---

Non-Physical Factors In Physical Healing

God designed and created us, so He knows us very well and He is familiar with all aspects of how we work. He knows that things are not always the way they appear to be. God knows that at times we think we are sick, but physical sickness is not really the problem. There are times that people come to us for prayer with what looks like a routine physical problem, but no amount of physical healing prayer will help them because what they really need is inner healing and mental wholeness.

Doctors agree that our mental and emotional state has a very direct effect on our physical health. The medical profession has even come up with a term for this: "psychosomatic illness." They use that term to refer to a sickens that is cased by emotional and psychological factors instead of straight physical ones. Some medical journals attribute over half of our present-day illnesses to psychosomatic causes. Other medical journals say that even when the illness has a purely physiological cause, the state of the patients mental and emotional health will determine how fast and now well that patient will recover.

The basic premise is that if the person doesn't want to get well down deep in their innermost being, they won't recover very well. That is not only true for when doctors treat us, it is also true when we pray for healing. If we pray for the physical roots of problem that is caused by emotional roots, the person probably is not going to get healed.

Let me give you an example from Scripture. Do you remember the story of the paralytic who's friends let him down through the roof in Matthew 9:1-8? (It is also told in Mark 2:1-7 and Luke 5:17-25.)

There was a man who had a real tangible physical problem--he was paralyzed and could not walk. Normally paralysis is caused by things like nerve damage, deterioration of the skeletal system, atrophy of muscles, etc. Usually when you pray for a paralyzed person, you would do things like command the nerves to regenerate, speak strength to the skeletal system, etc. However, when Jesus prayed for this man, he did not do any of those things. That is because Jesus discerned that the man's problem was psychosomatic, not purely physical.

Yes, the symptoms were physical, but the underlying root was not. The man suffered from guilt from sin to the point where it has completely disabled him. That is why Jesus addressed the emotional side of the problem before He addressed the physical side. That is why He said, "Your sins are forgiven you," instead of simply commanding the man to walk.

Jesus' approach raised quite a stir among the Pharisees. They had grown used to Jesus healing physical bodies, but they had a serious problem with His pronouncing sin forgiven. Jesus did not say this just to annoy the religious leaders of His day; He said it because He perceived it was necessary for the main's healing. The man laying before Him was wrecked with sin and guilt, and the Lord choose to heal the heart/emotions before He healed the body. Personally, I am not sure if the paralyzed man would have been willing to receive a straight physical healing from Jesus. I think the sin and guilt he suffered would have prevented his faith from engaging enough to receive his healing, and that is why Jesus pronounced him forgiven before He pronounced him healed. Jesus did not just deal with the physical condition, He dealt with the who person.

There are times when we need to do the same thing Jesus did. Some people are in need of a simple physical healing, they need a deeper touch from God. I remember one time many years ago when I was ministering to a man who had crippling arthritis. I did not know anything about praying for physical healing at that time, but I knew how to minister inner healing. His wife sat in on the ministry session because he believed that some of his issues were sexual in nature, and he wanted her present and aware of anything that surfaced.

It turned out they were not really sexual so much as shame based over a single rather "innocent" sexual incident that happened back when he was only five years old. His parents separated and his father bought him a tricycle as a parting gift. The little boy had wanted a tricycle for a long time and was anxious to ride it the next morning. In fact, he was so anxious to ride it that the did not bother to get dressed before he went into the front yard to ride his bike. His mother woke up to find him riding his tricycle around the front yard, completely naked.

Admittedly, five is a little old to be in the front yard in the buff. But it was not a sexual thing for him, it was about riding his new tricycle around the yard.

The problem was in how his mother reacted. She yanked him off of the bike and spanked him within an inch of his life. She yelled at him for hours and accused him of being a wicked, dirty, evil little boy. She suggested that the devil was going to poke him over and over again with his pitchfork as punishment for this shameless crime. (It is not surprising that he developed arthritis later on, which feels like being stuck with a pitch fork in the joints.) The mother's reaction evoked a very deep shame in this little boy, on that he never overcame even as a fifty year old adult man with grown children of his own. The man deeply believed that he was bad and wicked and deserved to be punished over and over again for his childish intercession. In fact, he was sure that both his wife and I would be horrified when we heard his "deep dark secret." He could not believe that we did not think that what had been his greatest and most secret shame for all of these years was not such a big deal. I think that was very healing in and of itself in breaking the power of shame.

But since this was such a big sin to him, I led him to through repenting and renouncing and receiving God's forgiveness. Personally I don't think he had done anything he needed to be forgiven of as five year olds are not expected to have adult judgment and maturity. But it was a very big deal to him and he needed to deal with it before the Lord. Once he had confessed his "sin" and received forgiveness for it, this amazing thing happened. The pain went away almost immediately and over the next few days, the swelling in his joints began to go down as well.

The thing that had been causing his physical problem was not physical in nature, it was brought on by guilt and shame and an untrue belief that he needed to be punished. When God healed the inner thing, the physical healing took place as well.

There are many people like him today--their real problem is not the physical symptom, it is an inner issue that God must heal before they are willing to become well. If we just pray for the physical symptoms, we can pray until we are blue in the face, and we probably won't see a healing. My doctor once told me, "You have to treat the right problem to get the cure." When the problem is inner, then no amount of straight physical healing prayer is going to fix things.

