The Gifts of healing

Matthew 4:23-24; 1 Corinthians 12:9 Please allow me to try and sum up the heart of our series on the spiritual gifts so far: To every believer (yourself included), the Holy Spirit has graciously given supernatural abilities which He is calling you to use in the Spirit of love to build up the Body of Christ gathered here or in the cell group you are in or in an informal gathering of believers in your home, wherever. Yes, the Holy Spirit is given to us to bring us to new life in Christ, to produce the fruit of the Spirit in us, to bless us and Heal us … but He is also given to empower us to make a difference in the world. And one of the ways that happens is through the spiritual gifts. Now the spiritual gifts cannot be limited to just the list of 9 gifts given in 1 Corinthians 12, because there are other lists in Romans 12, Ephesians 4 and there are individual gifts mentioned elsewhere in Scripture. But certainly 1 Corinthians 12 is the most comprehensive teaching on spiritual gifts in Scripture, and so it forms the basis of this series. Today we will cover the gifts of healing. Before we begin though, let me define healing. In the Bible healing is connected very closely to the Hebrew concept of shalom, which means wholeness in every part of my being. Living in a fallen world means that we lose our shalom either physically through injury or disease … mentally through mental illness, anxiety or stress … emotionally through grief, pain, insecurity … or even spiritually through oppression, torment, or just plain sin!! In the Bible healing is the restoration of shalom. So it is not only about physical healing … but about the restoration of shalom in any part of a person’s life. When God gives the spiritual gifts of healings, it means that He chooses to use a person ministering in the Name of Jesus, to restore shalom to someone else. What is this gift? This is the only gift in the 1 Corinthians 12 list that is stated in the plural – “gifts of healings.” And it is obviously no accident, because when Paul refers to it again in v.30 he once again uses the phrase “gifts of healings.” So it is a unique gift. The important thing about the spiritual gift of “gifts of healings” is that the spiritual gift is not just “healing”, but “the gifts of healings”. Therefore it is not that the person God has gifted can perform healings … rather the person with the gift operates as a delivery boy – a distribution agent to convey the particular healing from the Lord to the person being ministered to. Not for a moment does the gifted person become a “healer” – he or she only passes on God’s healings to another. Because this is so, there is also no limit to the kind of brokenness that can be healed through the gifts of healing. In Matthew 4 we read that Jesus went about healing every disease and every infirmity among the people. Jesus was not limited – He healed whatever brokenness there was. When the gifts of healing are exercised it is still the Lord Jesus Christ who heals – only through human agency. Therefore it makes sense that there is no limitation to the kinds of brokenness that can be healed through the exercise of this gift. What healing is from God? I think it is vitally important to cover this distinction when teaching on the gifts of healings. Why? Well, because not all healing is from God. Miracles – even miracles of healing – can be from Satan or demons. They can use miraculous signs to try to get us to put our trust in something or someone other than the Lord. This was the case of the Egyptian magicians in Exodus 7:11 and 22; Simon the sorcerer in Acts 8:9-11; the false prophets we are warned against in Deuteronomy 13:1-3 and Matthew 24:24; and the antichrist in 2 Thess. 2:9, Revelation 13:13 and 19:20. Healing miracles can also happen by occult practices (again empowered by Satan to try to get our faith off the Lord and onto something else) like psychometry, mediums, spiritists, clairvoyance, etc. I don’t think we should look for a demon behind every bush, but when it comes to healing we need to know a basic truth. God has created all things, and into some created things the Lord has placed healing properties. For instance in Scripture a poultice of figs was used to administer healing to King Hezekiah. Whenever a natural thing has healing properties, the Lord has given us that to use for healing – in medicines and treatments of various kinds. But when a healing is not administered through natural means – and when there is therefore no scientific reason for the healing – then that healing is called “supernatural”. There are only two supernatural forces at work in the world – the power of God and the power of evil. If anyone wants to minister “supernatural” healing (they probably won’t call it that – but I’m talking about healing that has no physical explanation) to me, and they are not offering to do it in the name of Jesus and in the way prescribed in Scripture – then I must refuse because whether knowingly or unknowingly, they are operating in the occultic, demonic realm. SO while I may be physically healed of my complaint, I will have opened my life up to demonic activity and oppression! Before you make use of alternative healing practitioners, make sure that there is some scientific and physical basis for the practice. So how does God heal today? God heals through natural means that He has endowed with natural healing properties … AND … God heals by the exercise of His supernatural power whereby He intervenes in the normal natural processes and restores a person. God is equally