Is It Ever Right to NOT Minister Healing to Someone?

There ARE cases where it would be improper to minister healing to someone.

Healing Resisters

The most obvious is one where the person doesn’t want to be healed.  The person wants to keep his disability payments, wants a reason to elicit pity or complain, or just wants to be left to die.  That last one is the toughest because other people, including you, might want that person to live.  But it is improper to minister healing while trying to override the free will of someone who has decided to just go be with Jesus.

People Who Know Nothing about Healing

Many people need instruction from the Word before you lay hands on them because otherwise, they will not be able to “hook up” with you in faith.  Instruction about healing is part of ministering healing – or should be – so that really doesn’t count as “not ministering healing.”  I’m just saying that sometimes laying on of hands should wait until the person has some idea what’s going on so that the person can deliberately cooperate with you.

You’re probably thinking, “If they’re weak like that, can’t they just get healed on your faith?”  Yes.  The man healed at the Pool of Bethesda had no idea what was going on or who Jesus was.  But we want people to get healed and stay healed.  An uninstructed person could lose his healing when Satan comes along and tries to sow doubt that anything really happened.  You don’ have to teach people a whole Bible course, but I prefer to give at least some quick instruction first.  Faith comes by hearing the Word.  Besides, signs and wonders follow, not precede, the preaching of the Word, so if you put the Word out there, you can get some people healed by the gifts of the Spirit when they might not have been healed otherwise.  The best cases are where “their faith” makes them well, and these are people Jesus commended.  But if they’re going to get faith to be healed, someone needs to preach to them (Acts 14:7-10).

People Bound by Religious Traditions

Another case would be where the person wants to be healed but does not want you to minster healing the way you do.  Some denominational people do not want healing to be ministered by faith because they’ve been taught that it is end-time devilish deception, or that healing has passed away, or that they have a thorn in the flesh, or they’ve been taught others of the hundreds of healing objections answered in this book.  Until you can show them the Bible truth that contradicts what they have been taught in error, you will not make much headway with such people.  Occasionally one of them might get healed anyway as a sign and a wonder, but that is the exception.

People Who Tell You Not to Do It Anymore

Another case would be where you have already attempted to minister divine healing to someone and that person has told you to stop and not do it again.  Getting pushy or argumentative will not help your cause.

A Child with Resistant Parents

Another rare case is a child who wants healing whose parents forbid you to minister to that child.  As awful as that is, you have to honor the parents’ choice.  Some parents fear that you are a cultist or “of the devil” if you minister healing.  This is like the heart-wrenching case we had where a child wanted to come to our church, but his parents forbade it.  We had to honor the parents’ choice.  Of course, once a child is legally an adult who can make his own choices, you would have every right to minister to that adult child no matter what his parents think.

A Person Under Church Discipline

Another very rare case would be if your church has turned a person over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh (1 Corinthians 5:1-5).  Such a person is not to be prayed for so that he can reap the consequences of his actions and wise up.  Ministering healing to such a person would only encourage and enable him to continue in unrepentant sin without the consequences.  However, this action can only take place when a church is gathered together and makes the decision in agreement, as shown by verse 4 in that passage.  This is not a decision a layperson can just make because someone rubs him the wrong way.  There is a somewhat unclear case in 1 Timothy 1:19-20 where Paul handed over Hymenaeus and Alexander to Satan so that they might learn not to blaspheme.  I think it’s safe to assume that this was done in a similar manner as what Paul urged at Corinth, as there is no Scripture where Paul authorized anyone acting as an individual to just hand someone over to Satan.  However, I’m open to the possibility that he did it personally, meaning only that he was no longer praying blessings upon that person.

Unsalvageable Reprobates

A yet rarer case would be a reprobate who once walked with Jesus and experienced the power of God personally but decided to deliberately renounce Christ.  There would be no point in praying for such a person.

1 John 5:16:
If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it.

Of course, this begs a question: How do you know if someone is in that category?

Hebrews 6:4-6:
For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost,
And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come,
If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.

If someone doesn’t meet these qualifications, pray!  I have only met one or two people in my entire life who would fit this description.  Jesus is so good, who would want to renounce Him and all His benefits?  Hardly anyone, but Scripture shows that there can be such cases.