The Bible has many verses that let us know that God likes to heal the whole man in order to bring us physical health. There are many verses that talk about emotional and mental things that make us sick. In fact, it spends a great deal of time instructing us to forgive others, because God knows that unforgiveness and bitterness can make us very seriously sick. In fact, God counts it as a sin when we hold unforgiveness in our heart towards others, and unrepeated sin can cause sickness. That is why James 5:16 says, "Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective."

Unforgiveness is a very important factor in physical healing. I have taught on this a lot in other courses, so I am only mentioning it briefly here. If a sick person holds unforgiveness sin their heart, that (in and of itself) can be enough to prevent the person from getting healed.

Let me illustrate with the parable of the unforgiving debtor from Matthew 18:21-35. This is one of Jesus' most famous teachings on forgiveness, and it is very powerful. He tells the story of a man who fell into a great debt, pleaded for mercy and was just a king's ransom of debt. Then he ran into a fellow debtor who owed him a much smaller amount and threw him into debtor's prison. The king heard about hit and got made. He threw the man into prison because he wouldn't forgive the other debt after having just been forgiven such a big debt of his own.

Do you remember what Jesus said at the end of that parable in verses 34 and 35? He said that if we do not forgive, then our Heavenly Father will deliver us to the torturers until we should pay all the debt (e.g., until unforgiveness runs it's full course in our lives). That is basically saying that if we have unforgiveness in our heart, then the devil has a legal right to torment us, including things like physical sickness, financial ruin, etc. If a person has been delivered to the torturers for unforgiveness, then no amount of healing prayer is going to help them if they won't forgive.

But unforgiveness is the only relational thing that can make us sick-- there are all sorts of them: stress in relationships, fear or rejection, arguing and contention, etc. Bad relationships/interactions with others can make us sick, and good ones can bring healing to us. Here are a few verses from Proverbs just to illustrate the point:

Proverbs 12:18

Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.

Proverbs 13:17

A wicked messenger falls into trouble, but a trustworthy envoy brings healing.

Proverbs 15:30

A cheerful look brings joy to the heart, and good news gives health to the bones.

Proverbs 16:24

Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.

So what is the main point of this lesson? It is to make us aware that God's agenda for the person may not be what it first appears to be. God wants to heal the whole person, not just their physical infirmity. He wants them to walk in forgiveness, peace and love. God knows that there are times when the sickness isn't really a physical problem at all, but an inner hurt that must be resolved before physical healing can take place. If we don't pay attention to what God wants to do in the person's life and we just try to heal the physical problem, we may miss the mark entirely. Some physical conditions can only be healed when God works with non-physical factors in the person's life.

Deliverance and Healing

I want to quickly review what we have been doing, so that we can add to it in this lesson. We have been looking at different things that make people sick and how to pray for them. At the same time, we have been trying to identify and break past our expectation barriers in those areas, so that we don't limit God in terms of how He may want to heal.

We have looked at a two different types of sickness so far. The first is the easiest type to understand and pray for. It is what I call "natural sickness"--e.g., sickness which is purely physical in nature, a result of simple cause-and-effect. Let me give you a few examples: you get in a car accident and you break a bone. You get around someone with something contagious and you catch it from them. You consume carcinogens in your diet and you get cancer. All of these are simple cause and effect, and most of them have routine medical treatments. But God can also heal these things. Jesus did that when He walked on the earth.

If Jesus healed someone who had one of these simple physical conditions, He prayed simple and straightforward prayers. He did things like commanding the disease to go, commanding a damaged body part to function properly, commanding the person to do the thing they could not do before, etc. There was nothing for Him to address other than the physical problem itself, so that is all He addressed.

But not all illnesses that Jesus healed were that simple and straightforward. Some sicknesses are more complex because they are caused by mental and/or emotional factors. (This includes things like stress, fear, shame, guilt, relationship problems, unforgiveness, unconfused sin in our lives, etc.) These non-physical problems produce real physical symptoms and cause tangible illnesses. But if you just address the illness they cause, you won't make much progress in seeing the person get healed. These conditions are a bit harder to pray for, because you have to deal with the emotional and/or mental component as well as with the physical problem.

Jesus ministered to sick people in the Bible had this added level of complexity. He always seemed to know what the problem was and how to pray for it. When He prayed for people who had the mental or emotional component, He did not ignore that part of the problem. He addressed the concerns of the whole person, not just their physical illness. For instance, we looked at one such prayer in the previous lesson: the paralyzed man whose friends let him down to Jesus through the roof. The man needed to walk but that was not all he needed. He also suffered from intense guild and sin issues. Jesus dealt with the other issues first, then He healed the man's physical body. (I went on to suggest that when emotional or mental issues cause a physical problem, you probably need to address them to make the person "willing" to receive their healing.)

So far we have looked at two dimensions of healing: illnesses that are purely physical and those which have mental and/or emotional roots. That is complex in and over itself, but healing prayer is "three dimensional," so it needs to get even a bit more complex. The other dimension that we need to deal with is the spiritual dimension. By that, I mean demons and the realm of the demonic.

