Healing and the Holy Spirit
1. The Role of the Holy Spirit in Helping You Receive Healing
Part of the Holy Spirit’s job is to guide you into all truth (John 16:13). You have not been left to figure out healing on your own! As you may have seen in these discussions, there can be many reasons why people don’t receive healing other than ignorance or unbelief. The Holy Spirit knows which, if any, is a problem for you. If you’re having difficulty receiving your healing, ask the Holy Spirit to help you! After all, God send Him to show you the things that God has freely given you (1 Corinthians 2:12).
He can show you what, if anything, you’re doing wrong. Perhaps He will lead you to go and make things right with someone you’ve offended. Perhaps He will deal with you about attitudes that need to change. If you’re embracing an attitude that rots your bones according to Scripture, it will be hard to receive healing for bone trouble if you don’t drop that attitude. Perhaps He will show you where you are buying into a Law perspective through unforgiveness. Perhaps He will point out an area in which you’re being disobedient to the known will of God. It is hard to receive the Holy Spirit’s ministry in the area of healing for your body while you are resisting Him in other areas of your life. In effect, you would be saying, “Will of God, be done!” in one area while simultaneously saying, “Will of God, don’t be done!” in another area.
He can also show you the parts of Scripture that you need to understand better. Only He really knows what you need to hear. Trust Him to open up the Scriptures to you. Ask Him to give you revelation knowledge of God’s Word concerning healing. He may lead you to certain verses that will give you the insight you need to receive your healing. He will make the Bible come alive to you.
You have a Helper on the inside. Let Him do His job and help you. The Holy Spirit wants you to get healed! He will help you if you ask Him to, so ask! Jesus said that those who ask receive, those who seek find, and those who knock get it opened to them (Matthew 7:7, Luke 11:9). God said to call on Him and He will show you great and mighty things that you don’t know (Jeremiah 33:3). Take God up on His promises!
You have a Strengthener, an Advocate on the inside. Avail yourself of His services. He wants you help you get your healing.
Since it was the Spirit Himself who anointed Jesus of Nazareth to heal the sick (Acts 10:38), and God now promises to pour out of His Spirit on all flesh (Acts 2:17), it makes sense that the same healing, life-giving Spirit will help you receive healing from God!
2. The Role of the Holy Spirit in Helping You Minister Healing to Others
If you are baptized with the Holy Spirit, you have the SAME Holy Spirit working through you who worked through Jesus. His work in confirming the gospel with signs following is so important to Jesus that He insisted that His disciples remain in Jerusalem until they “were endued with power from on high” – baptized with the Holy Spirit (Luke 24:49). Before the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus, Jesus performed no miracles. He was divine but had to walk the earth as a man. If He could not do miracles as a man without the Holy Spirit, neither should you expect to do so. But once you’re baptized with the Holy Spirit, you should expect to minister healing as Jesus, your example, did – as a man anointed by the Holy Spirit.
We see plainly in Scripture that Jesus ministered healing and performed miracles and cast out demons by the Holy Spirit, whom He referred to as the “finger of God.” Notice that Jesus did not say, “I cast out demons by My own innate divine power,” but rather, “…I with the finger of God cast out devils…” (Luke 11:20). If Jesus ministered as deity, there would be no hope for you to “do the works that He did and greater” (John 14:12), but because He ministered by the same Holy Spirit whom you now have, you can do what He did.
We then see plainly in Scripture that the Spirit-baptized believers in the book of Acts did in fact go out and do miracles and perform healings in the name of Jesus.
So the Holy Spirit wanted to heal people in Jesus’ ministry, and the Holy Spirit wanted to heal people during the Church Age, as recorded in Acts. By what reasoning could we conclude that the Holy Spirit has now CHANGED and no longer wants to do miracles? He was called the Spirit of MIGHT long before Jesus came (Isaiah 11:2). He performed miracles before Jesus came, so why would He stop wanting to do miracles under a better covenant that was established upon better promises (Hebrews 8:6)?
Has the great Miracle-Worker gone into eternal retirement or something?
