I Sense That God Wants to Use Me to Lay Hands on the Sick During Services at My Church.  What Should I Do?

Follow any known protocol that your pastor has established.  He has authority over his flock, so you always need to cooperate with his directives.

If there is no established protocol for a situation where you sense that the Holy Spirit wants to use you to minister healing through you, talk to your pastor.  Let him know what you are sensing.  He can let you know what the ground rules are as far as when you could change the order of a service.  For example, it is unlikely that he would want you to interrupt him in the middle of a message to call a healing line.  Of course, it’s unlikely that the Holy Spirit would want to interrupt him if he’s speaking by the Holy Spirit!

It is more likely that there will be freedom for spontaneous action in a small church as opposed to a church with 10,000 people where the services are being televised on an international Christian TV network.  However, you can be in a large church that is open to the Holy Spirit and the pastor may allow you to minister healing if you sense that the anointing is on you to do it.  In such a case, though, you will almost certainly have to already have a good relationship with the pastor and the church staff before you would be granted that kind of freedom.  They would want to know that you have some kind of track record when it comes to hearing from God and healing the sick – as well as being a reliable, non-flaky Christian.

Also, there are times I’m aware that a healing anointing has seemed to have just come into the room, but I’m not the one who’s supposed to flow in it.  When I served other healing ministers, they were always the ones who would do the actual ministry.  But I did learn to sense when that anointing was present.  I would know that the minister was going to change the order of the service to call a healing line before he announced it.  So my point is that even if you feel that the healing anointing is present, that is not necessarily an indication that YOU are supposed to lay hands on the sick now.

Back to the track record thing.  You may wonder, “Isn’t that like getting out of college and having all the employers look for two years of experience?  How are you supposed to get two years of experience when businesses only hire people with two years of experience?  Well, how am I supposed to GET a track record if only people with a track record can minister to the sick in services?”

My answer is that you get used to ministering to the sick OUTSIDE of services by telling them the Word and laying hands on them.  That’s how I started.  When you start seeing results, word will get out.

Some larger churches require members to attend small group meetings.  The small group settings allow time for more personal ministry.  That would be one place where the Lord might start using you.

However, “outside” the service doesn’t mean that you just go around immediately after the service and try to lay hands on people in the parking lot.  If the pastor doesn’t know you well, he will almost certainly put a stop to that – and he should.  Too many flakes show up to give people “parking lot prophecies” and who knows what else.

After a while, if people know that the Lord uses you along those lines, you might have people ask you to lay hands on them after the service, and that’s fine unless there’s a rule against it.

Where this could get touchy is if there are DESIGNATED altar ministers who are available to lay hands on the sick after the service.  If you start taking upon yourself the job of someone who has to be trained and appointed by the pastor to minister after a service, you could be seriously stepping on toes, to say nothing of stepping out of order.

So what do you do in a church where you have to be DESIGNATED by the pastor to minister healing after a service, but you repeatedly sense that God wants you to minister to the sick?  That’s an easy one.  Go through whatever training is required and become one of the DESIGNATED altar ministers who lays hands on the sick!  If that’s how God uses you, that would be a good place for you unless the Lord directs you otherwise.

You might think, “I already know about divine healing.  I don’t need to go to a training class!”  But you don’t know EVERYTHING about divine healing and neither do I – even though I’ve TAUGHT healing classes at churches.  Even today, I would gladly sit and listen to someone else teach on healing as long as they know what they’re talking about.  I’m happy to hear messages on healing that other people preach. I don’t think you can hear “too much” on the subject any more than you can be “too healed.”  If a training class is a requirement, don’t be too PROUD to attend it.  Part of the training will probably include what your particular church’s expectations are and how your particular church does things.  There would be no way for you to know that even if you just ministered to the biggest crowd ever assembled in some African country.