This area should not come as a surprise to you. The Bible tells us that there are demons who specializes in causing physical sickness and disease. It refers to some of them as "spirits of infirmity." It also names certain types of disease-producing spirits by the name of the physical problem they cause: "mute spirits," "deaf spirits," "blind spirits," etc. The Bible makes it very clear that demons cause physical problems and sicknesses. I think that most believers are aware of this; pretty much anyone who prays for the sick believes in demons and realizes that some of the sicknesses they pray for are caused by demons.

But I think that many of us tend to underestimate just how big or a role those demons play in a person's health. Many of us don't realize how important deliverance can be in obtaining healing. This is particularly true in Western thinking, because we have been trained since infancy to have a scientific "mindset." That mindset makes us tend to discount the demonic anytime that there is another logical explanation. We give the demons credit when there isn't another logical explanation, but we tend to have a bias towards science over spiritual causes. And because of that, there are times when we don't rebuke demons or spirits of infirmity, and we can't seem to get the person healed.

I was curious about how people think, so I did a survey one time. I asked people what percentage of sickens they thought was caused by demons. Most of them felt that it was very low--somewhere between 10 and 25%. Most of the people acknowledged the role of demons in sickness, but they felt it was the exception rather than the general rule.

My own thinking started along the same lines. I knew that demons caused sickness and whenever God would show me the activity of a demon in illness, I would rebuke it. My thinking was that demons were active maybe 10 to 15 per cent of the time. But as I would pray for the sick at various meetings, I noticed that God seemed to lead me to rebuke demons for more than half of the people I prayed for. That seemed like a lot to me, and I did not want to fall into a pattern of wrongly blaming demons for everything. That motivated me to do some very simple research on the topic. I was trying to answer the question, what per cent of the time did Jesus heal someone by casting out a demon.

I did not have a lot of time to sit down and collect every healing passage in the Bible and analyze it, so I decided to take a "short cut." I used Bible software to search the gospels for passages about healing and for passages about deliverance. I thought that maybe I would find a four-to-one ration or a five-to-one ratio (e.g. 4 or 5 regular healings for each deliverance.) But to my surprise, I found 84 verses in the gospels that contained the word "heal," and I also found 84 verses in the Bible that talked about demons and unclean spirits. I was shocked to find that the gospels spend as much time about demons as they do about physical healing. They were not precisely the same verses--sometimes demons were mentioned outside of the context of healing and sometimes healing was mentioned without a reference to demons. But most of the time, the two were mentioned together.

I was a bit surprised at my findings...I thought maybe it would talk about deliverance 1/3 as much as it talked about healing the sick. I was wrong--the gospel talks about demons and casting them out just as much as it talks about healing the sick. There is not a one-to-one correlation. I am not saying that every single healing Jesus did was also a deliverance, because some of them clearly were not. But a lot of them were. I don't know the exact percentage of times that Jesus or the disciples healed someone by casting out a demon, but it seems to be at least half of the time.

The bottom line is that there is a lot of demonic activity that causes physical sickness! We may need to revise our thinking and put more of our time and energy into dealing with the demonic. We might start seeing more healings if we do that. But at the same time, we must not assume that all sickness comes from demons.

Let me illustrate from the Bible, where Jesus healed some speech impediments. The first was a man in Mark 6:32-24. In this case, Jesus spit on the man's tongue and commanded his ears to be opened. The deaf man started hearing and speaking clearly. It was a straight physical healing. But the Lord ministered to another man in Luke 11:14. That time He handled it by casting out a "mute spirit." The passage reads, "And He was casting out a demon, and it was mute. So it was, when the demon had gone out, that the mute spoke; and the multitudes marveled."

In both cases, we have the same physical problem, a speech impediment. In one case it was caused by a demon and in the other case it was natural causes. I don't want us to get carried away and blame demons for everything. But I do want us to give credit where credit is due, and respond by getting rid of any demon that is making someone sick.

When we deal with demons, we need to be aware that not all demons are the same. Some are relatively weak spirits that specialize in "infirmity" and they tend to be very easy to get rid of. Others specialize in a specific type of illness and some of those can be very strongly attached and quite difficult to get rid of.

The most common type of demon is the "spirit of infirmity." In general, these demons go quickly, often without any inner healing ministry and with just a single command. I believe that this is the type of demon that Philip cast out in Acts 8:6-8. The passage reads, "6When the crowds heard Philip and saw the miraculous signs he did, they all paid close attention to what he said. 7With shrieks, evil spirits came out of many, and many paralytics and cripples were healed. 8So there was great joy in that city."

The fact that the demons came out "of many" with shrieks suggests that the deliverance was either done corporately (Phillip prayed over the people as a group) or very quickly in one-on-one situations. There is no suggestion of him spending a lot of time with each person. The results were that as demon's left, people were healed of the physical problems that the demon had caused. (A lot of paralysis was healed in this particular case). It must have been a glorious healing meeting and I wish I could have been there to experience it along with Phillip. God's main emphasis was on providing a testimony of Jesus and He was backing up the proclamation of the gospel with healings. That is why there were so many of them and they came so fast.

If we lift the sheet and look behind the scenes, I think we will find that God caused many who had those simple easy-to-get-rid-of spirits of infirmity to come to Philip's meeting. Then God asked Philip to speak forth His authority and command the demons to go, and they could not leave fast enough. I am sure there was an added measure of God's power and authority on Philip, but I also believe that for the most part he was dealing with the low level spirits of infirmity that are easy to get rid of. And the result was massive healings.

