of God." Part of God's nature is to heal the sick, and that is why He created medicine, so that His creation would have things to help them get well when they get sick. God is a healing God and it is His very nature to heal people, even those who don't know Him personally.
You might say that healing is one of God's personality traits. Yes, God has certain personality traits, and He tells us about them in the Bible. One of His personality traits is love--God is love. Another is truth--God cannot lie. And another of His traits is that it is His very nature to heal the sick. We saw a manifestation of that when Jesus walked among us. Every time He saw sick people, He was moved with compassion for them and He healed them.
In fact, God built healing into our bodies when He created us. He made us to be as resilient to sickness and self-healing as possible. He gave us immune systems to fight off germs. When we get cuts, our body heals itself. Broken bones grow back to form a solid piece. Our skin and organs constantly refresh themselves by producing new cells to replace damaged ones. God created our bodies to self-heal as much as possible because healing is part of His very nature, and we are created in His image.
I believe He created medicine for the same reason, because healing is part of Who He is.
By the way, the New Testament is very positive towards doctors and medicine. Luke was a doctor, and God selected him to write two important books in the New Testament, both of which detailed a lot of miraculous healings.
Paul was an apostle who healed the sick and raised the dead. But when his dear friend Timothy had recurring stomach problems, Paul encouraged him to take some medicine for it (see 1 Timothy 5:23). If you think about it, that is very interesting. Paul moved in the supernatural and in miraculous power (1 Corinthians 2:4). Acts 20:8 records him healing Publius's father, who was deathly ill (probably with Malaria). Acts 20:9-12 records Paul raising a young man named Eutychus from the dead. That guy has got to have faith for divine healing. Yet he tells Timothy take medicine for a chronic problem. I am guessing that Paul laid hands on Timothy and prayed for healing. But when Timothy did not appear to get better, Paul wrote, "No longer drink water exclusively, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments" (1 Timothy 5:23).
Paul's instruction to Timothy reminds me of a famous quote by John Wimber, "When I have a headache I pray and I take an aspirin. Which ever one works first is fine with me!"
We have been talking about God healing through medicine as well as healing miraculously. Some people will consider the verses about healing balm and splints and stomach medicine as circumstantial arguments and not be convinced. But there is a passage that clearly shows God healing through medicine. That is found in 2 Kings 20 and also in Isaiah 38. It is the story of King Hezekiah got a boil which made him sick and near to death. God sent Isaiah to prophesy to him and instruct him to set his house in order because he was going to die. Hezekiah responding by crying out to God and petitioning Him for his life. God responded to Hezekiah's prayer. Isaiah was leaving the palace after delivering his "you are going to die word." when God sent him back to Hezekiah with an "Ok, since you ask Me, I will heal you" word.
Look at 2 Kings 20:4-5, "4 And it happened, before Isaiah had gone out into the middle court, that the word of the Lord came to him, saying, 5 'Return and tell Hezekiah the leader of My people, "Thus says the Lord, the God of David your father: I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; surely I will heal you."'"
How did God accomplish this healing that He promised? He did it through medicine. Look at Isaiah 38:21. It says, "Now Isaiah had said, 'Let them take a lump of figs, and apply it as a poultice on the boil, and he shall recover.'" 2 Kings 20:7 records it this way: "Then Isaiah said, 'Take a lump of figs.' So they took and laid it on the boil, and he recovered."
That Bible story is pretty strong evidence that God does indeed heal through medicine!
Some of you are thinking, "Ok, God heals through medicine. So what? What does that mean to us when we pray for the sick?"
Actually, it has a lot to do with us. It means that we must never discount the medical route in the healing process. We should not advise people to go off their medicine unless God gives a prophetic direction to do so. We must honor and respect doctors and other members of the medical profession. We want to build a good relationship with them, where they will ask us to pray for the ones who they can't heal. At the same time, we should be comfortable in sending those who we pray to the doctor if the prayer doesn't heal them.