That isn’t a possibility, given that Jesus said that signs would follow them who believe (Mark 16:17-18), and there are plenty of people still around who believe. Acts 2:39 makes it clear that the Spirit baptism, which enables the believer to receive power, would be for as many as the Lord our God would call. (“For the promise [of the Holy Spirit] is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.”)
Why would God want to baptize us with the Holy Spirit today if there would be no benefit? If, as some claim, we don’t need tongues, Spirit manifestations or miracles today, why would the promise of the Holy Spirit be for as many as are saved? That “reasoning” isn’t reasonable! By what authority do we segregate the Church Age into a powerful Early Church Age and a powerless Late Church Age when no such division in the Church Age exists in Scripture?
The same Holy Spirit who was pleased to move through Jesus and the Early Church will be pleased to move through you in the same way. You just need to know that He wants to do that, and the yield yourself to do His pleasure.
Most churchgoers today are familiar with who God (the first person of the Trinity) is, who Jesus (the second person of the Trinity) is, but they know practically nothing about the person and work of the Holy Spirit (the third person of the Trinity)! Yet He was sent here to continue the works that Jesus did when He walked the earth. It is VITAL to be aware of the present-day ministry of the Holy Spirit if you want to be a conduit of God’s blessing to others, as He is the One primarily at work on the earth now! Jesus ascended to the Father’s right hand, but He sent the Holy Spirit, who descended to the earth and is still here now. So it would behoove us to learn more about Him! It would certainly help if all churches would yield to His promptings; most services give the impression that God is up in heaven somewhere and we’re sort of doing our own thing down here with Him watching. The Holy Spirit wants to be in control of what we are doing here – it’s the only way that the works of Jesus will be replicated in us. Jesus utterly depended on the Holy Spirit, and so must we. We must allow the Holy Spirit to move in our midst. He wants to manifest Himself in many ways, some of which are listed in 1 Corinthians 12:8-11, but He can’t do that if we don’t make room for Him. If we’re just going to plow through our “order of worship” without regard to any instructions He might have during the service, we’ll have only ourselves to thank for our bone-dry services that leave people with the sense that there must be something more, but they’re not sure what.
Jesus said of “him who believes” (not just the “Early Church” believers) that rivers of living water would flow out of his belly (John 7:37-39), speaking of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, you should expect and allow the Holy Spirit to flow out of you like rivers. That’s rivers in the plural, not just a single river, and a RIVER is not some nice little babbling mountain creek or a roadside drainage ditch. The Amazon, Nile, and Mississippi are rivers! You should expect a huge gush of the Holy Spirit to flow out of you and into others.
Many believers don’t believe Jesus’ words, so they never dare to act on them. Others intellectually acknowledge His words but never do anything with them. But those who believe and act on His words can still enjoy seeing the Holy Spirit GUSH out of them into others to bless humanity. You should expect no less.
What I believe stops many believers is that they never “feel” like they are full of the Holy Spirit, and until they get some kind of “feeling” that they are anointed, they will not budge. You could waste the rest of your life waiting to “feel” like you’re anointed! I don’t feel like I’m anointed every single time I lay hands on the sick! I lay hands on the sick and see results not because I feel like I’m going to see results, but because I believe and act on the Word of God in the matter regardless of feelings or the lack thereof. Remember that the just shall live by FAITH (Habakkuk 2:4, Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11, Hebrews 10:38), so you cannot wait for feelings of great cosmic power to shake you on the inside and convince you that you should let that power minister to someone else who needs it. Faith is at its purest when you have no feelings at all and you are just acting on the Word of God!
Instead, believers waste countless hours begging God to “send the old-time power,” asking and singing, “Let the power of the Holy Ghost fall on me!” God already sent the power in the person of the Holy Spirit. What “power” do you suppose God has that is more powerful than the Holy Spirit, who is a divine Person Himself? What “revival” needs to be sent from heaven that will be more powerful than the Holy Spirit whom He already SENT from heaven to anoint you to work miracles and be in you forever? You don’t need power to fall ON you that is already IN you. You only need to cooperate with the Holy Spirit.
