Healing--Dare To Believe

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Can God Use You To Heal The Sick?

The best way to get started in healing is to lay a groundwork or foundation, then to build upon it. The goal is not for the pastor or teacher or great spiritual leader to heal people; the goal of this teaching series is for you to heal some people. I want you to take your finger, point it to yourself and say this, "I will heal sick people because the Holy Spirit lives in me, and the Holy Spirit is who empowered Jesus to heal the sick. He wants to empower me to heal the sick, and I choose to stop fighting Him and let Him do it." Amen!

The first thing we need to examine is: "Does God really heal the sick today?" Some of you are all going to say, "Yes, but it is over there in Africa somewhere, or it is over there in Nigeria somewhere." Others may say, "Yes it happens through healing ministries like Benny Hinn or Randy Clark, but not through everyday believers like me." If your first thoughts were something along those lines, it is time to change how you think about healing. God wants to heal the sick today through us--the church. Since you are a part of the church, that means He wants to heal through you!

Have you heard of Randy Clark? He has been a bit of a mentor to me in healing, and I have traveled with him a few times. Randy has had a big impact on a lot of people (including me). I want to share part of that impact with you, because I think that it will help you to start thinking like someone who expects God to heal the sick through your prayers.

Randy had this saying: "God can use little 'ole me. I am so amazed that God can use little 'ole me."

Randy is a very humble man and in the early days of his healing ministry, he was amazed at what God did. He was (and still is) excited when God heals people. Randy does not lift himself up; he genuinely thinks of himself as a "little 'ole me." Of course, in my eyes, he was "somebody" because he was already moving in God's power by the time I met him. That is why it took me a long time to "get" what he was actually saying.

I remember sitting in Moscow where Randy was speaking. It was the fifth time I had heard him preach that particular sermon and it suddenly dawned on me, "Hey, if he was a little 'ole me, and God used him, then maybe God will use me too. I certainly qualify as a 'little 'ole me.'" So I said, "Okay God, here I am, and good luck."

Some of you might thing of me the way I thought of Randy: as a "somebody" instead of a "little 'ole me." If you happen to be one of the folks who think of me that way, it is simply because God was able to use me for His plans and purposes--it is all Him and not me. I was so much of a "little 'ole me" when I started praying for the sick that no one who knew me back then would have through that I could ever be in any sort of ministry. God doesn't used "the qualified" so much as He qualifies "the available." Don't even entertain the idea that I am doing something special when I heal the sick--I am only doing what God wants each of us to do. It is not an exclusive club. If you believe in Jesus and received Him as your Lord, then the Holy Spirit lives in you and you can do it too.

What I want for each of you who sees yourself as a "little 'ole me" to give yourself to a "great big 'ole God," so that God can use you too. The goal is to learn to do is let Jesus do the things Jesus wants to do through you.

You might not be at the place of being "used powerfully" yet--but you can get there. Healing the sick is not some grandiose or unobtainable goal. In fact, we are going to move from where we are towards that goal (healing the sick) by using a combination of learning fundamentals and practicing what we learn.

This teaching series is transcribed from the first session of a healing conference I did in Kentucky a few years ago. The people who attended that conference practiced what we were studying right in the conference. They had the experience of praying for people who were sick, and they got to see God heal them. It will be a bit harder to implement "practice" in this teaching series because we are not meeting together face to face; we can't practice together like we did at the conference. But I hope you seek out opportunities to practice this--seek out sick friends and pray for them as you study this series. Begin to ask God to point out to you those people around you who He would like to heal, so that you can pray for them.

Please be proactive in practicing and applying what we study Otherwise, you might not gain much from reading this teaching series. Let me draw a parallel from the sport of tennis to explain what I mean. You can read a book on tennis and learn all of the fundamentals of what constitutes a good serve, etc. But it won't really help your tennis game unless you actually get out there on the tennis court and practice. The same thing applies to healing: you can't just learn about it academically, you need to practice, to actually start applying what you read about.

So, back to the basic question: does God really still heal today? (You will probably say, "The answer is yes." But are you sure? It is very important that we believe God is at work today to heal the sick, or else we shouldn't be praying for healing.

Why would I say that? It is because we do not want to be doing anything God is not doing. So if God does not heal today, we do not want to pray for the sick, because we would not be getting power from God. If God is not doing it, then we would be getting that power from another source, and we do not want it from another source. The other source (e.g., the devil) does have power and can heal people. I have seen him do it--but he attaches all kinds of nasty strings and bondages, and we do not want that. So it is God or nothing.

Now here is the problem, most of the church has settled for nothing. That does not please God; we want to do what we see the Father doing. Is God a healing God? Are you sure He is? If so, how many people have you healed this week? Do you really believe that God is a healing God, or is that just something you tell yourself that you believe? When you really believe something, you act on it.

Let me tell you something that I do at conferences to emphasize this point. I pantomimed about an "invisible" chair. Of course, that chair doesn't really exist--it is pretend. But I say, "I have got a chair, I am going to put the chair right here, It is nice, has really pretty woodwork, a really nice velvet cushion seat, do you see it, it is gorgeous. This is the kind of chair you find in Buckingham Palace, like at the dining table. Do you believe it is a great chair? Okay, will someone pleaes prove that belief by coming up and sitting on it?"

Everyone laughs, but no one comes up. Why? It is because they politely humor me about the chair, but they don't really believe it is there. I continue, "What, you do not have confidence that you can sit down and it is going to hold you?"

A lot of us believe in healing like we believe in that chair. We can see it in our mind's eye when someone describes it to us. We can agree about it, but we are not going to go sit on it because we are not convinced that it is really there.

Then I make a gesture like I am about to sit on the chair. I say, "Do you believe this is going to hold me if I sit on it? Are you sure?" (Of course, I get mixed reactions from the congregation. Some play along regarding the "pretend" chair, and others advise me not to try and sit on it. Then I choose something "real" to sit on (the steps to the platform, a real chair, etc) and I say "I do not need a chair because I am sitting on the stairs." Then I make this point, and it is an important one--when I sat down on the steps, I acted on my faith. The steps are real, so my "faith" is rewarded and they don't collapse beneath me. They hold me up. Would the same thing have happed if I acted on my "faith" in the pretend chair? Would the nonexistent thing hold me up? Of course not--and the reason that I did not try to sit on the pretend chair is because down deep, I knew it wasn't real and it couldn't hold me.