We must never think of it as a lack of faith to send someone to the doctor because God heals through medicine as well as healing people supernaturally.
Never Deny Someone Their Medicine
Our last lesson looked at several verses and passages about how God heals people through the medical profession. This includes things like doctors, hospitals, physical therapy, operations, prescriptions, vitamins and the like.
I wrote that lesson about two weeks before getting on a plane to China for a missions trip. When I wrote it, I was not expecting to share any personal testimonies in this teaching series. My only plan was to look at what the Bible said about healing. However, the Lord gave me some experiences on this trip that I believe He wants me to put into this teaching series. That is how this particular lesson came to exist. I am writing it six days after I returned from China, and it shares experiences pertinent to medicine and healing. This particular lesson reads more like a testimony than a Bible study, but I hope you will find it helpful.
Let me give a tad of background about this trip. I flew Hong Kong to do a three day prophetic conference. I thought I was coming to that conference with very high expectations, but God outdid Himself in power and anointing, and He exceeded my expectations by quite a bit. I spoke at various church in Hong Kong for the next three days, and then I went to Macau for a one day conference (leaving on a Thursday evening, and the conference went from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM Friday. I left Macau by ferry at 7:00 PM Friday evening and arrived in mainland China about 8:00 PM Friday night. I spoke at a two day Pastor's conference on Saturday and Sunday, then I started my very long trip home. (It took me a little over 27 hours from when I left my hotel in China until I arrived home.)
I was perfectly healthy the whole time I was in Hong Kong. I had only brought one suitcase with me, but people gave me so many presents and such that I had to obtain a second small case. I decided to rearrange my stuff so I could leave most of my belongs in Hong Kong and travel lightly with the smaller case for my trip to Macau and mainland China. Since I had been perfectly healthy with no hint of a cold all of my time in Hong Kong, I packed almost all of my medicine in the case I left behind. I did happen to throw 3 of those 12-hour Sudaphed capsules into the case that I was taking with me. But I left all of my standard cold medicines in the case that stayed in Hong Kong.
A friend came by my hotel room at lunch Thursday, taking my "left-behind" case with him when he left about 2:00 PM. I was scheduled to be picked up for the ride to Macau at 6:00 PM. Wouldn't you know it, I started to develop a sore throat about 5:30 PM. I did not have much time, so I ran to a tiny drugstore near my hotel. They did not offer much of a selection of cold medicine, and everything they had was much weaker than anything I am used to taking in the States. For instance, I usually take the 12-hour pseudophydrine hydrochloride tablets (a.k.a. Sudafed) and Vicks Nyquil. The 12-hour version of Sudafed has 120 mg of pseudophydrine hydrochloride. The only cold medicine in the pharmacy was the 4-hour version and each dosage only contained 10 mg). They did not have anything that resembled Nyquil. I bought a roll of throat lozenges and the best cold medicine I could find. But it was 4 times weaker than what my body was used to, and did not seem to help at all.
I started getting a runny nose and sniffles while on the ferry. By the time I reached my hotel, I was seriously sneezing. I took one of my Sudafed before I went to bed because I did not want to be too hoarse to speak in the morning. When I got up, the cold hit full force and I felt pretty sick. I decided to take a second Sudafed to get through the conference and travel to mainland China. The cold was bad enough that if I had the medicine with me, I would have taken a 12-hour Sudafed every six hours to mask my symptoms. But I only had 1 Sudafed left and I knew I'd need it for the night.
When I arrived in China, they took me out for a late dinner and then brought me to my hotel. The I asked them if they could get me some cold medicine, as I was developing a cold. They found me something that had 50 mg in a 6-hour dose. It was not as strong as I was used to, but it noticeable stronger than the one from Hong Kong. I decided that I should save my last Sudafed for an "emergency" and took the Chinese cold medicine just before I went to bed.