The Bible also gives some examples of more strongly attached demons, ones who require longer ministry time and who don't go out as easily. The most famous case of that comes from Matthew 17. A father brought his epileptic son to the disciples for healing. The disciples discerned that it was a demon, but they were unable to heal the boy. The father appealed to Jesus in verse 16, saying, "I brought him to your disciples, but they could not heal him." Jesus had to pray minister deliverance to the boy. He rebuked the demon (verse 18) and the boy was healed. Later on the disciples gathered around Jesus and asked Him why they could not get that demon out. Jesus said that faith was a factor, but also this particular demon "does not go out except by prayer and fasting" (verse 21). IN other words, Jesus said that some demons are harder to get rid of than others.

Jesus Himself spent more time delivering some people than He spent on others. Some demons left with just a single command, but not all of them. One example is the tomb-dwelling demoniacs who called themselves "Legion" in Mark 5:1-15 and Luke 8:26-36. Jesus had a more involved confrontation with those demons, it took Him longer to set the demonized man free. Also, the demons seemed to be a bit more out-of-control when they were cast out. They came out in a demonstrative way that ended up getting Jesus expelled from the area so that He could not continue to minister there.

What have we learned so far? We have learned that demons are a factor in sickness and must be dealt with. You can't heal a demonized person's disease if you don't get rid of the demon. Also, some disease-causing demons come out easier than others. some come out with just a word and others require an in-depth ministry session.

There seem to be a lot of spirits of infirmity floating around, causing health problems. Perhaps they get away with more than they should because our westernized societies don't believe in demons or recognize the role that they play in sickness. It seems that demons are responsible for (or involved in) about half of the medical problems I pray for. That is why I have started to make it a general practice to rebuke any spirits of infirmity any time I am not sure precisely what is going on. Those spirits come out so easily that if they are there, the catch-all prayer usually gets rid of them.

However, if there is a more strongly attached demon, then a simply global rebuke prayer won't get rid of it. In those cases we need to hear from God and break the demon's stronghold over the person before we can get rid of it. Occasionally I will spend 15 minutes or so with an individual at the end of a meeting, but most of the time I schedule a private appointment when more involved deliverance ministry is needed.

The bottom line is that if a demon is making a person sick, then we need to get rid of that demon in order to get the person well.

The Role Of Faith In Healing

We all know that faith plays an important role in healing. We see that in Matthew 9:29 where Jesus told the blind men, "According to your faith will it be done to you," then He preceded to heal them. We see it in Mark 10:52 where Jesus told blind Bartimaeus, "Go your way; your faith has made you well." We see it again in Luke 8:48, where He told the woman with the issue of blood, "Daughter, be of good cheer; your faith has made you well."

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that faith in important in physical healing. But just how well do we understand this miracle-working faith? For instance, who is it that needs to have faith? Is it the person praying for the sick? Or is it the sick person? Or is it friends and relatives of the sick person who encourage them to get healing prayer? Who is it that needs to produce this miracle-working faith? Phrasing it another way: who's faith has to engage to get the healing?

As far as I can tell, the answer is "any of the above." It can be the faith of the person praying, or it can be the faith of the sick person, or it can be the faith of friends or relatives.

The Bible does not explicitly spell this out, but Jesus Himself exercised faith when He healed the sick. We see a hint of this in John 11:41-42, where Jesus prayed, "Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. And I know that You always hear Me, but because of the people who are standing by I said this, that they may believe that You sent Me." Jesus prayed that prayer just before He raised Lazarus from the dead. He was saying something along the lines of, "Father I have faith that You are going to do this miracle through me, because You always do miracles when you send me to pray for someone." Jesus demonstrated a level of faith just by praying that prayer. Then (of course) He demonstrated more faith by doing the miracle that He prayed for, by raising Lazarus from the dead.

We see another reference to Jesus' faith in Matthew 17. The disciples attempted to cast a demon out of an epileptic boy, but they were unable to do so (Matthew 17:16). So the father brought the boy to Jesus and Jesus cast the demon out. (This is the same demon that the disciples could not cast out.) The disciples asked Him why they could not cast it out, and Jesus replied (verse 20), "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."

Let's apply simple deductive reasoning to this passage. We are told that this type of demon won't come out unless the person praying has faith. Jesus prayed and the demon came out. Therefore that shows that Jesus exercised faith in order to get rid of the demon. Jesus personally had faith that God would heal when He prayed for sick people.

However, there are also examples in the Bible where Jesus did not engage His faith for healing on a person's behalf. There are cases where the sick person supplied their own faith, then they were healed. The first one that comes to mind is the woman with the issue of blood from Mark 5;25-34. Jesus did not set out to heal her. He was walking through a crowd, moving from point A to point B. He was not explicitly aware of this woman or of her need, but the woman was very aware of Jesus. Verse 23 tells us, "For she said, 'If only I may touch His clothes, I shall be made well.'" She had faith that if she could just touch Jesus, she would be healed. Verse 22 tells us that she acted on that faith, "She came behind Him in the crowd and touched His garment." Then Jesus felt the healing virtue go out of Him, which prompted Him to ask, "Who touched Me?" The woman became afraid and told Jesus the whole story.