What is the difference between my faith in that stairs and that beautiful extravagant "pretend" chair? The difference is that one is real to me, and the other chair is not real to me. It is gorgeous, even extravagant. You can talk about it, you can boast about it. But you would not dare sit in it, because it is not functional. Do you see what I am saying?

I want to take us away from believing in healing like my pretend chair (where you do not want to actually do the stuff) to believing in healing like the platform steps (where you can actually sit down and you do not have to think about it or worry about it).

So the question before is not about a chair. It is about healing, e.g., does God still heal today? Of course, we believe He does. But the goal is to move our confidence/faith in healing to the point where we can sit on the chair with aboslute confidence that it will hold us up.

God is a healing God, Who wants to heal people through each of us. He wants to make that fact more real to us, to cause our faith to grow to the point where it is easy to close our eyes adn visualize God doing healing miracles through our hands. The more this becomes real to us, the more we will see healing take place.

Does God Still Heal The Sick Today?

Does God still heal the sick today? Does He want to do that through those of us who comprise the body of Christ? Let's take a good look at that qustion, and let's start by looking at some Scripture, ot see what the bible has to say on the subject.

Matthew 4:23 says "And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people."

The bible says that Jesus a healing God!

Matthew 9:35 is similar: "Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every sickness among the people." This passage says the same thing, that Jesus is a healing God!

Matthew 12:15 says, "But when Jesus knew it, a mob of people had come looking for Him, He went and hid in the wilderness and great multitudes followed Him and He healed them all." In this psasage, Jesus was not looking to minister to anyone. He wanted some alone time with God and He went sneaking off into the wilderness to pray. Then all these sick people followed Him. They brought all their sick to Him, "and He healed them all." Healing was in the very fabric of His being.

Matthew 14:14 says "When Jesus went out He saw a great multitude and He was moved with compassion for them and He healed their sick." Why did He do that? He healed them because He had a heart of compassion and love.

Matthew 15:29-30 says, "Jesus departed from there and skirted the Sea of Galilee and went up on the mountain and sat down there. And great multitudes came to Him having with them the lame, blind, mute, maimed, and many others and they laid them down at Jesus feet and He healed them." God a healing God!

Luke 6:17 says, "And He came down with them and stood on a level place with a crowd of His disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem, and from the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, who came to hear Him and be healed of their diseases."

This verse is someone summarizing Jesus' life: Acts 10:38 says, "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, who went around doing good and healing all who were oppressed of the devil for God was with Him."

After looking at these verses, would you agree that God is a healing God? Some of you are thinking, (you are not saying this but you are thinking) well, that is Jesus--but God is a Trinity--including the Father and the Holy Spirit. That is true, but Jesus said: I only do what I see the Father doing; and if the Father is not doing it, and then neither am I (my paraphrase). If Jesus healed the sick, then the Father was also healing the sick.

Look more closely at Acts 10:38. How did Jesus heal the sick? It says, that He was anointed with the Holy Spirit and power. That means the Holy Spirit is involved in healing the sick as well. The God of the bible is a healing God. Some of you may be thinking that in the time of Acts and the early church there were lots of healings, but this is today. But in Hebrews 13:8 it says, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever." If Jesus was a healing God when He walked on this earth, He is a healing God today.

By the way, does Jesus walk on this earth today? (That is kind of a trick question.) We know He is up in heaven, but He also said He is with us always even unto the end of the world. He breathed on His disciples and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit," but He said "Tarry and wait for an empowerment," and the Holy Spirit fell on them. God is in us. What are we called? As the church, we are called the "Body of Christ." That means we are Jesus feet, so we can go where He wants to go; we are Jesus hands. When Jesus wants to lay hands on the sick today, how does He do it? He does it through us, His body.

Jesus prayed for people and ministered to people when He walked this earth. He still wants to pray for people today, and He still wants to heal the sick. But He isn't here anymore, He has ascended up into Heaven. So, how does He do that today? He does it through us--His body.

You are His body. But what kind of body are you? Are you going to be a body that is fully functioning and does what the mind tells it to? Jesus the mind, isn't He? The bible says that He is the head of the body. There are paralyzed people, that have injuries to their neck or spinal injuries to the spinal column--when their mind wants to do something, their body does not respond. Do you want to be a paralyzed Body of Christ?

The other choice (the better one) is to be a functioning living obedient part of the church body. That means you have to do what Jesus is doing. And what is He doing? The answer to that is simple, and it comes from the bible: He is doing what the Father is doing.

What are some of the things the Father did? He preached the kingdom; He advanced the Kingdom; He healed the sick; He cast out demons; He did signs and wonders. We are the body of Christ doing God's will on the earth today. So guess what you should be doing? Yes, we should be doing the same things that Jesus did.

What does the Great commission command us to do? It says to go preach the gospel, heal the sick, and cast out demons. If this is in the great commission, why aren't you doing it? It should be part of our normal day-to-day lives. This doesn't mean that we heal a sick person every single day. But we should be moving with God, and doing what He is doing on a regular basis, because that is what the bible said to do. God a healing God. Yes, He is!

We have heard stories. How many have heard about all the miraculous healings out of Nigeria? How many have heard about Mozambique? I know revival is there. I know Rolland Baker--we are not close friends, but we communicate occasionally. In the last 6 years they planted over 5,000 churches. A church is composed of usually 50 or more people. They have to take in 10 orphans before they are allowed to be a church. The churches are all new converts. Do you know where they are getting the new converts? Muslims. Africa has a lot of Muslims. Do you know how they are getting the converts? It is by performing signs and wonders. They are healing the sick; they are raising the dead.

Let me give you an idea of what it is like over thre. Think about a couple in your church where the husband is a successful business man and both of them have a lot of faith. I bet your church has a couple like that--most churches do. For the sake of this discussion, let's call them Art and Karen. Imagine that Art walks out of church one Sunday morning and gets run over. He dies, and we have to prepare a funeral for Art. (I pray this will not actually happen to whoever the "Art" is in your church; I am just giving a "what if" example here and not suggesting impending danger for godly businessmen.)