Do not confuse this situation with a false conversion where someone might have prayed a “sinner’s prayer” when a script-driven scalp-hunting street evangelist pressured him to do it.  I witnessed a case where someone was “led” in a “sinner’s prayer” without even knowing what she was really doing or counting the cost.  The preacher asked her to “repeat after me” and she had no idea what she would be repeating.  This probably counted on his salvation tally sheet, but it apparently didn’t count in heaven.  Soon this person was pregnant and shacked up, but it wasn’t because she had renounced Christ in the manner discussed above.  It was because there was no real conversion in the first place!  This wouldn’t be someone you would refuse to pray for!  In some circles, you are expected to meet a souls quota, and you might not even graduate from their Bible school unless you do, which creates artificial pressure to “close the sale” with people who might not actually be ready to make such an important decision.  But the people who “get saved” that way are not mature believers who have tasted the powers of the world to come, so you can certainly pray for them!

Dusting off Your Feet in a Place that Rejects the Truth

Another situation involves an area such as Nazareth that is resistant to the gospel.  Follow Jesus’ example in Mark 6:1-6 and still be willing to lay hands on people in a tough area.  Jesus got a few people healed even at Nazareth through the laying on of hands.  If there are people who are receptive in an unreceptive town, they can still be healed!  However, we can also follow Jesus’ example and His command to just go somewhere else if a certain place is unreceptive.

Luke 9:5:
And whosoever will not receive you, when ye go out of that city, shake off the very dust from your feet for a testimony against them.

Even this must be understood as something that is subject to change.  Nineveh was wicked at first but repented at the preaching of Jonah.  Paul and Barnabas left Antioch in Pisidia shaking the dust off their feet.

Acts 13:51:
But they shook off the dust of their feet against them, and came unto Iconium.

But not too much later they returned to the same city!

Acts 14:21:
And when they had preached the gospel to that city, and had taught many, they returned again to Lystra, and to Iconium, and Antioch,

We can assume that this is once again Antioch in Pisidia, not Antioch from where they were commissioned as apostles, as we read this three verses later:

Acts 14:24:
And after they had passed throughout Pisidia, they came to Pamphylia.

So be very slow to give up on someone or some city.  Before you dust off your feet, consider that you might just be doing a crummy job reaching that area or you might not be the right person to reach that area.  A certain preacher basically dusted off his feet and left an area, but another preacher succeeded in that same area and was having to have multiple services to fit all the people in the same kind of church!

Training Others

Finally, there is an important case where someone with a proven healing ministry should NOT minister healing.  I’ve been in this situation many times and I can vouch that it requires faith.  This is when you are training others to have divine healing flow through them.  If you do it all the ministry all the time, how will God raise up another generation of healing ministers?  You won’t be around forever, and the Body of Christ can’t afford to be without people who flow in divine healing.  So the Holy Spirit will sometimes direct you to have someone you’re training, not you, minister healing.

I remember when I was going to lay hands on someone with fruit allergies and the Holy Spirit stopped me and told me to have a seven-year-old girl who was part of our church do it instead.  I told her what to say, and she did, and she was believing God!  The person was healed without my direct ministry.  It takes faith to believe your own preaching that any believer can flow in divine healing!

It’s a real stretch when the need is something we might consider difficult.  (God never considers anything difficult; He’s all-powerful.)  We were conducting healing training classes and a woman who had been coming had one leg shorter than the other.  This wasn’t one of those “shift the person’s back to make it look like something is happening” charades; she had to wear special shoes and her doctor had long ago verified that one of her legs was shorter.  We had seen that condition healed before, but in this case, the Holy Spirit prompted my wife to have the woman’s husband lay hands on her and command her leg to grow out.  We didn’t touch her.  We all watched her leg grow out in front of us and she has been normal ever since.  It was a faith-stretching experience for all of us!

We’d been on a roll seeing deaf people healed, and another deaf person came to one of our meetings.  However, the Lord told us to let a lady we were training minister to him.  To our knowledge, she had never ministered healing to a deaf person.  But that night, he went from having to lip-read even with hearing aids to not needing hearing aids anymore after SHE commanded his ears to be healed.

I had to fight off thoughts like, “OK, this is deafness, so clearly the ‘pros’ should handle this one.  We have a track record.”  But even if we did the ministry and the person was healed, it would not have had the same impact on all of us as letting that lady do it.  She needed to do it so that she could grow.

Do we believe our own preaching that ALL believers have authority to lay hands on the sick?  If we do, we need to provide opportunities for less experienced ministers to grow in that area.  We need to trust the Holy Spirit in someone else as much as we trust the Holy Spirit in ourselves to get the job done.