Jesus and the Prayer Requests
Mark 18:6-11:
And a long line formed before Jesus of people bringing Him their prayer requests for other people who were elsewhere.
A man came unto Him, saying, “I beseech Thee, please pray for Bobbus in Capernaum – he doth have pain in his joints.”
Then a woman came unto Him, saying, “Please lift up Jillia in Decapolis. She hath a broken arm.”
Then came another man, saying, “Please pray every day for Ralphus in Cana until his blood pressure goeth back to normal.”
Another woman begged, “Please intercede for Billeo in Jerusalem. A dog did bite him and his leg hurteth greatly.”
And Jesus spent the day and part of the evening praying for the prayer requests that the multitudes did bring.
I assume you’ve figured out by now that this passage is not in the Bible. Nor is there any passage remotely like it. It sounds more like a modern church phone line!
The pattern was to bring the sick (or bring yourself if you were the sick person) to where the anointing was flowing, which was wherever Jesus was. It was NOT the standard to just get Jesus to “lift up people in prayer.” Here are some good reasons why having the sick come personally for prayer (when possible) is superior to submitting prayer requests for them:
1. The sick person’s greatest need is the Word, not prayer. God said, “He sent His Word and healed them,” but He never said, “He sent an army of intercessors and healed them.” The multitudes in Jesus’ day came to “hear and to be healed,” not just to be healed.
Luke 5:15:
But so much the more went there a fame abroad of him: and great multitudes came together to hear, and to be healed by him of their infirmities.
Luke 6:17:
And he came down with them, and stood in the plain, and the company of his disciples, and a great multitude of people out of all Judaea and Jerusalem, and from the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon, which came to hear him, and to be healed of their diseases;
It is MUCH easier to get people healed when they can hear what the Word says about their healing. They will then have a basis for faith to receive the healing Jesus paid for instead of just “a hopin’ and a prayin’.”
2. When sick people come to be healed, they have some skin in the game. If they just want people to pray for them, they can figure there is no downside if it doesn’t work because they didn’t exert any effort.
3. In a service at a good church, a tangible anointing can flow in a way that would be difficult to replicate at the sick person’s house by praying remotely. It’s easier to get healed where the anointing is flowing. People came to Jesus because He was the Christ (the Anointed) and people knew that the anointing flowed out of Him.
4. Sometimes, people who are not in faith themselves can still get healed by the gifts of the Spirit in a good service where the Holy Spirit is allowed to move freely. This will not usually happen with a prayer request while the person stays home, though occasionally “the gift of faith” can manifest and someone will get healed. That is very rare in my experience.
5. The people Jesus healed “remotely” were not in a good condition to be brought themselves. We have no indication that He healed people who could have easily gone to where He was. Even the paralyzed man in Luke 5:17-26 was brought and let down through the roof; his friends didn’t just come and say, “Pray for the paralytic who can’t make it here himself for obvious reasons.”
6. A person at home might not have anyone of “like precious faith” around, but at a good church, a sick person can be surrounded by people who believe everything God says about healing. That definitely helps, because you become like the people you hang out with. Quick examples of this:
Proverbs 13:20:
He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.
Proverbs 22:24-25:
Make no friendship with an angry man; and with a furious man thou shalt not go:
Lest thou learn his ways, and get a snare to thy soul.
7. It is unfair to the local church to expect it to take up service time with a request from a person who couldn’t be bothered being there himself if he lives in the area.
8. The person might not want to be healed, in which case you can’t pray in agreement with him. People who don’t want to be healed don’t show up at services where people are getting healed. This weeds out people who just want sympathy or don’t want to lose their disability payments.
9. There are no accounts of Jesus praying for the sick. The closest you’ll get is His prayer at Lazarus’ tomb (John 11:1-44), and that was a prayer for a dead person who had no possibility of coming to Him for prayer. Nor did Jesus ever commission His disciples to “pray for” the sick. He commissioned them to heal the sick (Matthew 10:7-8, Luke 9:1-2, Luke 10:9). There’s a big difference between beseeching God and using authority to heal the sick.
It is both amazing and annoying that some people think it’s a good idea to go to a church that doesn’t believe in healing, and if anything is said about healing, it’s against it, and then when they’re desperate, they call another church that DOES believe the Bible in the area of healing to request prayer. Then they get healed and happily stay at United Unbelief Fellowship, and when the next serious need arises, they’ll call the other church for prayer again. I lost count a long time ago of the number of times we’ve been the “other church” in this example. Many people have been healed this way and I know God is more merciful than my flesh is! But it is not fair to support one church with your time, talent and tithes and then ask a church you don’t support at all to help you every time you’re sick. This is like getting a free sample of some supplement, finding out that it works, then saying, “I don’t want to pay for the next batch – give me another free sample!” It is like paying Walmart for something you ordered on Amazon. It’s also incredibly stupid to stay and support the teaching of unbelief at a dead church while refusing to attend and support a good one in the same area.