Art was well known in the community as a successful businessman, and some of his customers have gotten attached to him because he had integrity in how he conducted his business. So they are all come to his widow and saying things like "I am so sorry about your loss." and they all feel sad for her. His wife Karen says, "You know what God told me? God said that My husband and I will do some things together that we haven't done yet. I believe God's word, so he is not going to stay dead." They look at her and think "poor widow, she is so bereaved, she has no clue what is going on. We will just give her space, we understand she is suffering." Of course, they come to the funeral to say their fond "goodbye" to Art. But during the middle of the funeral (it's an open casket service), Art sits up and says, "What are you all doing?"

Let me ask you: do you think it is possible that some of the non-Christians might take God more seriously? Yeah! That kind of thing that is already happening in Africa. and it can happen here as well.

Now most of us cannot raise the dead here in Western Culture until we get used to healing the sick. There are levels of faith involved, and the faith to heal the sick lays the groundwork for the type of faith that raises the dead. You have to develop one faith skill before you can successfully move on to the next.

Look at mathematics as an example. When you have a little kid, what is the first thing they learn in mathematics? 1 + 1 is 2; 3 + 2 is 5. Children learn the basics of math before they learn the advanced stuff. They learn to add and subtract before they can learn to learn to multiply and divide. Why? Because multiplying is like compounded adding. 2 times 3 is 2 plus 2 plus 2. You have added twice, and the short hand that is to multiply. Likewise, dividing is subtracting a bunch of times. The number 6 divided by 2 is 3, so you have subtracted 2 from six three times--well you get the picture. You cannot do multiplication and division until you can do addition and subtraction.

Likewise, you cannot raise the dead until you can heal the sick. Now, there are always exceptions. God will usually move in His general guidelines of growing in faith. But there will be somebody who never prayed for anybody before, who has never seen a healing. That person will go lay hands on a dead person, and that person will come alive again. It will happen occasionally, but it is not what we should expect as "the norm."

Let me tell you what God wants to be "normal" in our lives. God expects us to get used to moving with Him in little things and then we can move up and up. When Jesus came to earth, He came as a baby. He grew up 30 years before He started ministering. He did not do anything the first 30 years other than ask some scholars some questions at the temple, and scare His parents a bit. Is not that a waste of time? He could have just come as an adult and started His ministry, couldn't He? So, why did God do it that way? It is because God usually works through processes.

When you plant something, like a flower, you buy the seeds and the plant grows up and then flowers come up last. Sometimes they sell you little plant-lings instead of seeds. In the area where I live, we have really hard soil, and those plant-lings might not be able to take root. Many of them die. There is some risk if you skip the seed stage and jump ahead to the little 3 and 4 inch tall plants. If you want flowers that really last, they come from seeds. It is smarter to plant seeds because the seeds can establish their roots down into the tough soil. It is better to take the time and go through the whole process (seed to blossom) than to try and accelerate it with those partially pre-grown plants. The little plants don't do as well as the seeds because they are used to the softer soil of the nursery, and their roots are not tough enough. The seeds grow in the harder soil so they have tougher roots.

Likewise, God likes to work through processes. If you start at the beginning and work forward, you go further than if you try to jump in the middle.

Experience and Faith

Many believers have experienced some type of supernatural healing in their body. That makes it easier for them to pray for the sick. It is easier to believe that God heals today when you have personally experienced healing. But not everyone has that type of experience. So, I'd like to share a story or healing from my own life to help build your faith. I know that God really does heal because I have experienced it.

I used to do a lot of skiing. We have this place about a four hour drive from my home called Tahoe, which is a major ski resort area. It is not as good as the ones in Colorado, but it is pretty nice. My husband and I had started to do some racing. I was not racing at that moment, but I was practicing on a course that we were going to race in a few days. It was steeper and faster and harder than I realized. All of a sudden I got out of control and fell and started tumbling down the mountian. When I stopped falling, the ski patrol came over and asked, "Are you ok?" I said, "Yeah, I think so I am just sore and shaking."

I went home and a couple of days later my neck was sore, and a couple of days later it went from being sore, to where I could not move it at all. My head tilted over and my shoulder went up. I looked like a hunchback, and it hurt so badly. So my husband took me to the doctor and he recommended I go to a specialist. The specialist said, "This is a bad one. The x-rays are a little fuzzy but it looks like it could be a very serious crippling type injury." They put me in a neck brace and in physical therapy. But the timing for this injury was incredibly bad; it happened just a few weeks before I was to go with Randy Clark to Russia. He was sponsoring a "Catch the Fire" conference in Moscow in February of 1996, and I was part of the ministry team.

This was not planned as a formal healing conference; it was intended more as a renewal conference. Even with the help of the physical therapy and the neck brace, it was still hard to move. I was thinking that I should not go this trip, but I felt like God was telling me that I needed to go. He gave me that verse "And they were healed as they went." It was from the passage where some lepers asked Jesus to heal them, and He told them to go wash in the pool of Siloam, "and they were healed as they went."

That verse gave me the expectation that I would get on the plane half crippled, but when I got to the New York airport with Randy, he would pray for me and God would heal me. Randy was already moving in healing at that time, so it seemed like a reasonable scenario to me. I got to the airport in New York and Randy walked up to me and said, "Wow, Teresa, you look terrible, what happened?" So I told him about the ski accident and he said, "I will tell you what, if we get anybody with neck injuries, I will send them to you for prayer." Then he walked off. I thought, "you forgot to pray for me!!" But I could not chase him because I could hardly move. So a couple of the other members prayed for me but nothing happened.

When we got to Russia, my neck was still injured, and I felt like God had shortchanged me. Most of the people on the team were from either Randy's church, There were three from my church, and a few people from Pennsylvania. Most of them did not know me at all. They thought, "What is she doing here? She cannot even carry her own suitcase; she is going to be a burden on the rest of us." I was also thinking, "God, what am I doing here? Was this a terrible mistake? Should I get on a plane and go home?"

The first two days were a very difficult time, and I was in a lot of pain. The first day we were there was a Saturday. On Sunday we went to some churches. I went with the team, but I was not really able to function or contribute. I sat there wondering what I was doing there. Sunday night we met together as a team, and Randy gave us instructions for the conference for Monday. Then he said, "Okay, guys pray for each other."

