How NOT to Pray for Your Healing
If you want to make sure that you never get healed, simply follow these instructions from ill-informed and ill-bodied people around the globe. These methods are practically guaranteed to ensure that you never receive your healing. Millions of sufferers worldwide can attest to the fact that these methods do not get you healed!
Let God Know How Sick You Are
Assume that the omniscient, omnipresent, all-seeing God has a blind spot when it comes to your condition. Enlighten Him with a detailed complaint about how bad your condition is. “Oh, God, I just can’t take this pain. It’s so bad. God, it hurts all over. I feel horrible. God, I’m so sick.” Make sure that you do not switch gears from complaining into anything the Bible calls prayer.
Beg and Plead with God to Heal You
Rather than believing the clear Scriptures that say that God is already willing to heal you, treat God as if He were a meanie who would barely give you the time of day, much less heal your body. Try to “talk Him into” healing you. State all the reasons why you think He should. Start with all the nice things you have done at church. Then proceed to the nice, clean, moral life you have been living. In no event should you bring up the fact that the blood of Jesus has made you righteous, because you are seeking to establish your own righteousness and worthiness to receive healing.
Take a lesson from the world’s “foxhole faith” and start making all kinds of promises of how you will serve God if He will just heal you. Make sure He understands that your service to Him is contingent upon your healing and that you are not consecrated to serve Him unconditionally at the moment. But, oh, how consecrated you will be after He heals you.
Pray the Same Prayer at Least 500 Times
Rather than believing that you receive your healing when you pray one time, don’t believe that you receive it at any time. Simply keep trying to “bombard the gates of heaven with your prayers” despite the fact that for you as a Christian, the gates aren’t shut.
Rather than taking to heart what Jesus said about using vain repetitions like the heathen, keep praying the same prayer over and over. “Oh, God, heal me. Oh, God, heal me. Oh, God, heal me. Oh, God, heal me.” is a fine one to start with. Later you can supplement this with, “God, hear my prayer. God, hear my prayer. God, hear my prayer (etc.).” Once you get good at this, you can come up with some clever permutations of each sentence to pray the same thing over and over without being strictly repetitious: “Oh, God, heal me. Heal me, Oh God. Oh, heal me, God.” (There are 24 possibilities with these 4 words alone.) This will make it at least a little less boring for the angels that are listening to your alleged prayer (the ones you haven’t already driven away with this blather).
Let as Many People as Possible Know About Your Sickness and Ask Them to Pray, Too
The more people you tell about your illness, the better your chances of finding people who, instead of agreeing for your healing, will agree that you have a big problem. Their unbelief can start to rub off on you. Telling everyone you know gives you an excellent chance to keep using your mouth to talk about how bad your condition is, which will help you stay in unbelief.
Determine in your heart that it is the quantity of prayers rather than the faith attached to them that will get you healed. Keep telling yourself, “If I could just get more people to pray for me, God would heal me.” Ignore any sensible folks who feel the need to share the Word with you rather than to simply pray for you. Consider prayer alone, irrespective of faith, to be the way to get healed. Then it will be done unto you according to your unbelief, and you can find some more people to complain to, oops, I mean, request prayers from.
Have Others Pray “Lump ’Em All Together” Prayers
Instead of having others pray for you by name, insist that all prayer for you be done on a “lump ‘em all together” basis. Have your church just pray for “the sick” in general instead of for you in particular. Better yet, just have them “remember” the sick instead of actually praying for them. If they must pray for the sick, make sure that they pray “Bless the sick,” “Touch the sick,” or something else that does not involve the actual healing of the sick.
Get Unspoken Prayers to Be “Prayed” for You Instead of Actual Prayers
Better yet, have them just think nice prayers about the sick. “Unspoken prayer requests” are the safest because they will always be unanswered prayer requests. They are a neat device to make sure that no one else can possibly pray in agreement with you.
Just Pray in Other Tongues All Night Instead of Praying Anything in Your Native Tongue
Don’t bother renewing your mind with the Word of God. Just figure that the Holy Spirit always prays in faith anyway, and let Him do all your praying for you. Ignore Paul’s instructions to pray with the spirit and with the understanding (1 Corinthians 14:15). Also ignore the fact that you cannot receive anything in faith when you don’t know what you’re praying about. Just put your understanding in neutral rather than hooking it up with your spirit. Daydream, watch TV, play video games, listen to secular music and generally get carnal while praying in tongues.