the healer of your cancer when the chemotherapy works AND when someone lays hands on you and you are miraculously healed. God is not only the healer through miracles; He is also the healer through medicine … because it is He who created the components of that medicine. How does this gift operate? If you are in a situation where someone needs God’s healing, what do you do? I believe that whether you think you have been given the gift of “gifts of healing” or not, you ought to ask the Lord for healing. Prayer for healing is a ministry that every Christian should be doing. After all Jesus said in Mark 16 that “these signs will accompany those who believe … they will place their hands on sick people and they will get well.” So whether I have been given the gift or not, I should pray. Step #1: Ask the Lord for the gift. In other words ask Him to use you as you pray for the person who needs His healing. Yes, the Holy Spirit will decide who receives the gift and whom He wants to use to minister healing … but we are encouraged to eagerly desire the gifts, and so we should ask. When our sincere desire is to help others and glorify God, and not to gain acclaim for ourselves, He would encourage us to seek the gifts. Step #2: Approach the person for whom you have a burden and request permission to pray for them for healing. Explain what you are going to do. Step#3: Build up your own faith and the faith of the other person by reminding each other who Jesus is, what He has done in miraculous healing, etc. Remember out loud that it is Jesus’ healing you seek, and not a healing from yourself or any other source (John 15:5 – “Of yourself you can do nothing”). Then ask for a fresh infilling of the Holy Spirit, and ask the Lord again to allow you to be used as His instrument of healing. Step #4: Begin to pray. At first simply become quiet and wait on the Lord … pray quietly in tongues if you have been released in that gift … listen for His voice and for any particular directions. This may come through a sudden flood of thoughts, a vision/picture, an impression (a deep knowing in the Spirit), a scripture verse coming to mind, etc. Step #5: You will probably have decided beforehand how you are going to pray, and this will have been part of your explanation to them; but at this point you can anoint the person with oil and/or lay hands on them. Never lay hands inappropriately on a person. Always ask permission. If it is a sensitive area, have them lay hands on it and you put your hands on theirs or on their arms. Otherwise just lay hands on their shoulders or head. This was the practice of the early church and sometimes Jesus also used a touch to minister healing. The anointing with oil was not always used, but it is part of the Biblical instruction on healing in James 5:14; and Mark 6:13 tells us that Jesus’ disciples anointed people with oil for healing. But having said all of this, most instances of healing recorded in the New Testament have no reference to laying on of hands or anointing. Step #6: Pray in very straightforward language, asking the Lord to heal the person. You may possibly experience a flow of God’s healing power through you as you pray. Like Jesus knew that power had gone out of Him when a sick woman touched him from behind in a pressing crowd, so those ministering healing often experience a sense of heaviness in the hands, or power or heat flowing through them. One may feel “goosebumps”, light-headedness, or even just a deep excitement in the pit of your stomach. But then again sometimes there is no experience at all. Step#7: Ask the person for feedback. If it is an afflicted body part for which you are praying, you may encourage them as you pray to “stretch out your hand” or “open your eyes”, etc. Otherwise you can just ask them if they feel or sense anything. This communicates your own level of expectancy and also encourages them to expect the Lord to move. Remember this is the Lord’s ministry. You asked Him for the gift of “gifts of healings”. You won’t always know until later whether or not He used you in this way, and that is fine. You asked for an invisible gift to give to someone … you prayed for their healing, seeking to give them that gift … and you will only know once that healing has manifested in their lives, and they have reported back on their healing, that the Lord actually gave you the gift at that moment. When the Lord does heal through your “delivery-person ministry”, be sure to give Him all the glory and REFUSE to take any glory for yourself. In his book Come Holy Spirit David Pytches tells of a well-known evangelist of an earlier generation who had a remarkable healing ministry, and thousands were blessed through it – especially rheumatoid arthritis sufferers. Until one day in a huge meeting right here in SA, in his excitement, he exalted himself and declared, “The world is at my feet”. That was the end of his ministry. God never again used him for healings. What role does faith play? This is a crucial question. Jesus makes it clear that faith is needed if God is going to use us to heal. In Matthew 17:20 he explained the disciples’ inability to heal as being ‘because you have so little faith.’ But what I want to stress here is the target of our faith. Our faith is not in our faith. We do not believe that it is our faith or the faith of the person being prayed for that heals. It is God who heals. So as we pray, our faith is firmly: • That God can heal this problem. • That God can use a simple human instrument to perform that healing. • That God WILL heal, if that is His desire.