I was kind of an obvious "in need of healing" case, but nobody came to pray for me. That is probably because they weren't really focusing on healing on this particular trip. Randy was into healing but the team was not. They are praying "more Lord," and the Holy Spirit came and blasted them, filled them with power, broke oppressions off them. All kinds of things were going on. I got tired of being left out, so I walked up to this guy and said, "Can I pray for you?" He said, "Yeah, go ahead." So I just began to pray, "Lord, will You just begin fill..."

I had my eyes closed and then all of a sudden I heard this thud. I opened my eyes and he had fallen straight back and down, and there was no catcher. So I tried to kneel to see if he was okay. It turns out that he was out under the Spirit, laying on the ground shaking. I remember thinking, "I hope this is the Holy Spirit and not epilepsy!"

All of a sudden the power of God hit me and I started to be able to move my head freely. It was shaking violently from left to right. I thought, "This should hurt!" but it did not. Some people started noticing that God was doing something, and the power of God is on me, so they came over to me. I was shaking and God's healing anointing was all over me. People asked me what was going on, but I could not talk to answer them. But as the power of God hit me, my neck was healed.

The doctor told me not to go on that trip; he said that if I went, I would mostly likely come back permanently paralyzed. So when I got home, I took my neck brace in my hand, and went into the office. I said "Hey doc, look." He looked, and then he took X-rays. Then he said, "I cannot explain this." He was a Jewish doctor, and he refused to call it a miracle, but he said that my "recovery" defied medical science. He said, "I cannot offer you any explanation other than a supernatural miracle, but I do not believe in the supernatural, so I cannot offer that explanation either." Then he medically documented this as an unexplained recovery.

Do you know what happened to the team when I got healed? The next morning I did not wear my neck brace when I came down for breakfast. I said, "Hi everybody, how are you doing?" They are all going, "Wow, is that the same person?" Only about a fourth of the team had seen me that night when I was healed, so breakfast was a surprise for a lot of them.

What do you think that healing did for the faith level of the team? It caused their faith to soar. We saw healings at that non-healing conference in Moscow. Why? because God boosted our faith when He healed my neck. Does God heal today? I had a doctor that says He doesn't, but he cannot explain why I am better. God still heals today!

Yes, God heals today, but that doesn't mean He always heal everyone. We need to celebrate the healings that we see Him do, but we don't want to loose faith if someone who we pray for is not healed. The sad truth is that not everyone gets healed. Even Jesus, the greatest healing minister to ever walk the face of the earth, did not heal everyone.

Look at what happened to Jesus when He tried to minister in His home town. Mark 6:2-6 says that Jesus got up in the synagogue to preach like He always does. But this time He was in His hometown. This happened shortly after He was baptized with the Holy Spirit, and He started moving in power. He went out preaching, visited several places, and then He came home. From the perspective of the people who lived there, it was one of those "All of a sudden, a local boy makes good" stories, and everyone came out to see Him. He sat down at the local synagogue and He started to preach.

"2 When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished, saying. "Where did this man get these things?" and what wisdom has been given Him, that He is able to do mighty works by His hands! 3 Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Are these not His sisters here with us?" And they were offended at Him." (This indicates that He was not readily received in His hometown.)

Let's read on from Mark 6. Verse 4 says, "But Jesus said unto them, 'A prophet is not with honor accept in his country, and among his own relatives and his own house.'"

Now here is the verse I am looking for, verse 5: " And He could do no mighty work there, except He laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them."

Most of us would go "Wow; healing a few people sounds like a pretty mighty work to me!" But, the poeple were offended at Jesus and they were not open to God's move. Because of their offense and disbeliever, verse 5 says that "He could do no mighty work there except a few healings."

We see Jesus' reaction to this in verse 6: "and He marveled because of their belief." In short, Jesus was astonished by their unbelief and how it effected His ministry. He said, "Whoa, tough crowd!"

Their faith (or lack thereof) played a role in healing. Jesus had faith to do the healing miracles. His level of faith did not go down, but the faith of the people receiving impacted His ability to do some miracles. This is a situation where people were trying to disqualify Jesus, and the disqualification lowered the level of anointing that he could move in.

Sometimes we try to disqualify ourselves, and that can pull our level of anointing down. Sometimes when other people try to disqualify us, that can also reduce our anointing level. In a way, that is almost good news. If you go to a certain place and you are not received there and you can't do much healing, this does not mean you are not anointed. It just means you are not anointed to minister there to those people at that time.

Of course, the devil will try to set you up for a failure. He will put you in a situation where you pray for a sick person and they are not healed. Then as you are walking away, a demon will run up behind you and whisper, "You cannot heal, you cannot heal, you cannot do it, you are no good, see, you failed." Satan is trying to set you up for a failure. Are you going to buy into the failure of the devil, or are you going to buy into the will of God? You have a choice.

We need to be sure that we do not disqualify ourselves. We also need to resist allowing other people to disqualify us. Someone else's lack of faith can make it much more difficult to see healing when you pray. But if a given prayer session doesn't work out because of someone else's lack of faith, that does not disqualify us; it just makes it harder for us to minister to that person (or group of people).

When Jesus left his hometown, He was able to do miracles again.

Raising Our Expectations

In our last lesson, we talked about how Jesus wasn't able to heal people in His home town of Capernaum because of their unbelief. There are going be times when you are not going be able to do the stuff because of the response of other people. That does not mean that God yanked your anointing, saying, "You are no good, I am taking it back."

This is really important to understand. Otherwise when people start ministering in healing and they will get a big failure, then they will say, "That is it, I quit." Do not do that, because I guarantee you that somewhere along the line (especially near the beginning) you are going have a good failure. It is guaranteed. Even Jesus had some failures. He was shocked that He could only heal a few sick people, and that was Jesus! If Jesus had problems because of unreceptively of people, there is a good possibility that you might have similar problems.

Your success in healing is not based on your performance; it is based on the authority of God. You will have times and situations where you cannot do what you think you should do. There will be times when you really believe that you have the anointing for this healing and you pray for the person and they do not get healed. Don't give up; go pray for someone else instead.