Use Tongues to Pray the Devil Away
Attempt to “pray the devil away” by praying extra loudly, and supposedly authoritatively, in other tongues. This will give the devil a good laugh, because he doesn’t understand tongues. Because you are nowhere told to pray to the devil, he will enjoy the undeserved attention you heap on him. The longer and louder you go, the better he will like it. Just don’t believe in your authority in Christ. (If you were to do that, you would realize that you can just speak to the devil for a few seconds rather than praying to him.)
A similar method, in common use in the Body of Christ, is to speak to the devil in a commanding tone of voice, but without really believing in your authority. Then pray rapidly, in special “fear tongues,” to keep him away before he can get you back.
Ask God to Take Away Your Sickness
This method is popular, and it never loses its ineffectiveness. This is usually used by those who think God made them sick in the first place, but it can also be used by Christians who know that the devil is the author of sickness but don’t understand their authority in Christ. Pray, “God, do something about this sickness. God, take away this sickness. God, stop the devil from doing this to me.” Forget that stuff Jesus said about speaking to the mountain yourself, and ask God to “do something” about the mountain and to “take away” the mountain.
Give God Your Sickness
“Lord, I give You my cancer” sounds really humble, too. While it’s hard to imagine how exactly you would give God cancer when heaven has none, or what God would do with that cancer if He had it, it’s not about making biblical sense – it’s about repeating what countless other religious people said who “gave God their cancer.” It’s a great way to fob all the responsibility onto God so that whatever happens, it must be what He decided to do after you gave Him your cancer. Because it’s all up to Him, if you don’t get healed, well, that must be His will, right?
Get Pushy with God and Ask Him What’s Taking Him So Long
Determine that any delay in receiving your healing is God’s fault. Demand that He hurry up. Let Him know that you consider it unreasonable for Him to expect you to exercise patience between the time you pray and the time your healing manifests in your body, regardless of what Mark 11:24, Hebrews 6:12 and Hebrews 10:35-36 say. Then get really mad and determine that He isn’t doing anything for you anyway. These words will be self-fulfilling.
Better Still, Get Mad at Him for “Allowing” You to Be Sick in the First Place
Demonstrate your ignorance of who heals and who sickens by blaming God for your illness. Or at least lash out at Him for “allowing” it to happen to you. For the sake of consistency, also complain bitterly about all those years that He “allowed” you to be unsaved and all the people whom He “allows” to go to hell. Let Him know just how unfair and unjust you think He is.
Pray for God to Heal You “If It Be His Will”
Rather than taking the time to find out from the Bible what the will of God is concerning your healing, just ask Him to heal you “if it be His will.” Do not read Jesus’ “I will” answer to the leper when the leper asked about His will, because this might persuade you to stop using this prayer. If you want a break from praying for healing, also ask Him to help you be a witness to others if it be His will, and to help you walk in love if it be His will, and to help you stop sinning if it be His will.
Better Still, Pray for Character Instead of Healing
Focus on having God build your character through your illness. Pray for character to be developed in you instead of praying for your healing. Then you will get what you pray for. God will work on your character in answer to your prayer, but you will not get healed. God will not give you one thing when you ask for another.
Be Vague
Don’t actually talk to God about healing. Instead, ask God to “touch” you, “bless” you, “comfort” you, “strengthen” you, or some other nonspecific thing. Join the many others who have gone to church services and walked away unhealed after someone prayed that God would “touch” them instead of “heal” them! For maximum non-effect, pray a beggy, pleady prayer like this one I heard a minister pray once: “Oh, please, just a touch from God. God, please let this be the night!” He didn’t get any results, and neither will you.
Pray Halfheartedly, Knowing That You Can Live with It Anyway
Do not treat your illness seriously. Why should you, if it isn’t a serious illness? Just pray out of sense of duty that it’s the thing to do, and because you know that all the “faith people” at your church would approve. Then flesh out by watching game shows and soap operas, reading a couple of tabloids, and playing violent computer games, and don’t bother praying any more about it.
