Healing and Prayer
If there is any area where people get confused about healing, it is probably in the area of prayer. The common misconception is that we need to get a maximum number of people to bombard heaven’s gates with requests for your healing, and this will supposedly maximize your chances of getting healed. That is totally wrong. There is no need to bombard heaven’s gates to get something that is already yours. (Besides, heaven’s gates aren’t shut to you in the first place!) You do not need to talk God into healing you. God operates according to His Word, and specifically by your faith in His Word. The majority does not rule Him!
The problem with the “bombard heaven” mindset is that it assumes that healing is something that you have to “get out of God.” Some people use Jesus’ parable of the persistent midnight knocker to teach that you should just keep praying until God gives you what you want. That is not a picture of God. God is not withholding your healing from you! God wants you healed! He already made provision for your healing. You don’t need to pray Him into doing anything about your healing. He has already done all that He needs to do about it. It is now your move, so to speak.
I am an avid chess player, and I know that you would be thrown out of a chess tournament if you kept making moves when it wasn’t your turn. That would be against the rules. There are rules concerning God’s dealing with man, too. God moves when it is His turn, but He does not move when it is your turn.
If I were playing a chess match and my clock were running and I failed to make a move, eventually the clock would indicate that I had forfeited the game on time. I would be declared the loser. It would not be my opponent’s fault; it would be my fault. I could not blame my opponent for my loss of the game.
Well, thank God, He is not your opponent; He is your ally. But the same idea still applies. If you do not move when it is your turn, you lose. It is not God’s fault; it’s yours. God will not make a move when it is not His turn.
God made His move when He sent Jesus to bear such a lashing that He was marred and disfigured more than any man (Isaiah 52:14). That disfigurement brought physical healing to you. Healing is now available on a “whosoever will” basis, just like forgiveness of sins. It is now your move. Your move is to receive what God freely offers you right now.
Now suppose that instead of making a move in the chess game, you simply prayed in tongues the whole time. You would surely be more edified by the time your clock ran out, but you would still lose the game because you did not move. You can pray in tongues on and on for your healing, but you still lose if you do not move. When you pray in tongues, you speak mysteries to God in the Spirit. Therefore, you do not need to pray in tongues for healing, because healing is not a mystery. God has made it absolutely clear that healing is for you. There is no need to pray in tongues about something when the will of God has been made known to your understanding. (This is true in all areas, not just in the area of healing. For example, you never pray about whether God wants to you marry an unbeliever, because He already told you in 2 Corinthians 6:14 not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers.)
I am not saying that it is wrong to pray in tongues when you are sick; I am just saying that you cannot pray “the prayer of faith” in tongues. “Yes,” you say, “but doesn’t the Holy Spirit always pray in faith? He can’t pray in unbelief, can He?” No, He can’t, but to pray the prayer of faith, you must believe that you receive something when you pray. You can’t believe that you receive something if you only pray in tongues, because you have no idea what you’re praying. Your understanding is unfruitful, to use Paul’s words (1 Corinthians 14:14). You can’t receive something by accident. To receive from God, you must know that you are doing so! You can’t receive healing without knowing it any more than you can receive the new birth without knowing it.
If you want to pray in tongues while asking God to reveal to you the cause of your problem, that’s fine. I was having trouble with persistent headaches and when I was praying in tongues, I felt that I should look into having my wisdom teeth out. Maybe you are not as dense as I was and would have figured it out, but I thank God for tongues. I had the wisdom teeth out and the headaches stopped. (Obviously, I am not against doctors, although I am glad that I will never have to repeat that particular experience. By the way, the next day, a famous healing minister was in town and I went to his meeting. Before the meeting, I couldn’t even eat, and when it was over, I could eat whatever I wanted without hurting, which I promptly did because I was very hungry. I believed God for a fast recovery and got it. You can do that, you know.)
There is no need to pray marathon prayers. This is where so many people miss it. They think that if they pray for eight hours, they will get their healing. Actually, you would be better off praying for eight seconds in faith to receive your healing. It would make the 8-hour marathon prayer totally unnecessary.
If you listen to most Christians pray, you will discover that they are wasting much of their time. They are praying for things that are already theirs according to the New Testament – things that they could just receive from God. If you want to pray for eight hours after receiving from God, that’s fine. Thanking God that you already have something for eight hours would hardly hurt you. You only pray the prayer of faith once. After that, there is no need to ask for what you want again, because you have already received it. If you pray after that, just thank God for what you already have, regardless of whether you have yet seen any change in your body.
Church people too often use prayer as a substitute for faith. You cannot make up for a lack of faith with extra prayer. Rather than rambling on and on, people need to build their faith in God’s healing covenant. We would see more results if we would emphasize the receiving part by the sick person, rather than stressing that prayer be made for the sick person.
James didn’t just tell the elders to pray for the sick in a general sense. He said specifically that the prayer of faith would heal the sick person.
It certainly is scriptural to pray for the sick to get a revelation of God’s healing covenant. We are told, “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). Sometimes the Spirit will just put an urge on you to pray for a sick person, and you should follow His leading. However, your prayer is for enlightenment for the sick person, not that God will perform some new act to heal him.
One final aspect of prayer involves preparing to minister to others. The fact that you don’t need to even pray to receive healing (you can just command sickness to leave in the name of Jesus) does not mean that you don’t need to pray about how you minister healing! Jesus spent a lot of time praying. So did Paul. God doesn’t expect you to take every waking minute away from your family to pray, but you DO need to pray to be effective. In particular, I’ve found that praying in the Holy Spirit helps me be sensitive to His leading when He wants to use me in special manifestations. (He wants to use YOU, too, the only question is how (1 Corinthians 12:7)!) You don’t know everything about a person’s life, but the Holy Spirit does, and you can pray perfect prayers for the people you’re ministering to in the Holy Spirit. Of course, God does expect you to use your normal language as well (1 Corinthians 14:15).
You will never be an effective minister if you think that you can just whip Sermon #57 off the shelf and dish it out to the people without doing any praying. By praying, you can be ready to minister the Word and the Spirit to people. Even the particular passages you preach should be the result of asking God which ones are most needful for the people who are going to hear you.
The nice thing about praying in the Spirit is that you can pray about difficult situations BEFORE they even come up! Doing all your praying without tongues is like praying with one hand tied behind your back – you miss out on so much!
If you don’t think YOU really need to pray, Paul has three words for you – “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). Now that doesn’t mean that you go around all day mumbling prayers under your breath in public, as I saw one well-intentioned but ill-informed person do. This only made him look like he had a mental problem, even though he was just trying to obey that verse. Paul did not mean that you should literally pray non-stop! That would be hard to do given that you have to sleep at night, to say nothing of the fact that you have interact with other people on your job. What he meant was, “Be consistent in prayer.” In other words, don’t neglect prayer.