Do you know that it is not always God's will to heal everybody in a meeting at a given moment in time? Sometimes God only chooses to heal a few. Do you remember when Jesus went to the pool at Bethsaida? That was a miracle place. Do you know how the Catholics have this place where people come to pilgrimage to them because they think they might get a miracle? It was one of those.

There was an angel and he would every now and then, come and stir the water. After he had made the water ripple, the first one in the water got healed from whatever they were sick with. It was sort of like the local hospital, a hangout for all the cripples, and all the sick people. If they needed a healing, that is where they went. They hung around watching the water to see if they could be the first one in.

So, there were lots of sick people there, right? And Jesus was only able to heal one person there. What about all those other sick people?

Now, if you have the gift of healing and you go to a place where there are a bunch of sick people, what is your expectation? Do you expect God to heal everyone there? (There are times when He does that. There are verses where Jesus healed everyone who came to Him.) But He was only able to heal one person at the pool of Bethesda.

Why do you think that is? It was because Jesus said, "I can only do what I see the Father doing." The Father was only healing that one person, then that is what He is doing at that moment. Of course, we want to see everyone healed. But who is in control, you or God?

There is going to be times that you really want to see somebody healed because you have a heart of compassion for him or for her, depending upon who you are praying for. There are times when you think, "God, if I could just have only one more healing like this in my life, let this be the one.: There will be times like you are going to feel that way. But that might not be the person that God wants to heal at that moment. It does not mean He will not heal them later. But right then at that moment, if He does not want to heal that person, you are not going to get that healing, because we do what the Father is doing.

I had one of those "times" early on in my healing days. It happened some years ago when I was at the San Francisco Vineyard. There was this lovely girl named Diane--she looked like she was the homecoming queen for her high school; she married a handsome man and they were just one of the most gorgeous couples. In addition, she was one of the nicest people I ever met. She loved the Lord, and she was a wonderful Christian. She was the kind of person that everyone looked to as an example, and everyone wanted to be like her. Diane and her husband were in their early twenties and they hadn't had any children yet.

Diane caught Melanoma, e.g., skin cancer. I met her in April of 1994, but her cancer actually started in 1993. She was a regular at some nightly renewal meetings. They happened six nights a week at the time, because God broke out at the church and it was incredibly powerful. We would sit there late night in the meetings and we would put our hands on Diane's lumps. W e would pray and we would rebuke the cancer, and the lumps would shrink under our hands as we soaked her in prayer for hours at a time. We could feel the heat, we could feel the anointing, and we could feel the power of God. We could also see His healing at work because the lumps were disappearing. One lump was gone in an half an hour and we would think, "God, wow!" God healed her and she went into remission, so we stopped praying for her. But after a while, the cancer started coming back. She came out of remission. By then we only had one renewal meeting a week, so she did not get soaked in as much prayer as before. Sometimes some of us would go over to her house and pray for her.

If there is anybody that should have been healed this was the lady. There were prophecies about things that she and her husband were going to do together, so we felt it was not God's time to take her. She was one of the nicest people I knew. She had faith, tremendous faith, and there was no reason she shouldn't have been healed. But God did not heal her and she died--and we were all in shock.

I remember being so mad at God. I sat there and I had my arms crossed. I had been in Toronto and I flew home from Toronto. As I got off the plane, I got a call on my cell phone that she had died while I was in the air. I crossed my arms, I went home and I said, "God what were this teaser healings? I do not think I want to pray for the sick anymore, You do not play nice."

If anybody should have been healed, it was Diane. But God did not heal Diane--she died and she stayed dead. She was buried, actually she was cremated, and it was over. (After a person has been cremated, there is not a whole lot of hope of raising them from the dead anymore.) I could not understand it. Why didn't God heal her? It did not seem fair. If I could have healed only one more person in my life, it would have been Diane.

Some of you may have had people in your life, either friend of yours, relatives, or maybe someone that you have ministered to and you have felt that way, and God has not healed them. How do you deal with that?

The way most people deal with that is they tell themselves, "Well healing is not really real for today." The expectation was to see healing, but the experience was the healing did not happen. So the expectation now drops to match the experience. Now what happens? There is a lower expectation. Then someone else comes along who needs a healing. They may not need as big of a healing miracle, but since the expectation is lower, the subsequent experience is lower too.

When this happens, you don't have faith for the types of healings that you used to see before. So you pray for someone with lower expectations and you only pray half-hearted because you do not really expect them to be healed. Guess what happens? They do not get their healing. And that causes your expectation to drop down even lower.

It is like a downward spiral--our expectation starts dropping to match our experience, and as our expectations drop our experiences drop. Sometimes it takes a sovereign work of God to break the expectation.

A lot of people choose to travel with a healing ministry to solve that lowered experience/expectations spiral. They sign up to travel as ministry team member with an anointed healer like Randy Clark or Todd Bentley, or someone else along those lines. They pray for the sick as part of the trip, and they see healings. That causes their expectations go way back up. and their experience rises up again to meet it.

There is another way to deal with low expectation problems. It is to repent before God and say, "God I have chosen to believe a lie. I choose to stop believing that lie and I choose to start believing You. Would You please give me experiences to match the expectations of what is in your Word?" Sometimes God helps by giving us an immediate experience of praying for someone who is healed, and that boosts our faith. Other times, we have to begin dealing with that we have chosen to believe the lie and we have to work our way back up because Jesus said we are supposed to do what He did.

We need to upgrade our expectations, but we need to do so reasonably.

Seed Faith

When I first started out in healing, I expected to go to the hospital and heal everybody in the hospital. I went with a team of more experienced people. We went through the hospital, but things did not work out the way I expected. First, nine tenths of the people we approached did not want prayer, and you cannot force it on them. Then for the tenth who accepted prayer--nothing noticeable seemed to happen. No crippled people got up, none of the cancer patients left the ward. So what happened to my expectations? I told myself, "Well, God does not really heal the sick in hospitals." I decided to try it at the service in church, hoping it would be easier there. But my faith for healing had dropped a couple of pegs. That happens to a lot of us and it is ok. As long as we keep praying for the sick and don't give up, we will eventually see results. But why set ourselves up for disappointment by aiming unreasonably high?