Pray to Be Healed at a Future Time, and Then Declare by “Faith” That God Is Going to Heal You
Rather than believing that you receive something when you pray (Mark 11:24), believe that you will receive your healing sometime after you pray, say, next Tuesday. “I believe that I receive my healing by next Tuesday.” Then tell everyone that you are in “faith” that God is going to heal you by next Tuesday. You will be able to fool most people with this one, because they won’t know the difference between that and real faith. (However, this won’t cut it with people who read their Bibles a lot, because they probably noticed that no one in the Bible ever used faith to receive a healing “in the future.”)
Worship, Worship, Worship!
Use worship as a substitute for faith. Play pretty worship music – or songs about what we are doing for God, how we are winning cities to God, about the anointing, about the effects of our praise, about what we think we are doing to strongholds, about all the cool things God does for you, about exhorting each other to worship God, or anything at all – assume that it is really worship as long as it says “worship” on the album cover. Do not pray in faith and believe that you receive anything. Just assume that if you worship long enough, you will just get healed in God’s presence. Avoid reading God’s promises and statements regarding healing because, after all, who needs to know the Word when we can just get everything we need by worshipping God and being in His presence? Then advise your sinner friends that if they need to get saved, all they need to do is worship long enough and God will save them because everything they need is in God’s presence. That way, they can apply the same principle you’re using.
Assume that your wonderful worship just tugs at the heart-strings of God and “moves” Him to want to heal you, which you assume He didn’t want to do before you started worshiping Him. Use your worship to “get God to heal you” rather than thanking and praising Him that it was already His will to do so before you started worshipping.
This method of avoiding healing is more dangerous than the others, because if you hang around God, it is possible that He will start speaking to you about His Word and His desire to heal you, and you will wise up, or worse yet, actually pray the prayer of faith. Make sure that you base your relationship with God on experience and feelings, not His Word. Wait to “feel like” He wants to heal you rather than knowing His will from the Bible.
Sing Along with Pretty, Catchy Modern Unbelief Songs
Find some songs that talk about how you will worship God even if He never heals you or someone around you, and how it’s OK with you if God chooses not to heal because you will accept it as His loving, mysterious best plan for you. Singing that He gives and takes away is especially good for this purpose, but there is no shortage of unbelief-with-a-beat songs where the drummer thinks he must hit his toms incessantly throughout every measure while the singer belts out touchy-feely lyrics that tug on people’s emotions without necessarily ministering the Word. Still, you have to be careful because some of us do put out modern music with biblical lyrics. If you want to fortify your unbelief, you have to stick with lyrics that contradict what God says, like asking the anointing to fall on you, for God to pour out His power and love, for Him to pour out His Spirit, send revival, and so on. (If you don’t see the issue with these, another article is a good place to find out.)
Pray to Anyone Other Than God the Father in the Name of Jesus
Do not pray a scriptural New Testament prayer to God the Father in the name of Jesus (John 16:23-27). Ask Jesus Himself for your healing. Better still, go through Peter, Paul and Mary. Actually, any dead saint will do. Jesus said that two or three can agree about anything on the earth, and dead saints aren’t on the earth. So when you try to drag one of them into things, failure is guaranteed. St. Jude is a popular go-to saint for healing, but beware – he is notorious for making you run that silly “publication must be promised” statement in the personals section of your local paper when you get your answer. If you pray, “Hey Jude, I want to be healed” and are healed, you’ll have to purchase a “Thank You Saint Jude” classified ad. (Of course, you’ll only use your initials in the ad so that no one will know it was you, unless your name is Xavier Quinn, in which case X.Q. might give you away, or you live in a very small town, in which case we’ll all know it was you anyway. Makes you wonder, if that thing has really “never been known to fail,” why don’t people sign their full names proudly?) Anyway, getting dead saints involved is a surefire way to make sure that you don’t lose your disability payments – because you won’t lose your disability!
Pray for Your Healing Any Other Way You Want!
Indeed, any method of “praying for God to heal you” is likely to keep your healing away, because you are asking God to give you something that He says is already yours in Christ. His decision was settled irrevocably when He sent Jesus to atone for your sins. So keep praying for your healing “until you get it,” which you probably won’t. As long as you don’t act like Jesus already “got” your healing for you, you run little risk of being healed.
If you want to fail even more in prayer, concentrate on praying prayers God won't answer.