How Long Should I Expect to Have to Pray for Healing?

The same amount of time it took for you to pray to get saved!  In other words, a very, very short time!

When you decided that you wanted Jesus to be the Lord of your life, how long did your prayer have to be to receive Him?  Did you have to keep beseeching the Lord for days to save you from your sins?  No!  You believed that something was available to you, you prayed, and you received what was available.  That was the end of it.

Healing is supposed to work the same way.  You believe that you receive healing when you pray, just as you believed that you received the new birth when you prayed.  So how long you pray is mostly a matter of how quickly you get a few words out of your mouth!

Now that you’re saved, do you keep asking the Lord to save you every day?   No!  You don’t have to do that because you only need to receive the new birth once.  Once you’re received it, it’s yours.  Healing works the same way.  You believe that you receive it when you pray, and it’s yours.  You don’t keep on asking the Lord to heal you at that point any more than you would keep asking the Lord to save you.

“Yes,” you might add, “but I still don’t feel as if I’ve received my healing.”  Feelings have nothing to do with whether or not you have taken something in the spiritual realm.  Do you feel saved all the time?  You don’t go by feelings to determine whether you’ve received the new birth, do you?  So why go by feelings about anything else?

“Well, I still have symptoms as if I hadn’t received anything.”  Do you ever snap at someone else and regret it later?  That is a symptom of being a sinner, but yet you are not really a sinner on the inside anymore if you are born again.  Acting like a sinner at times doesn’t negate the fact that you’ve received the new birth.  Likewise, having pain in your body does not negate having received your healing.

You may need to STAND for your healing after you believe that you receive it, but you only PRAY to receive healing for something ONCE.  Any subsequent prayer to receive healing would negate the first prayer and admit that you prayed in unbelief the previous time.  Now if you DID pray in unbelief, go ahead and pray in FAITH this time, believing that you receive when you pray, as Jesus taught.  Then make any subsequent praying about the matter be prayers of thanksgiving that Jesus provided the healing that you’ve already received.