When I woke up in the morning, I realized that I was really in Mainland China--I had been want to go there to minister for over 30 years so I was finally walking out a dream I'd held for so long. I jumped out of bed, threw open my curtains and looked out. I was so excited that I began to pray, "Lord, can You believe that I am really in Mainland China!! I am so excited." I tried to pray out loud and that is how I discovered that I had completely lost my voice. The sound coming out of my mouth did not sound like my own voice at all--it sounded like a frog croaking. My voice was so hoarse that my words were barley understandable.
Right about then is when it hit me how sick I felt. I also started to cough a lot. My cold had gotten very bad very fast because I did not have the right medicine to suppress it. I realized that there the interpreter would not be able to tell what I was saying and I would not be able to speak at this leader's meeting. Sixty pastors and leaders from 16 different churches were coming for my training, some from as far away as Beijing (27 hours by train).
I felt something close to panic as I realized the implications of loosing my voice. I tried to practice speaking to see if I could get it to clear up. I did that for half an hour. It did not clear up; if anything, it got hoarser. I tried rebuking demons, commanding spirits of infirmity to leave, laying hands on my throat and commanding my voice to return, rebuking the cold, etc. Nothing helped. I could not understand why God was not healing me.
Then I felt impressed to pray a simple prayer, and to pray it out load. It started as a barely distinguishable croak, but I knew God would understand it. "Lord," I prayed. "You sent me to China to help train and encourage the pastors here. But my voice is gone and in order to teach them I need to be able to speak. Lord please help me!" By the end of that prayer, my voice had returned completely to normal and I spent the next hour thanking God and worshipping.
God had seen fit to give me my voice back--and I did not lose it again after that or even get hoarse. But God did not see fit to heal the rest of my symptoms. I was double dosing (and occasionally triple dosing) on the weaker medication I had to try and keep the symptoms in control. I did not want to be cough or sneeze on the people who I came to train. The pills were enough to keep the symptoms mostly in check, but oh did I feel sick! I used my last Sudaphed when I slept Saturday night, because I did not want to loose my voice for the second day of the conference.
In fact, I felt so sick Sunday morning that I did not know how I was going to get through the service. They worshipped for an hour. I spent part of that hour worshipping with them and the rest of it trying to mentally review my 90 minute teaching for that morning. My concentration was shot and I was having trouble remembering the material. "Lord!" I prayed silently, "Please help me. I feel spent and I don't know if I have anything left to give them. I have waited so long to minister here. Please don't let me fail them!" I was reminded of the verse from 2 Corinthians 12 where Paul prayed for God to remove the thorn in his flesh. Verses 8 to 9 came to my memory: "8Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me."
Quite frankly, when it came time for me to speak, I was a bit nervous that I would not be able to do an adequate job. Then the Holy Spirit came on me. I was able to clearly communicate what He had given me to say. He also helped me to use humor and recalled some neat stories (e.g., personal testimonies) to my mind to help me illustrate it powerfully. That was the session where I did my teaching about obeying Him and I always end that teaching by making an invitation for people to enter into an obedience covenant with God. Every single person in the room was eager to do that. I spent a bit of time explaining that God would definitely ask them to do something they don't want to do (or to not do something they really wanted to do) and they would be obligated to obey Him without arguing about it if they made this covenant. But no one changed their mind. They were all eager. After leading them (a repeat-after-me prayer) into the covenant, I asked them to cry out to God like they did in Acts 4:23-30 for boldness to obey Him and for empowerment to obey Him.
The Holy Spirit began to fall on people in the room. About 2/3 of the room was Pentecostal and the other third evangelical. The Holy Spirit began to fall on most of them, even the ones who had never seen it before. A few were looking around questioningly, but most were receiving from God. (The ones who were uncomfortable with this Pentecost type of experience were unable to leave. The had sealed the door with sound proofing, so as not to call attention to what was going on in the room. Believers in China have to be cautious in the worship services, as they are not government sanctioned.
