This week I attended a four-day training from William Lau on praying for the sick. The training was Tuesday to Friday mornings. The training was not really anything new for me, but it made me mindful of certain principles/practices I had not thought about for a while. His teaching is primarily on how to pray for healing from our authority in Christ, as per John 14:12-14. The technique is to use primarily commands instead of petition prayers. In the name of Jesus, you command demons to leave, pain to leave, swelling to go down, damaged tissue to regenerate, etc. It is done in an evangelical context where you are presenting the gospel and using the healings as evidenced to back up the reality of the gospel.
One of the things we had talked about in the training on Thursday morning was praying for cancer, as a sort of side topic on faith. We started by looking at mountain-moving faith, as per Matthew 17:20, "I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." Then we digressed to look at mulberry tree moving faith from the verse where Jesus says, "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it will obey you" (Luke 17:6).
William's wife pointed out something she noticed -- the mountain was an inanimate object, it was not alive. But the tree was alive. Then she began to compare it to cancer, saying how cancer was an alive thing and we have to curse it and command it to die. She began to talk about the passage from Mark 11 where Jesus cursed the fig tree and it died. She suggested that when we pray for someone with cancer, we need to curse the cancer and command the cancerous cells to die, and the cancer has no choice but to obey us, since we command it in Jesus' name. She was very passionate about praying for cancer. I was sort of blessed by her passion -- sort of a "you go girl!" attitude for her enthusiasm to heal cancer. But I was not thinking this applied to me at all.
But later on that day, had an opprotunity to pray for someone with cancer, and I tried cursing the cancer like William's wife suggested. While they did not have a total healing, but there was a significant and measurable improvement in their condition. I also had the opportunity to pray for some other people, and I applied the principles that we discussed in the class, and I saw more healings than I am used to seeing in this area. They really work!
The next night, Friday, there was a miracle/evangelism service. Since I had completed the training, I was on the ministry team for that service. Just before service started William leaned over to me and told me that there was a lady with fiberomalysia and he wanted me to be the one on the ministry team to pray for this lady. He told me the main symptom was a lot of pain in her muscles and joints.
The service itself started with worship and then a short sermon tying healing to salvation. It was from the story of the paralytic who's friends removed the roof and let him down to Jesus on a mat, so he could be healed. But Jesus said "Your sins are forgiven you." Then Jesus healed the man to prove that He had authority to forgive sin.
Then William said that he was going to have the ministry team come to pray for the sick. God was going to heal people and we would see miracles as proof that Jesus can forgive our sins. He said that after the demonstration of the miracles to back up the claim that Jesus can forgive sin, he will give people a chance to receive Jesus and have their sins forgiven.
Then he asked us (those who had been at all 4 days of the training) to come forward and make a line across the front. I was near the far left end of that line -- about 20 or so people were there to pray for the sick. He invited people who had problems in their bodies and wanted healing to come forward to those of us lined up across the front.
William's wife brought the lady to me that they wanted me to pray for. It took them a long time to bring her up because she was partially crippled and limped up slowly using a cane. Her name was Mary Jane. I asked her what she needed healing for. She never mentioned Fibermalysia, but she had knee replacement surgery and something heavy had been dropped on her knee while it was recovering from surgery. It was swollen to almost twice the size of the other knee and was so painful she could hardly bend it. She also had a pinched sciatic nerve that resulted in very bad back and hip pain.
Before I could even start praying for her, other people were getting healed and starting to give testimonies. (I could not listen to the testimonies because I was giving the lady my full attention.) I began to pray for her. I prayed for her back first, commanding the pain to leave, commanding anything that was out of alignment to line up, commanding any spirit of infirmity to leave etc. The back felt much better and there was a lot of heat. Her knee hurt so bad that she could not keep standing, so I asked someone to get me a chair and let her sit down as I prayed for her knee.
I put my hands on the leg just above the knee and commanded the swelling to go down ... womp! ... it went down under my hands. That was quite an experience, and both knees were suddenly the same size. One of the other prayer team members had been watching me pray, and she said she could see the knee shrink in size as she watched. It happened so fast that if you blinked, you'd miss it.
I began addressing the knee pain, but William told us we needed to stop praying and go to our seats because it was time to do the altar call. So I told her I'd pray for her more after service.
After service, I prayed for Mary Jane some more. Before I started to pray again, she reported that her back pain was totally gone. So we began to work on the knee. It took about 15 minutes to get the knee pain to go away. Then I was strongly reminded of when the Lord healed a crippled lady in Brazil, and I had sort made her walk and she was healed as she walked. Well, I asked this lady to stand up and put down her cane. Then I asked her to walk with me, telling her she could hold on to me as much as she needed to. And I was strongly reminded of the verse where Jesus told the paralyzed person to stand up, pick up their bed and go home. And they were healed as they began to obey that command.
So I had her walk with me. From time to time she would report pain and we'd stop walking for a second and I'd rebuke the pain. And it would leave. Within a few minutes, she was walking without the cane and barely touching my hand at a regular pace. She was not even limping very noticeably. I had her walk around the church for about ten minutes before I let she sit down. She had not walked that far since the surgery. And she was pain free and not needing the cane! About half way through the walking, I let go of her and she was totally walking on her own.
This was so totally awesome! I have to confess that I had a lot of fun watching God's healing power move on her behalf. She walked up to her husband without the cane. He hardly noticed because he was excited about a healing he'd experienced. He had really bad Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, and the pain was totally gone. He did not believe that God healed people today and had been dragged to the meeting by his wife. He did not go up for prayer for healing. But as he sat in his seat, a lady gave a testimony of being healed of the same thing he was suffering for. And he was instantly healed as he heard the testimony. (Now he believes God heals today, by the way!)
I only got to pray for the one lady, because it took a long time to minister healing to her (because she had a "hard" problem). We prayed about 15 minutes during the in-service ministry time and another 20 minutes after the service was over, then we walked for ten minutes. But it was well worth spending 45 minutes with her to see God touch her in such a wonderful way!
I love to watch God heal the sick, and I love it when He lets me do that with Him! It is my idea of fun!
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