The fact remains that Jesus was totally unaware of her when she acted in faith to reach out and touch Him. He was not lending His faith to hers, she was healed completely independently of His faith. Look at what Jesus said to her in verse 34: "Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your affliction.'"

That passage shows us that the faith of the sick person can bring them physical healing. There are other passages that show the same thing. For instance, Paul perceived man had faith to be healed in Acts 14:8-15: "8 And in Lystra a certain man without strength in his feet was sitting, a cripple from his mother's womb, who had never walked. 9 This man heard Paul speaking. Paul, observing him intently and seeing that he had faith to be healed, 10 said with a loud voice, 'Stand up straight on your feet!' And he leaped and walked."

Let's look at one more passage about a sick person's faith: Blind Bartimaeus called out to Jesus for healing Mark 10. Everyone told him to be quiet, but he was convinced that Jesus could heal him and kept calling out to Jesus to help him. Jesus asked him what he wanted Him to do for him. The blind man replied, "I want to receive my sight." Now look at verse 52. "'Go,' said Jesus, 'your faith has healed you.' Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road." That is a case where the person was healed because he had enough faith to ask Jesus to heal him. His faith activated to a higher level when he interacted with Jesus, and as a result he received his healing.

What about the faith of others (friends and relatives)? Do you remember the paralyzed man who was let down through the roof in Mark 2:1-7? Did you notice that the story is not told from the perspective of Jesus or from the perspective of the sick person. It is told from the perspective of the friends who brought the man to Jesus for healing. Look at verses 3 to 5:

3 Then they came to Him, bringing a paralytic who was carried by four men. 4 And when they could not come near Him because of the crowd, they uncovered the roof where He was. So when they had broken through, they let down the bed on which the paralytic was lying.

5 When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, 'Son, your sins are forgiven you.'

Who's faith was it that moved Jesus to heal the man? Look carefully at verse 5. It says "their faith," not "his faith." E.g., the faith of the friends who brought the man to Jesus is the faith that caused this man to be healed.

Let's look at another example from Luke 8:43-48 and Matthew 8:7-8,13. It is the story of the Centurion who wanted his servant healed. Have you ever wondered why this man did not want Jesus to come to his house to heal the sick person? Let me explain the reason. The Centurion was a Roman (a gentile), but he knew and respected Jewish laws and tradition. He knew that if a Jewish person entered into a Gentile's home, it would make that person ceremonially unclean. He did not want to ask the healing Rabbi to do anything that might "defile" Himself under Jewish law, he just wanted his servant (who was also his dear friend) to be healed.

I believe the Centurion was a very practical man, so He looked for a practical solution. He found one that would to "work" for everyone--he could ask some Jewish elders to bring a message to Jesus for him, asking Jesus to heal the sick servant. Jesus did not need to physically come into the house where the sick man is and become ceremonially unclean, He could just speak the healing command. That way everyone "wins" under the Jewish law--the servant is healed, the Rabbi doesn't defile himself by making Himself unclean. The Centurion was just trying to find a win-win way to get his servant healed. It never occurred to him to doubt that Jesus could heal from a distance, and that is where the faith entered in.

Jesus recognized and rewarded that faith. Look at Matthew 8:13: "Then Jesus said to the centurion, 'Go your way; and as you have believed, so let it be done for you.' And his servant was healed that same hour."

Let's look at one more faith example, the faith of a relative obtaining healing for her family member. There are several we could choose from, but lets look at the Canaanite mother in Matthew 15:22-28. This woman's daughter suffered terribly and she wanted Jesus to help her. The disciples tried to send her away, but she refused to give up and kept crying out after them for help. They tell Jesus (verse 23) "Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us." Jesus gives the woman a discouraging answer in verse 24, saying He doesn't minister to foreigners. The woman continues to demonstrate her faith by refusing to give up. She keeps on pressing in and keeps on asking until Jesus finally says to her (verse 28): "'Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.' And her daughter was healed from that very hour."

We see from these examples that faith plays a very big role in healing. The reverse is also true: a lack of faith can play a big role in preventing a miracle from happening. Look at Mark 6:5-6, "5Jesus could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. 6And he was amazed at their lack of faith."

Imagine that, even the Lord Jesus Himself was limited in what He could do by the lack of faith of those who He ministered to.

What does that mean to us when we are praying for the sick? It means that we need to do everything we can to build faith and to eliminate lack of faith. We will look at this more in our next lesson.

Removing Doubt Barriers

We know that faith is important in healing. We looked at that a bit in our previous lesson and saw that faith can come from a number of sources: 1. the person who is praying, 2. the person receiving the prayer, 3. friends or relatives who encouraged the sick person to get healing prayer. We saw that faith fosters healing, but we saw that the opposite is also true. Disbelief can actually interfere with healing and prevent God's miraculous power from flowing. We see an example of this in Mark 6:5-6: "5Jesus could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. 6And He was amazed at their lack of faith."

Jesus wasn't only amazed by the power of their disbelief, He also did not like how it effected His ability to minister to others. He did not like being limited by the power of disbelief and lack of faith. We know this because the Bible records at least two times that He intentionally manipulated His environment to eliminate the "doubt problem."