Usually this type of group prayer and ministry time lasts about 15 to 20 minutes. But the Holy Spirit came in and took over the room for a full 40 minutes. It got really wild in there. My interpreter was a dispensationalist. He had prayed the prayer along with the others and during part of the Holy Spirit takeover, the Holy Spirit fell on him. He experienced tingling in his hands, heat on his feat and God really touched his heart. Originally he was not going to be able to do the last session (2-6 PM) because he had another commitment. The person they had obtained for that service barely spoke English and I was kind of worried about how that service would go. But my interpreter decided to cancel his afternoon commitment because he felt God's tangible touch during the morning session. After seeing the Holy Spirit in action, he decided that he needed to reconsider his non-Pentecostal theology. He already moves powerfully in the gift of evangelism, and I suspect God is going to be doing some additional amazing things in his life.
At one point during the ministry time, God told me to say, "God is releasing the gift of prophesy." The room went into an uproar. People started falling heavily to the ground (no catchers) and some lay shaking on the ground under God's power for over 30 minutes. The room got really noisy and God was all over His people. Some were crying, some were dancing in the spirit, a few were shaking, some were falling down, others appeared to be speaking in tongues. (The tongues part is a guess, they may have been interceding in Mandarin.) I silently asked God "What next?" He told me to just wait, and he continued to pour out on the people in the room for a full 20 minutes. I spent most of it just waiting and watching what He was doing in the room in amazement. But He also poured out on me during part of it.
After the Lord finally gave control of the service back to me, I offered to lay hands on anyone who wanted it to pray for impartation. (I had washed my hands with disinfectant liquid just before I started the ministry time to try and prevent passing out any germs as I prayed for people). Before I could get the invitation out of my mouth, I was mobbed with people wanting prayer. They don't "line up" for prayer in China, they just mob around you.
I did not feel sick at all from the time I started preaching Sunday morning until we broke for lunch, because the anointing was on me so strongly. However, the afternoon session was a bit of a struggle because I was feeling sick/weak again. However, I did not cough or sneeze and the session appeared to go well. When it was over, there was a special dinner with a few key leaders. Than went for a couple of hours and then they took me back to my hotel and I went right to sleep even thought it was only 8:00 PM.
They were supposed to take me sightseeing Monday morning and put me on a ferry that arrived the airport about 2:00 PM (I was supposed to check in at 3:00 for my flight home. But I was so sick that I wanted to get to my medicine as early as possible, so I asked if we could cancel the sightseeing and get me back to Hong Kong and my medicine in the morning. We had breakfast at 8:30 AM and left the hotel at 9:00. I was supposed to reach the boarder by 10:00 and then had a 1 hour train ride to Hong Kong. But there were delays and I did not get to my medicine until about Noon. I took both a Sudafed and some Nyquil. Within an hour, I could feel my body responding to the medicine that it was used to. My sneezing and coughing stopped, but I still felt very weak and miserable. I had a 2 hour "rest" (a quiet chat) at a friend's house in Hong Kong where I also rearranged my suitcases for the flight home. Then it was an hour drive to the airport.
My medicine was already starting to wear off, so I decided that I would take a Sudafed every six hours instead of every 12 hours. Overdosing on the Sudafed is not healthy, but flying with head congestion can be excruciating, especially on take offs and landings. Also, planes have a closed air circulation and I did not want to get my fellow passengers sick by coughing or sneezing on the plane.
The flight home was pretty comfortable, but even without the coughing and sneezing, I still felt pretty weak and sick. I had upgraded my seat to business class because I was so sick that I did not think I could make the flight in uncomfortable coach. It was a two-hour flight to Manila, a 2.5 hour layover, then a 12 hour flight home. I slept for about 8 hours of the 12-hour fight home. I do remember thinking how much better I felt when I had the right medicine and decided that I would always carry at least 10 Sudafed with me even if I had no symptoms at all. I don't want to be caught in this type of situation again.