Part of the reason I failed at the hospital is because I set my expectations wrong in the beginning. When we start out in healing, we are like a little child in first grade math. I should have been working on addition and subtraction, but I expected to do advanced calculus.

We need to learn to start at the beginning with little things. When people start by praying for the really big things that they do not have the faith to pray for, their experience goes down; then their faith goes down the expectations goes down and they are on that downward spiral.

We need to use what I call the 'mustard seed' principle. Jesus talked about the mustard seed In Mark 4:31-32. He said it was a little teeny seed that grows into a great big plant fast. That is how it is moving in the gifts. You have to start with a something small and allow it to grow. It will grow quickly, it will grow powerfully, but you have to start at the beginning and let it grow.

There is a baseline that we can start at. If we have unreasonable expectations, we are now going to change our expectations to say, "I am going to start at the beginning, just like Jesus was born a baby and I am going to grow into it."

Think of faith as something that grows over time and gets taller as it grows. When we first start out and don't have a lot of faith for healing, I call that "ankle level." As we grow in faith and begin to believe God to heal slightly "bigger" things through us personally, our faith level grows to "knee level," then later to "hip deep," and so on.

When I first start out, I only had "ankle level" faith Things like healing cancer usually require something along the lines of "chest level" or "shoulder level" faith. My faith has grown over time and is maybe "waist level." I have seen God heal cancer in some people, but many of the people who I pray for with cancer don't get healed. There is going to be a day that I am going to be able to walk into a cancer ward and bring some people out with me. But right now, I am going to look for the people who have little things that right now my "waste level" faith can handle.

That is how to do it. When you have "ankle level faith," look for people with "ankle level" infirmities; e. g., infirmities that are somewhere in the range of my current faith. Pray for those people. They won't all get healed, but maybe half of them will. Guess what happens to your faith? It moves up to "knee level" and allows you to start praying effectively for bigger things.

The principle is this: as I keep praying, I keep seeing healing, my faith goes up and now I can pray for bigger things. That makes my faith level goes up.

When I first started praying for the sick, I saw a lot of backaches; I saw a lot of flu and colds and headaches. I was pretty good at seeing God heal things like sinus headaches, but I did not have very good results with the people who had chronic migraines.

I remember, I was taking a healing class at Fuller Theological Seminary, and our homework assignment was to pray for three sick people and report on whether or not God healed them. I thought, "Thank God the assignment was not to actually heal them, but just to pray." Before my first class meeting, I went to an early morning prayer meeting at a local church. I did not know anyone there, but I noticed a lady who was just sniffling away. She had a very bad cold and sinus headache. I figured, "well if this person probably wants to be better. So I asked her if I could pray for her. She said, "Sure."

I did not expect God to do anything. I had to pray, it was my assignment right? So, I prayed for her and she said, "Oh, I feel better!" I said, "Are you just saying that to make me feel good?" And, she said, "No really, I feel better. Look, I am not sniffling anymore"

She got healed, how about that! So I tried praying for other people who had little things that needed healing. I cannot remember what the problems were, but they were all little things. All three of my people got healed What do you think that did to my expectation? I thought, "Hey, God really does this stuff!"

Then I almost talked myself out of this new burst of faith for healing. I told myself, it only happened because I am a student of Peter Wagner's class, and it won't sustain after the class is over.

So, after the class was over and my assignment was turned in, I had to test it out again. I found someone with another little thing that needed healing. Guess what? They got healed too! A person watched me pray for that little healing and came up to me. They said, "I have got this compressed disk and the doctor wants to operate and I am supposed to go in for surgery tomorrow. I am really having second thoughts about it, would you pray for me?" I wanted to pass on that, because compressed disks sounded a lot harder than headaches or the flu. But God had nudged me to step out at a slightly higher level once I began to believe that He would really heal the little things. So I prayed for them and their back was healed! They called their doctor on the phone and cancelled the scheduled surgery.

My faith jumped up a level and I found that I could believe for more than just the little things. So I started praying for some harder things, and to my delight, God healed those as well.

If I had started with those "harder things" instead of building faith with little things, I probably would not have seen any results at all because I would not have had faith to sustain my prayer. I discovered that God healed things like slipped disks and chronic back problems. So I started looking for everybody with a back problem. "Do you have a back problem? Oh good, well, let me pray for you." About one third of them were healed, two-thirds weren't. But a third was healed! Not everyone was healed, but I saw that real healing was happening. So my expectations went up and my faith grew.

Jesus wants us to grow into higher and higher levels of faith. No matter what level we are at, we can keep growing until we can say things like, "Cancer, oh yeah, that is no problem for God," and see healing in more than half of the people we pray for..

There was a time when I would have never dreamed of a blind person getter their sight back when I pray for them. But now it is not so unusual for blind people to see again. I would say that about 20 to 25% of the blind people who I pray for get their vision back. Yeah, I know that is no where near 100%--but think of it as roughly one out five blind people have their eyes opened. That is exciting for me!

Some of the people at my church have learned a secret--the more we practice praying for "big healings," the more of them we will see. Here is an example from a couple of years ago. A lady came to our church who was deaf. We were supposed to be doing prophetic ministry, but some of the people the prophetic ministry team also pray for the sick. They flocked around her to pray for her healing. It was like "No, no let me be the one to pray."

They want to practice on these people who need big healings, and so do I. Why? Because we know that there is one out of four chances that God is going to heal them and we want to be the one who is praying when it happens. We want to see God heal the people because it blesses them, but also because seeing the miracle raises our faith level for even greater things.

Do you remember the story of Jesus healing Peter's mother-in-law? He went to an area He really had not been in before. People did not know Who He was or what He could do. They did not have faith to make healing demands of Him. So Jesus went to Peter's house where Peter's mother-in-law was sick, and Jesus healed her. She got up and served Him.

That is a great blessing for Peter's family, but the ramifications of that healing were wider spread than just Peter's household. The word out. People heard how He healed her; and they mobbed Peter's place hoping that they could get healed too. That one healing caused the city's expectation to change. People started coming to Jesus for healings, and He healed all these people.