The first was Jairus' Daughter, who died and needed to be raised from the dead. There are two versions of this story, one told in Matthew 9:18-26, and the other in Mark 5:22-43. At first glance, the two accounts almost seem like they are referring to two different incidents. They have differences that almost sound like contradictions, but those differences are there because the story is told from two different perspectives.

The gist of the story is that a Jewish leader came to Jesus to ask Him to heal his daughter, who was deathly sick. As he was talking to Jesus, he received word that his daughter died. Right then, Jesus encouraged the man to believe God for a miracles. At that point, Jesus selected a small team (Peter, James and John) who He permitted to come with Him to this man's house to "heal" the dead daughter. The rest of the disciples were left behind, they were excluded from this particular ministry session.

When the team arrived at the house, there were a bunch of mourners and "funeral types" already there. Jesus told them that the little girl was not really dead, so their services were not needed. Their response was a total lack of faith. In fact, they actually mocked Jesus to His face. Jesus would not tolerate their disbelief because He knew that it would interfere with the miracle He wanted to do. So He had all those people put out of the house.

He only allowed the girl's parents and His hand-picked ministry team of three (Peter, James and John) to go with Him to see the little girl. Then Jesus appears to quite effortlessly raise her from the dead. He didn't spend any time praying before-hand, He didn't do anything elaborate. He simply took her hand and told the dead girl to get up, and she did! She came back to life and then Jesus swore everyone in the room to silence about what He just did. However, the people outside saw the little dead girl up and walking around. They have not been sworn to silence and the news of what He has done (raising a person from the dead) begins to spread like wildfire.

I am going to include both Bible accounts in this lesson, so you can see the differences between them. Let's start with the version of someone who was not allowed to go with Jesus and did not see the events first-hand, from Matthew 9:18-26:

18 While He spoke these things to them, behold, a ruler came and worshiped Him, saying, 'My daughter has just died, but come and lay Your hand on her and she will live.' 19 So Jesus arose and followed him, and so did His disciples.

23 When Jesus came into the ruler's house, and saw the flute players and the noisy crowd wailing, 24 He said to them, 'Make room, for the girl is not dead, but sleeping.' And they ridiculed Him. 25 But when the crowd was put outside, He went in and took her by the hand, and the girl arose. 26 And the report of this went out into all that land.

Mark's account includes specific details that had to come from one of the eye-witnesses, probably either Peter, James or John. Mark himself wasn't there, but he relates an eye-witness account of one who was there. Mark 5:22-43:

22 And behold, one of the rulers of the synagogue came, Jairus by name. And when he saw Him, he fell at His feet 23 and begged Him earnestly, saying, 'My little daughter lies at the point of death. Come and lay Your hands on her, that she may be healed, and she will live.' 24 So Jesus went with him, and a great multitude followed Him and thronged Him.

35 While He was still speaking, some came from the ruler of the synagogue's house who said, 'Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further?'

36 As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, He said to the ruler of the synagogue, 'Do not be afraid; only believe.' 37 And He permitted no one to follow Him except Peter, James, and John the brother of James. 38 Then He came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and saw a tumult and those who wept and wailed loudly. 39 When He came in, He said to them, 'Why make this commotion and weep? The child is not dead, but sleeping.'

40 And they ridiculed Him. But when He had put them all outside, He took the father and the mother of the child, and those who were with Him, and entered where the child was lying. 41 Then He took the child by the hand, and said to her, 'Talitha, cumi,' which is translated, 'Little girl, I say to you, arise.'

42 Immediately the girl arose and walked, for she was twelve years of age. And they were overcome with great amazement. 43 But He commanded them strictly that no one should know it, and said that something should be given her to eat.

There are a few things there that we should pay attention to. Let's start with Jesus' selection of His ministry team. Have you wondered why He only allowed certain of His disciples to go with Him instead of bringing all of them? I am firmly convinced that it had to do with their level of faith. I believe Jesus was hand-picking a team that was strong in faith.

We know from Matthew 17 that nine of the twelve disciples had a bit of a "faith problem" and still needed to grow in their faith. Jesus had taken three of the disciples with Him to a high mountain where He was transformed before their very eyes into His glorified form. The other nine remained behind and were ministering to the masses, holding a giant healing meeting and multitudes were coming to them for healing prayer. There had been this certain boy who the disciples could not heal. Matthew 17:15-16 is the father of the boy talking to Jesus. He said, "15 '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. 16 So I brought him to Your disciples, but they could not cure him.'" Jesus cast out the demon and healed the boy. Then the nine disciples came to Him and asked Him why they could not cast that particular demon out. Jesus answered them in verse 28, "Because of your unbelief." That indicates that those disciples definitely needed to grow some in their faith, they had a faith problem that keep them from being able to do all the things that God wanted to do through them.

That incident happened chronologically after Jesus had raised the girl from the dead. Jesus knew the disciples and He knew they did not have the required faith-level for "raising the dead," so He did not bring then with Him. I believe He was carefully controlling the ministry situation to assure that there was an adequate faith-level in the room to raise the girl from the dead.