It was bedtime by the time I got home, but I had just slept 8 hours on the plane, so I was up until about 4:00 AM Tuesday morning. Then I slept most of Tuesday, getting up at 4:00 PM, and dozing on the living room sofa when I tried to watch TV. I slept most of Wednesday, was up all night, and slept in until 4:00 PM Thursday. When I woke up, I was coughing up all sorts of green stuff and my kidneys burned/ached. My coughing fits were so long that I would get dizzy and needed to lay down most of the day. My own doctor is not available on Fridays, so I made an appointment to see a doctor at a local clinic early Friday morning.
The doctor I saw was fresh out of medical school. She took 4 lung x-rays, diagnosed me with "severe bronchitis" and then gave me an antibiotic...only she gave me the wrong one. I ended up with a low dose of the same stuff that my dermatologist used to give me for acne years ago. The pharmacist told me that was not the standard medicine for my type of condition and recommended I see another doctor. I made an appointment to see my regular doctor early Saturday morning. The medicine that the clinic doctor gave me on Friday did not help at all. In fact, I seemed to be getting worse again. I was in a lot of pain and I felt miserable. Even the Nyquil was not helping at this point.
My own doctor was astonished at what the other doctor gave me. He said that she had misdiagnosed me (telling me that my lungs were full of fluid when in fact, they were inflamed not filled). He got me on a better antibiotic and also give me some type of inhaler to help with the chest inflation and coughing. He also give me 5 days worth of a prednisone (a steroid that reduces inflammation). I waited at the pharmacy 45 minutes to get my prescriptions filled and I coughed non-stop that entire time.
I took the inhaler and first dose of antibiotic before I left the pharmacy. The relief was almost instant. The coughing went from very heavy to very light in a matter of maybe 5-10 minutes. It is amazing how much the right medicine can help, and I was reminded that medicine is a gift from God.
I was supposed to take the inhaler every six hours. After about 5 hours it began to wear off and I was starting to feel sick again when it was time for my next dose. The only problem was that I had put the inhaler down somewhere without paying attention to where...and I could not find it. I began to pray and ask God to help me find it.. it was in between some dirty dishes on the sink counter. I can't imagine how it had gotten there, but I was grateful that God showed me where it was.
As I reached for it, God spoke to me. He said, "Teresa, I have allowed you to go through all of this so you can see how important medicine can be to someone who is sick. Don't ever deny anyone their medicine."
There are times when God heals a person and their medicine becomes unnecessary. In fact their medicine may even start making them sick, as many modern medicines seem to have hurtful side effects. We usually advise the person to see their doctor (so he can run medical tests) to get taken off of their prescription medication.
There are times when God requires a "faith response" from someone. He speaks to them directly and tells them to discontinue their medication and then He will heal them. But that type of instruction needs to come directly from God to the person--it is not something that should come from the healing minister.
We will talk about weaning off of medicine and a faith response in our next teaching.
Faith Response
How To Wean Yourself Off Of Your Medicine
Our last two lessons talked about how God heals through medicine and how we should not deny someone their medicine, or suggest that they stop taking it to demonstrate faith for healing. That is especially true if that medication is keeping them alive, preventing severe pain, preventing depression or preventing mental instability.
But there are times when people need to wean off of their medication. This can happen because God has healed them, and the medication becomes unnecessary. In fact, some medication can make people sick or have harmful side effects, and it is important to get off of that medication as soon as possible after it is no longer needed.
There are also times when God personally challenges a person to trust Him instead of trusting in their medication. He sometimes asks people to take a step of faith by discontinuing a medication they trust in, telling them to look to Him for the healing instead of looking to medical science.
The tricky question becomes, how do we balance these two things? How do we know when God is healing through medicine and when He is requiring a step of faith to discontinue that medicine?