What Jesus did with Peter's mother-in-law was called "seed faith." He gave one healing for free (no faith required) to build the faith to build the expectation of those in her city. Then He healed the others because they came to Him expecting a healing. He does that sometimes. He bypasses faith and gives a miracle that makes people's faith grow.

There will be times when He will put you in a situation and you will think nothing's going to happen but you pray anyhow, and you will see a miracle.

Step By Step

There will be times when you pray in faith for healing, and nothing happens.

So now, here is the question: How do you handle it when nothing happens? One thing I do is look at the level. I ask myself if I am praying outside of the scope of my faith? If I am, I say, okay this is something I am shooting towards, this one of those "one out of ten type of things."

I have probably prayed for about 120 crippled or paralyzed people, and I have probably seen about 12 of them walk. I still get really excited when I see a crippled person walk! I am not a person that you should bring every crippled person to me for prayer, because only about ten percent will walk. There are other people who live at a level of faith where they can see about 50% of the crippled people they pray for get healed. I am not there yet, but I am still growing and I am going be there someday. And you can get there too, if you want. You just have to go, step-by-step.

Are you willing to believe Jesus really meant what He said? He wouldn't say it unless He meant it, right? He said we are to do the same miracles and healings (and other works) that He did (John 14:12).

So, how do you get from the level of faith that you have to where Jesus was talking about? You do it step-by-step-by-step approaching the target. You do not just say, well I am here and then you magically find yourself there. No, what you do, you struggle with it like I struggle. You keep pressing in and practicing and praying when only one out of ten are getting healed. You don't settle for whatever level of limitation you currently have in healing the sick. You keep on pressing in to do all the healings that Jesus did.

Do it step by step. Step one is to start praying for people with things that you have enough faith to pray for. Step two: as you see some things get healed all the time, then try praying for something harder.

We go with an expectation that God is going to take us to the goal, but we go there with the understanding that it is a process but we have to build our faith. So, how do you get there? Start small, use the mustard seed principle and work it out. Is it okay to start praying for small things, but let me warn you of one thing. As I started praying for people's colds and flu, I got colds and flu.

Have you heard of John Wimber? He is with the Lord now, but he was one of the first people who figured out that healing is supposed to be normal for all Christians, instead of being something that just a special few do.

He gathered a small team and they started praying for the sick. He called it "doing the stuff. He would pray for people and his healing team would pray for sick people, and guess what happened for a whole year? They all got sick and the person they prayed for stayed sick. It was frustrating, but they did not give up.

Then one day someone telephoned him and said, "My wife is really sick. She has a high fever and we think we may need to take her to the hospital. Will you come pray for her?" So, he came to the house and prayed for her. She sat up, got out of bed and started making breakfast. He said, "You guys were faking right? This was a set up?" At first, he did not believe she had really been sick. But she was, and God healed her. Note that John did not see that first healing until he had seen a huge number of failures.

So, John came up with a saying that I believe is very true, and I will put it to you as a challenge. If you are praying in faith, you can not pray for 100 people and not see at least one of them supernaturally healed.

(I am not talking about the prayers that say "Oh dear God, if it is Your will--I know You do not always want to heal. but if it is Your will..." That is not a prayer of faith, is it? That kind of prayer won't yield a lot of healings. Pray like you expect God to heal this sick person. You don't need to be worried about offending God. If you are praying outside of His will for a given individual, He is capable of not healing that person. Don't get hung up in worrying about that, but pray a real prayer of faith.

I dare you to pray that way for a hundred people and not see a healing; you cannot do it, it will not happen.

Most of you will not be able to go twenty. Several of you will not be able to go ten. It is just not possible to keep praying for the sick and not see healings. I challenged some people, who literally took me up on the challenge. They got a little notepad and carried it with them where they got a count. One guy got up to forty-seven healing prayers without seeing a healing. But person forty-eight got healed. Another person in that same group saw his first supernatural healing on the tenth person he prayed for. I do not believe it is possible to pray in faith for one hundred sick people and not see a healing. I double-dare you to pray in faith for that many people and not get a result.

There is one caveat to this challenge, pray for people with infirmities at your level of faith. If you have never seen a healing in your life and you take the challenge by going to the cancer wing at the hospital and praying in faith for 100 people--you might be starting with a challenge too high for your level of faith. (Although God is a God Who rewards faith-risks and He just might heal some of those cancer patients anyhow.) If you start out with all cancer patients and blind people and those in wheel chairs and stuff like that, then you are not operating in the spirit of the challenge. It might be possible to pray for 100 people that way not see results, because you are intentionally setting too high of a goal for a beginner.

With that caveat aside, you can't pray for 100 people for healing and not see a healing. If you do not believe me, try it. Would you please try? I would love it if you would try because; you will find out, I am right. You will be happy to be proven wrong because of the thrill of knowing that God just healed someone through you. It is fun to heal the sick. It is exciting! Jesus meant what He said--we are to heal the sick. Not every single person we pray for will be healed, but we will see healings.

God Is Looking For Volunteers

Have you heard of Heidi Baker? She has a phenomenal anointing. God started a revival in Africa through her and her husband. That revival has sustained for several years now, and they have planted well over 5000 churches from Muslim converts. They have seen the signs and wonders. Heidi ministers in love. She will just walk up to somebody in love and she will say, "Lord, bless this person. Touch this person, Lord God. Will You just bless her and fill her." She just loves on them and prays for them, and she has seem all sorts of amazing miracles happen.

Sometimes when Heidi prays for a sick person, God shows her that He is not going to heal that person right then. Do you know what her response is? She hugs them and holds them in her arms, and she prays the love of God over them.

There are healing ministers who reply on supernatural revelation to choose who they will pray for. My friend Keith is one of them. If God doesn't explicitly show him that a given person will be healed at that moment, then Keith won't pray for that person. He is not trying to be mean, he is trying to be obedient in faith. But he won't pray for anyone unless he is sure God will heal them. That is one way to heal in faith, and Keith has seen a lot of supernatural healings and he has an effective ministry.

Heidi, on the other hand, she will just love the person to death. She will not tell them you are not going to get healed. Her thinking is "I am so sorry you are not getting healed right now, let me love on you, let me comfort you, let me pour God's love in you."