There are times when you will sense His presence “upon” you to do a particular thing, and that can be wonderful. For some things, like raising the dead, you would need a special unction from the Holy Spirit. You can often sense His presence “upon you” as He is letting you know that He wants to use you in tongues, interpretation of tongues, prophecy, the word of wisdom, the word of knowledge, discerning of spirits, gifts of healings, working of miracles and (special) faith. I’ve sensed His presence so powerfully in such cases that I’ve occasionally bawled like a baby or just screamed because the power was so heavy “on” me.
But what will you do when a sick person is before you and you don’t feel any power? What if you feel like you’d like to just go back to bed yourself and chill out for the rest of the day? You can act on your feelings or you can act on the Word. In my experience, I often feel a special manifestation of “gifts of healings” kick in AFTER, not BEFORE, I put my hands on someone in raw faith. If you wait to “feel something,” you could wait a long time!
I see no accounts in Acts where the disciples had to “feel something” before they performed miracles. Rather than “waiting on God” until they “felt the power,” they boldly exercised the power that they already had in the Person of the Holy Spirit.
I’m as human as you are, so if it were up to me, I would feel a mighty rush of heavenly power every time before I laid hands on any sick people. I like it better when I feel something, and I’m sure you would like it better too. It’s nice to have a physical sensation that confirms that God is with you. Sometimes God will let you feel something. But feelings are never to lead us – only our faith should be directing our steps.
I’m aware that some preachers have made it their policy that they will never get into the pulpit until they sense the anointing. With all due respect to them, I don’t see a requirement to do that in the Bible. There were some great men who did great things and walked in all the revelation they had at the time, and God honored it. But I’m glad we’ve learned a thing or two since then. One famous healing evangelist would pray, “Lord, rebuke the devil,” and I would hope that even a regular member of a good faith-preaching church today would know better than to pray that. At least we can take heart in the fact that if we walk in the revelation that we have, God will honor that.
I know that some people who have had success have (or had) an “army of intercessors” to “pray the power down” or whatever, but so far in my experience I have never had to recruit an army of intercessors to see results, though we do have people who pray for our ministry. But they don’t try to “open heaven” or anything like that because Jesus opened heaven once and for all. I fail to see in Scripture where Jesus or His disciples required an entourage of intercessors to get anything done, though I’ll be the first to tell you that you need to do your own praying and that you DO need to pray just as Jesus did to hear from God and “see” what He is doing so that you can cooperate with His plan for a meeting.
It is also a mistake to think that you’re not “good enough” to have the Holy Spirit use you. He is the Spirit of Holiness (Romans 1:4). The day you got saved, you got “good enough” for the Holy Spirit to use you as far as God is concerned! Paul showed that it was possible to have mountain-moving faith without walking in love at all (1 Corinthians 13:2), but he definitely didn’t recommend the practice, stating the faith should work by love (Galatians 5:6). In fact, Jesus said that UNSAVED people could even do miracles in His name although He never knew them (Matthew 7:22-23). You don’t have to be “spiritual” – you just have to be available. How spiritual do you think that Judas Iscariot was? He filched from the till, yet he was one of the 12 original apostles who ALL did miracles and cast out demons! God can use completely unspiritual people, but He would prefer that you also grow up in areas other than faith while you’re at it, particularly in your love walk.
I think the devil has twisted “faith which worketh by love” (Galatians 5:6) to convince some believers that their love walk just isn’t good enough to qualify them to act in faith, so they shouldn’t bother trying. But the fact that you can have NO love and do miracles proves that “faith works by love” does NOT mean that you can only do works of faith if you have an adequate love walk, however that is supposed to be measured! I’m not excusing walking out of love. We should always try to walk in love. But if you fail, it doesn’t disqualify you from being used to bless others, which is an act of love in itself!
You don’t have to pray to make the Holy Spirit more powerful! He has all the power you will ever need to accomplish anything you will ever need to do. All He needs is your availability to cooperate with Him. Yield yourself AS YOU ARE to Him and let Him gush through you as rivers of living water!