The best way to find out is to ask the Lord to clearly show His will to the sick person--then trust that He will do so. I firmly believe that God does not usually speak to the healing minister to direct them to tell the sick person to go off of their medicine before they are completely healed. It happens occasionally when the healing minister moves strongly in the prophetic, but it is the exception and not the general rule.
Most of the time, the Lord speaks this directly to the sick person, and He gives them a gift of faith to accompany that direction. An example comes to my mind as I write this. I have a friend named Rusty Russell who moves strongly in God's healing anointing. There was a time when Rusty had really bad allergies--hay fever and the like. Now allergies are usually life-threatening, but they can leave you disabled and feeling very miserable. Rusty was able to control them most of the time with medication so he could function well to minister to others.
The Lord began to impress on Rusty's heart that if he wanted to minister divine healing to others, then he should personally walk in divine health as a demonstration of God's ability to heal the sick. The allergy symptoms were mostly controlled by medicine, but they seemed to be directly opposed to what God was showing him about divine health. So Rusty began asking God to heal those allergies. I am not sure how long this went on, but at some point God told Rusty to step out in faith and stop depending on his medicine and to trust God for healing.
God's direction came at a bad time for Rusty, as he had a full ministry schedule. But Rusty choose to obey God and step out on faith. At first it looked like God was not rewarding his faith at all. His symptoms got really bad for a while, making it hard for him to minister. I remember talking to him on the phone one time and he commented on it in his typical down to earth way. "For a while, I was a mess! Snot was coming out of my nose like crazy and running all over the place."
Trust me, that is not the image you want when you are standing in front of a congregation ministering God's healing to others! But Rusty stood in faith even when his symptoms got worse. He refused to take his allergy medication to get comfort. I think he was even having trouble sleeping at night. Circumstances seemed to shout that he was crazy, that God did not really ask Him to take this stand. But God had deposited a gift of faith in Rusty. I can't remember the exact time frame...I think it was around a week. Suddenly the allergy symptoms stopped and Rusty has never had a need for his allergy medicine since then. He stood in faith and God rewarded him for that faith.
There are two things I want to point out from Rusty's story. The first is that Rusty did not make a random decision to step out in faith--he heard from God and obeyed Him. The second is that Rusty's medication was not life sustaining--it merely made him comfortable and able to function better.
If God tells someone to go off of a medicine that they need to keep them alive (or to keep them mentally balanced), then I encourage them to spend some time carefully double-checking their hearing with God before they step out to obey. If God asked them to take that stand of faith, He will confirm it to them. It is important that we know we have heard clearly from God before we put our life into jeopardy.
We know that the desires of our own heart can sometimes imitate God's voice to us and lead us astray. Jeremiah 17:9 tells us, "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" Sometimes people want to be healed so badly that they can think God said to take a stand of faith when He really did not. A stand of faith is not going to be effective unless they are in the center of God's will when they take it. Remember when the devil tempted Jesus. He wanted our Lord to take a stand of faith by doing something to purposely endanger Himself. The devil even quoted Scripture to try and convince Jesus to do that, but Jesus refused to endanger Himself when God was not leading him to do so. Look at the account of this incident in Matthew 4:5-7: 5Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6"If you are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down. For it is written: " 'He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.'" 7Jesus answered him, "It is also written: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'"
I would like to share another testimony with you. This testimony comes from a lady named Dawn Okpisz and she originally shared it on an email list called New-Wine. I am using excerpts from it in this teaching with her permission.
Dawn went to a service at Chicago HUB on Sept 24, 2006. The Lord did a lot of signs and wonders in that meeting to increase faith, and some of them were a bit unusual. At first Dawn's attention was drawn to the wonders God was doing and they helped to build her faith. They served communion in the meeting, and God began to touch her directly and supernaturally as she took the communion.
She wrote, "After I consumed the manna" (e.g., the communion wafer), "my jaw and head and neck and then upper back all got hot and I shook and had to sit down. I could feel His presence coursing through my body--not over my body, but through my body--a very different but incredibly powerful experience."