Realize that even the big names in healing don't see everyone who they pray for get healed. That means that you are not going to get everyone healed either. But as you start moving in the level of taking baby steps, start with the smaller steps, you are going to start seeing the healings and as you take bigger steps and you are going to see more healings. Everybody will not be healed, but a lot will.

I have sort of have a reputation that a lot of the people who I pray for get healed, so a lot of people want me to pray for them. Only about one-third to half of them get healed when I pray--but the reputation does not go away. The secret to seeing more healings is to start celebrating what God is doing rather than worrying about what He isn't doing.

Also, be aware that at times a single prayer doesn't do the trick, even when God fully intends to heal that person. Sometimes it takes multiple prayers. That is not because God's weak, but because He is doing something we do not understand.

One time I heard Mahesh Chavda tell a story that I just love, because it illustrates this point so well. He was leading a healing crusade somewhere in India and there was this little old blind lady there who really wanted to see. When the preaching part of the service ended, Mahesh said "We are going to start demonstrating with healings and those who want healing come forth." The very first person to come up to the front for prayer was a little eight or nine year old girl leading her blind grandma.

Mahesh put his hands on her and he prayed and he rebuked the spirit of blindness. He asked the Lord to come with His power. He power of God hit her, and she was slain in the Spirit. She went flying backwards so strongly that she knocked the catcher down as well. Mahesh thought, "Well, something must have happened there." But when she got up and he interviewed her, she was still blind. Mahesh though to himself, "Oh man; that is a faith killer. It is too bad that happened at the start of the first meeting."

(If you are doing a healing service and you start with big obvious flop, then it is hard to pick up the people and raise their faith to get the meeting going again.)

Then the next night, guess who the first person up for prayer was? It was the same little girl leading her blind grandmother. Mahesh thought to himself, "Oh God, why, could not she at least be like in the middle or something?" So, he prayed for her and the power of God hit her again and she fell down again. When she got up, she was still blind.

It was a seven night crusade, and this lady came up first for prayer at each meting. Before the sixth meeting, Mahesh silently prayed, "Dear God, please keep this woman out of the meeting!" But she was the first one up for prayer again. By the seventh night, his prayer was, "Dear God give me at least one night. If she is going to be there, at least make her last." Guess who was the first person to come for prayer?

So Mahesh said, "Oh, alright. Fine. God heal her!" He briefly prayed for her and moved quickly on to pray for someone else as she started to fall. He tried to ignore her and everyone's focus on the next person he was praying for. But there was all this screaming commotion behind him. The little old grandmother got up, and this time she could see! This caused the faith level at the meeting to go through the roof, and God did all sorts of healing miracles on the last night of the crusade.

After the meeting was over, Mahesh tried to debrief with God about it. "What is going on God? Why six times I prayed for her and nothing happened? Seventh time she can see, what is going on here--are You giving me a hard time? Am I doing something wrong or what?"

Then God opened his eyes to see in the spirit. Mahesh saw a demon shaped like an octopus, and it had seven tentacles. Each of those tentacles had been over her eyes. Each time he prayed, he busted off one of those tentacles. The symptom did not go away until the last tentacle had been broken off. Each time he prayed, equal anointing equal power went out, but the results could not be seen until the seventh tentacle was busted off.

There are times when we have to persist in prayer; we have to contend for the healing. There are times when we have to deal with spiritual things that go on over and over again. So, if someone I pray for is not healed, I like to tell them the story about Mahesh. I also tell them "Let me pray for you next week. Just keep coming back to me every week until you are healed."

I have one lady that came to me every week for almost three years. At first I thought that each time I prayed, that might be the time she would get healed. But after about two years, I got the idea that she wasn't going to be healed. I still prayed for her because I did not want to hurt her feelings; I wanted to love on her the way Heidi Baker does. Guess what! One day when she came to me for prayer (and assumed that nothing would happen), God healed her anyhow.

Jesus really meant it when He said: you are going to heal the sick. But at the same time, that doesn't mean every sick person you pray for will be healed. In fact, Jesus did not heal every sick person that He came in contact with.

Remember when He was in Capernaum and He did not do anything except heal a couple of people. There will be times when you cannot heal everybody--even Jesus could not heal everybody. But Jesus did what the Father was doing. The Father does healing and God will release healing through you.

The question is: do you believe Jesus meant it when He said. This is what He said: "Most assuredly, I say to you, He who believes in Me, the works that I do, He will do also. And greater works than these will he do because I go to My Father. And whatsoever you ask in My name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in My name, I will do it." That is John 14: 12-14.

If Jesus meant what He said, then we get to heal the sick. That is good news!

That means we need to start to upwardly adjust our expectations to match what God says in His Word. We need to move towards the goal, step-by-step, until we are moving in His supernatural healing on a regular basis.

If we are willing to go step-by-step and use the mustard seed principle, we can plant our seed of faith and it will grow. Be reasonable and don't start with the "hard stuff" like blind eyes or raising the dead. Look for the backaches, the colds and flues, the little stuff. Then take that challenge. Try to pray for 100 people. It will not be possible to pray for a hundred people and not see a healing. In fact, you probably won't be able to pray for ten people without seeing a healing, because God really is eager to heal.

I used to think His healing anointing was something we had to compete for. I thought God was looking for special people to anoint, and only a few would be selected. I thought it was like the Marines or Navy Seals where only "the best of the best" get to do this stuff. Then God showed me a vision of what it is really like.

He showed me those roped-off lines like that have at the post office or at airports, or at the the entrances to sporting arenas ore amusement park rides. They are meant to hold a lot of people with the ropes and control big crowds. Line after line had been roped off in this huge arena-like building, and there were about twenty-five counters set up on the far end, ready to service people. But there were a few people at a few of those counters, and about seventeen of the roped off lines were completely empty.

Then God said, "It is not like I have too many people, and I am trying to choose who to give My power to. It is like I do not have enough people to do what I want to do. I am looking for more volunteers."

That means that if you are willing to volunteer, God will say "Good, another volunteer, okay! You are in." Do you understand what I mean? Praying for the sick and seeing them get healed is reserved for the cream of the crop or the select few. It is quite the opposite. We do not have enough people who make themselves available to God to do what Jesus is doing.

Would you want to be one of them? Good, because you will be if you make yourself available to God.

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