There is another group that Jesus excluded from the ministry session: all the people who had come to mourn the leader's dead daughter. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that these people had no faith. Jesus told them the girl was not dead, only sleeping, and they ridiculed Him. They were not just unbelieving, they were downright rude in their disbelief. Jesus did not waste any time trying to convince them or win them over. Instead He simply had them removed. He did not want to fight their disbelief to do His miracle, so He had them put out of the house. In short, Jesus fostered faith for the ministry situation by getting rid of those who did not have faith for the miracle.

The Bible does not tell us much about the parent's faith level. We don't know anything about the state of the mother's faith, but we do know that Jesus allowed her into the room when He healed the dead girl. We don't know if she had the required faith or if Jesus just had compassion on her because she was a grieving mother.

Obviously the father had faith that Jesus could heal his little girl (before she died). That is why he left his daughter's bedside and went after Jesus, who was apparently some distance away. Most parents will drop what they are doing to be at the hospital bedside when their little girl is deathly ill. The man obviously cared a great deal for his daughter. Yet he choose to leave her and go find Jesus and ask Him to heal her. That means he was convinced that Jesus could heal the girl.

I don't think that he had faith to raise the dead, but I think Jesus was working with him to help build that faith. A messenger (a runner) came just as he was finally able to talk to Jesus and told him (in front of Jesus) that the girl had died. I am guessing the father reacted in the typical way...grief. He was probably ready to take the messenger's advice and "not bother" Jesus anymore, since the girl was already dead. Jesus stepped in at this crucial point to build the father's faith. He said, "Do not be afraid; only believe," then He offered to go with the father and heal the girl.

God worked in the man's heart to build is faith while they were in route. The woman with the issue of blood touched Jesus and she was physically healed. I am sure that God the Father arranged that incident to help Jesus build Jairus' faith. There is nothing as faith-building as seeing Jesus do a big miracle while He is in route to come and heal your own loved one! The bible does not record any more of Jesus' conversation with the father, but I would not be surprised if Jesus said other things to him to build his faith while they traveled to the man's house.

Jesus was carefully building an environment to foster faith for the miracle or raising the girl from the dead. Faith was important to Him when He did miracles. There were times when He could not do the miracles that He wanted to do because of the unbelief of others (Mark 6:5-6). Jesus really wanted to do this particular miracle, so He controlled the environment by eliminating those who did not have faith from the ministry situation.

We will talk more about this in our next lesson.

Overcoming Disbelief

Controlling The Faith Environment

Our last lesson looked at how Jesus purposely manipulated His environment to remove doubt and disbelief when He wanted to do a big miracle. A little girl had died (before her time) and Jesus wanted to raise her from the dead. He only brought three of His disciples with Him because the other nine did not have the necessary faith. He arrived at the dead girl's house and found it full of doubters and scoffers, so He had them removed from the scene. Jesus went out of is way to create a faith environment before He did the big miracle. There may be times when we need to follow His example and do that as well.

There is a healing minister named Charles N'Diffon who sees a lot of big miracles. I have served on prayer teams at his meetings a few times. One time when he was in San Jose, I brought a sick friend to him for prayer. He surprised me by getting in to a very prolonged conversation with my friend. Among other things, he shared testimonies of people he had prayed for who had a condition similar to hers, and how God had healed them. This conversation went on for about 15 minutes while everyone else stood there waiting for their turn for prayer.

At one point he asked her, "Do you think that God wants to heal you?" Her answer was, "I don't think so, probably not." They talked some more, then shook hands and he began praying for other people. He did not pray for her.

I asked him about it later on that evening. "Why didn't you pray for my friend?" His answer was that she was convinced that God would not heal her, so praying would not only be a waste of time, it would also weaken her faith for healing--which was tenuously weak to begin with. She was not going to get healed if she was convinced God would not heal her. Then he gave me an assignment. My assignment was to talk with her and try to get her to realize that maybe God might be willing to heal her. He wanted me to bring her back to the next meeting if I could convince her of that. She did not have to have faith that she would be healed, she merely had to concede the possibility that maybe she might be healed. I had lunch with her the next day and worked on that point, discussing "Why wouldn't God want to heal you?"

The reason Charles had not prayed for her the first time was because he perceived an impenetrable disbelief barrier. He tried to get rid of that barrier by talking to her, telling her testimonies of similar healings etc. He even did a little exegesis about healing from Scripture. My friend's disbelief remained strong throughout the conversation, though she did enjoy talking with him.

At first I had been a little offended that he did not pray for her but she wasn't offended at all. It had been a good encounter for her and she viewed it positively. When I talked to her the next day, I realized that Charles had been right. My friend had been processing the stuff they talked about, and she is a slow processor. If he had prayed for her right then, while she was still steeped in doubt, she would not have been healed and would have taken the lack of healing as imperial evidence that God doesn't heal today.

But at lunch she finally conceded the fact that maybe God might want to heal her. She came back to the meeting with me that evening and she received prayer and she got a partial healing. Charles had done the same thing Jesus did. He found strong disbelief in the ministry situation, so he worked to overcome that disbelief before he ministered to her.

Let me share another story with you. This is a testimony I heard from someone on one of my ministry trips. There was a lady who went to the hospital to pray for her seriously sick mother-in-law. Both of the lady's sister-in-laws were there with their mother, and they gave her a hard time about praying for healing. The sort of made fun of her and the mother-in-law was hesitant about having prayer, and things did not go well. She did not see any evidence of any sort of healing. She left the room in tears, vowing to herself that she would never go pray for the sick again because it had been such a grueling experience for her.