"I looked down at my hands and there were still a few crumbs. I considered eating them too. But as I ran my finger over the crumbs several flecks of gold dust began to appear. I stared at it for a very long time. As the meeting continued this happened to other people too--you could see them staring at their palms. Harold Beyer also had gold dust appear on his trousers when he was later on the floor."
"I also had a healing. I have had a blood disorder that causes my platelets to be overactive since 2003. I suffered two mini-strokes at the age of 31 that caused double vision and weakness and partial loss of feeling in my arms. I had lots of physical therapy and have fully physically recovered from the effects of the mini strokes. But if I missed my medication for the blood disorder I had trouble the following day--I would get increased pain and fatigue and if I didn't take the next dose I would have vision problems."
"The blood disorder was healed tonight. I know because after 10pm I usually get pain in my head when I am due to take my medication. Right now it is 12:45 am and I have no pain. When the corporate prayer was being said for a blood disorder--I felt the Lord shoot healing through my body. About a year ago I asked the Lord if he could heal this one thing. I had other healings from other problems--but this one I continued to battle with--and I asked the Lord if he could heal this one so I would not have to continually take a blood thinner to deal with the disorder. And He did!!!"
Her first email was sent to the list at 1:00 AM Monday morning, just a few hours after the healing.
We received a follow-up email from her Tuesday evening. It said, "By 10:00 AM central standard time this morning I will have been off the medication the blood disorder for 36 hours. I will have missed four doses. Normally if I miss just one I have double/blurred vision and other complications. The only thing I feel is sore muscles from dancing for 2 hours in worship on Sunday!!!"
Last night I felt some fear as I approached the 24 hour mark. I am not one to go off of medication just because I think I might have been healed. My Mom was a nurse, so I am respectful of doctors and careful with medication. I went off of my medication because I felt the power of the Lord shoot through my body Sunday night when Jeff (a speaker at Chicago HUB) had a word of knowledge and called out my blood disorder. Then the pain from the disorder left and is still gone. I can't wait to tell my doctor about this!!!"
Another email came on Wednesday morning. It said, "My doctor learned of my healing from the blood disorder last night and her reply was 'Praise The Lord!' It's OK for me to be off the medication. I have been off of the medication now 72 hours (if you count the last dose I took) and have missed 6 doses. I am still doing well. Only muscle aches from activity but absolutely no symptoms of the blood disorder or complications from stopping the medication. The more days that pass the more this surprises me."
"My greatest battle right now is mental. Though my doctor and my husband are supportive, some others are not. Some are jealous that I got healed. I didn't expect that one. Some are challenging the healing. Sometimes I get fearful that if something bad happens to my health it will weaken my witness. I don't want that. I want Jesus to get all the glory and honor and praise that is due to Him."
Another email came a week later: "My blood disorder was healed seven days ago, and I am still off of meds. I am still doing very well. I got to share it with our congregation this morning, and prayed for two people too--who experienced pain relief. God is so good!!! I did communicate with one doctor on Wednesday - I saw another doctor Friday and He was very pleased. He said my muscles are stronger than they were last week and he was impressed with the healing."
I like the way that Dawn tested her healing by carefully and watchfully withholding her medicine, ready to take it again if the symptoms returned. I also like that she was planning to see her doctor about this and get tested out. I expect she will end up with a medically confirmed miraculous healing.
I feel that she used a good combination of faith and wisdom in how she responded to what God was doing in her life. God does heal supernaturally and take away our need for medication, but not every healing ministry prayer immediately results in a full healing. That is why we need to use wisdom and common sense in weaning ourselves off of our medicine, just as Dawn did.
In Dawn's case, she was prepared to go back on the medicine if the healing did not hold and seek medical confirmation/supervision. However, her healing seems to be holding, and I suspect her doctor will confirm it and she won't need the medicine any more. God is a healing God and He still heals the sick today in amazing and supernatural ways.