How Can I Get God to Use Me in Gifts of Healings?
Gifts of healings manifest as the Holy Spirit wills, not as we will, but they also depend on our desire and how yielded we are. There is no way to “make” God use you in any particular “spiritual gift.”
1 Corinthians 14:1 tells us to desire spiritual gifts, especially prophecy. So it is completely biblical to want God to use you in gifts of healings and other manifestations of the Spirit and to present yourself to Him as available. However, the timing and the particular ways He uses you are up to Him, not up to you. There is definitely no “magic prayer” you can pray to MAKE God manifest gifts of healings through you in a particular situation. If there were, believe me, I’d pray whatever it was every time, because I love flowing that way.
If there were some promise to believe so that you could always “claim” gifts of healings, they would be rights – they would no longer be gifts. The word “charismata” is used to describe the “gifts” – and charis is the Greek word for GRACE! Manifestations of the Spirit are by grace, independent of what we deserve.
However, you can do some things to position yourself so that IF the Holy Spirit wants to use you in that way, it will be easy. Some other things people do are a waste of time as far as “getting God to use you” a certain way. So let’s look at a list of things that help, followed by a list of things that don’t help.
HELPFUL THING #1: Be Born Again and Baptized with the Holy Spirit
This should go without saying, but these manifestations are for believers. It would be silly to expect the Holy Spirit to use you if you aren’t baptized with the Holy Spirit. If you aren’t already in both of these categories, this book has articles that will show you how to fix that!
HELPFUL THING #2: DESIRE to Be Used by the Holy Spirit
Some people don’t WANT God to use them in supernatural ways. That’s why Paul exhorted us to DESIRE spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 14:1). If you go around saying, “I would never want to be used that way,” you will hinder the Holy Spirit from using you! If you WANT to flow supernaturally, God will accommodate you, though He still has control of the particulars. Make yourself AVAILABLE to the Holy Spirit – comparatively few Christians are.
Just sitting around saying, “If God wants to use me, He just will, so whatever!” is not good enough. That is NOT obeying the Word when it says to DESIRE spiritual gifts. It is wrong NOT to desire to be used in spiritual gifts because God COMMANDS you to desire to be used that way! You should not be “in neutral” about your desire for the Holy Spirit to use you.
HELPFUL THING #3: Give God Something to Confirm
The disciples went everywhere preaching, and God confirmed the WORD with the accompanying signs. Make sure that you minister the Word, first and foremost. Never base ANY kind of ministry, especially healing ministry, on manifestations of the Spirit. Always give the Word first place. Now there may be services where the Holy Spirit just has you “flow” and not preach, but such services will probably be the exceptions because people need to know from the Bible where God and Jesus stand on healing. Even if you aren’t in a ministry office, you should put the Word first when sharing about healing privately. Don’t just run around trying to slap hands on people who have no clue what’s going on.
HELPFUL THING #4: Pray in the Holy Spirit
To see people get healed by faith (which should be the primary goal), learn the Word and share it as boldly and accurately as you can. To see people healed by the gifts of the Spirit as the Spirit wills, spend time praying in the Holy Spirit. Often this is the time when God will show you a specific way that He wants to move through gifts of healings. If you spend no time in prayer, you could miss out on what He wants. The servant is not above his master. Jesus spent considerable time praying. If you want to see His results, you will have to pray as well as study and preach the Word.
HELPFUL THING #5: Keep Your Flesh Under
Your unspiritual body will always fight you when you want to do supernatural things. I’m sure that you can think of times when you decided to pray but your body screamed, “NO! I’m too tired! Go to bed!” Yet if you were going to spend that time watching football playoffs for hours, your body would give you no fight. So pursue the things of the Spirit on purpose so that you don’t fulfill the lusts of the flesh (Galatians 5:16). I’ve found that I need to fast on occasion to keep my flesh in check. Fasting will usually put a quick stop to flesh that wants to run wild. However, you don’t have to go on the extreme fasts promoted in some circles. God’s “atomic power” can flow through you without you having to fast for weeks.
HELPFUL THING #6: Make Yourself Available to Minister to the Sick
If you are willing to do what God has already told you that you can do by FAITH (laying hands on the sick and having them recover), you put yourself in a position where gifts of healings can manifest. Let’s face it – if you don’t minister to any sick people, you’ll never flow in gifts of healings!
HELPFUL THING #7: Don’t Put Gifts of Healings in a Box
Sometimes the opportunity to be used in gifts of healings could be staring you in the face, and yet because of your overly narrow preconceived idea of how gifts of healings work, you could miss it. See the discussion, Don’t Put Gifts of Healings into a Box for an elaboration on this point.
See also the answer to the question, How Can We See More Miracles Today? for some other thoughts on what we can do to facilitate the flow of the Holy Spirit.
Now let’s consider some things that will not help you at all!
UNHELPFUL THING #1: Trying to Impress God
I’ve known people who seemed to be convinced that if they would just be the “best” Christians around, read the Word more than everyone else, pray more than everyone else, do more Christian activities than everyone else, etc., then God would reward them by using them mightily in spiritual manifestations and revival involvement. Quit wasting your time and energy with that kind of thinking! Gifts of the Spirit are just that – gifts, not merit badges for good performance. They are based on GRACE, not WORKS – you cannot earn or deserve them. The more you think, “If I work harder for God, God will reward me with spiritual gifts,” the farther you will be from being able to flow in God’s power.
Sooner or later, you may encounter some of the types of people I have met who seemed to want to be test cases of how carnally you can act and yet still be used by the Holy Spirit. Some people with awful prayer lives, awful love walks, selfish and arrogant attitudes and general fleshly behavior seem to “get away with it” and still be used more powerfully than we are. Again, it’s because gifts of the Spirit are given by GRACE, not MERIT! Now I’ll caution you that sloppy living WILL cost you in the long run, but I’ll tell you, God lets some people get away with a lot more than I would while He waits for them to repent. I guess that’s why it’s a good thing that God runs the universe and I don’t.
UNHELPFUL THING #2: Constantly Begging God to Use You in Gifts of Healings
God’s call on your life is not going to change just because you want it to. If He wants to use you frequently in gifts of healings, and you’re available, He will use you. But it’s still up to Him. I was on the opposite end of one type of manifestation – I kept begging God NOT to use me that way, and He rebuked me. He had to remind me that He is the potter and I am the clay, and whatever He wants is what matters, not what I want. I gave up my rights to what I want the day I handed my life over to Jesus.
The question is not IF but WHICH when it comes to being used in manifestations of the Spirit. God DOES want to use YOU! But it’s up to HIM which way He uses you.
UNHELPFUL THING #3: Trying to Get Someone Else’s Anointing
I’m not sure why you would want the anointing of someone who is called to do different things than you’re called to do. Every person’s calling is different. Yet some people go from meeting to meeting thinking that if they just “soak” under someone else’s anointing, it will get on them. Or WORSE, they think that if they get in enough of someone’s prayer lines, the minister’s anointing will be transferred to them. (A whole separate answer is devoted to this whole thing of getting someone else’s anointing.)
UNHELPFUL THING #4: Waiting to “Feel” the Anointing
You might never “feel” the anointing if you won’t budge until your flesh gets some kind of confirmation that God’s Word is true. God wants you to lay hands on the sick in faith, believing His Word. When you are willing to step out in faith, that is often when a special anointing will kick in. The fact that you “felt” the anointing on a particular occasion before you laid hands on someone does not guarantee that you will “feel” the anointing before you lay hands on someone else.