God told her to go back the next day at precisely 3:00 PM. She did not want to, but the Holy Spirit really convicted her, so she went. When she got there, the mother-in-law was alone in the room, her daughters were not at the hospital. The mother-in-law apologized for the previous night, saying that she really wanted prayer but she was afraid to offend her strongly opinionated daughters. The mother-in-law asked her if she'd be willing to pray for her again--this time without the interference of "the girls," and she agreed to pray. The mother-in-law felt a pleasant warmth come over her as they prayed and the pain went away. She was very tired, so she left the hospital so her mother-in-law could get some sleep.

This lady got an interesting call that evening from one of her sisters-in-law. "I heard you went back to the hospital this afternoon, against my wishes, to pray for Mom?"

"Yes, I went to visit her and she asked me to pray."

"Well, whatever you did, it worked! The doctor said she has had a marked and unexplainable improvement, and she is being released tomorrow morning."

The prayer had been ineffective the first time, because of the doubt and hostility in the room. But when she went back the second time, the disbelief barrier been removed (e.g., the opinionated daughters were not present), and the prayer was effective.

You might want to think about disbelief barriers the next time you pray for someone who is not healed. Mentally re-check the environment and see if there was someone there who served as an obstacle to faith. Or perhaps the sick person needed a faith "booster shot." Maybe they needed to hear you say something to them to help build their faith before you pray for them. If you, you might want to build faith and then pray again.

Remember that Jesus manipulated His ministry environment to improve faith for healing. If He did it, then There might be times when you need to do it as well.

Territorial Spirits Of Disbelief

Let's look at one more example of Jesus controlling the faith environment. Look at the story of the blind man from Mark 8:22-25. "22 Then He came to Bethsaida; and they brought a blind man to Him, and begged Him to touch him. 23 So He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the town. And when He had spit on his eyes and put His hands on him, He asked him if he saw anything. 24 And he looked up and said, 'I see men like trees, walking.' 25 Then He put His hands on his eyes again and made him look up. And he was restored and saw everyone clearly."

This passage is a favorite of proponents of the "spiritual warfare camp." They suggest that there was a territorial spirit of disbelief over the city, and that Spirit inhibited the flow of the miraculous in that city. The spirit had a geographic area that it controlled, which matched the boarders of the town named Bethsadia. The spirit could effect people who were geographically inside of the city, but lost it's power when they left town. They suggest that Jesus took the man outside of the city gates to remove him from the influence of the territorial spirit of disbelief over Bethsadia. Once the man was free from this territorial spirit's influence, it became easier for Jesus to heal Him.

I think that is actually a pretty plausible explanation. In fact, it is the only logical reason I have heard for whey Jesus choose to take the man out of the city before healing him. There can be little "strongholds" of belief. If you pray for someone in one of those strongholds, you probably won't see nearly the same level as if you pray for them somewhere else.

C. Peter Wagner documents several cases of this sort of thing. I took a beginning spiritual warfare class from him at Fuller Seminary, and one of the examples he gave in class really stands out in my memory. There was an evangelical outreach in this certain city in Argentina. People there seemed to be extremely resistant to the gospel and it was a total waste of time trying to witness to them. The team members were starting to get frustrated. Then this odd thing happened.

One of the team members had been witnessing to someone who dropped something. They noticed in on the ground and picked it up and followed the person across the street to return it to them. This same person who had been totally unreceptive to the gospel suddenly became very interested in it. They had a brief discussion and then the person prayed to receive the Lord.

The person told the team leader about that. The team leader got the idea that maybe the physical street also represented some spiritual barrier as well. Maybe the territory on one side of the street was controlled by a demon that made people resistant to the gospel, but the other side of the street was not. The leader decided to test his theory by repositioning his teams on the other side of the street. It was like night and day difference. Suddenly everyone was very open to the gospel and many prayed to receive the Lord. It turns out that they had been trying to witness in an area controlled by spirit that blinded people to the gospel, and they did not have much success witnessing . As soon as they moved out of the area of that spirit's control, then they started having all sorts of success in sharing the gospel.

The example I just shared is not about physical healing, but it illustrates how a given geographical area may be under the influence of a particular demon. The demon seems to be able to exercise some degree of control over what happens in it's area. If an area is ruled by a spirit of disbelief, it is going to be hard to get physical healings in that demon's territory. But if you move the sick person out of the demon's area of control to pray for them, then the territorial spirit is not able to interfere with the healing any more.

What does that mean to us when we have a sick person who we want to pray for? It means that if we pray for them and nothing happens, the problem might be environmental. You might be praying in an area that has a stronghold of unbelief. If that sick person is a friend or relative, you might want to try moving them to another area and praying for them there. Maybe you need to do like Jesus did and take them out of town (and out of the control of the spirit of disbelief). You might want to think about hopping in the car to go to a nice park that is outside of the city and pray there for ten or fifteen minutes. We need to do what we can to foster faith and to disable and overcome any disbelief that is interfering with the healing.

Jesus did it, so we need to do it as well.

[Previous Article] [Next Article]

Support Gateways of His Light by sharing this page on social media